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The Park, Friday Evening

On days when she didn't have work at Caritas or class in Baltimore, April tended to walk Cliff rather late in the day. Because she could, pretty much. Only two things about this particular walk set it apart from the norm.

The first was that April was still feeling a little crappy, so about seventy percent of her attention was going toward her phone rather than to where she was walking. She was engaged in a very important (read: not important) conversation via text with her sister Natalie, who was giving April really unhelpful advice about how to apologize to someone she didn't want to apologize to.

The second was that Cliff had just come from veterinary surgery and had a lampshade-shaped cone of shame on his head. The squirrels kept snickering at him and Cliff was beginning to become a bit growly.

"Dude, I wouldn't do that," April warned him, not looking up from her phone. "You know those squirrels could beat you up."

She wasn't wrong. It had happened before.

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"... oh, hi."

There Victor was, taking a perfectly normal Friday evening walk, and he spotted the girl who had kind of gotten him killed. He was almost certain she wasn't a vampire anymore, but his muscles were tensed in case of attack anyhow.

Oh, this guy. Awkward.

"Hey," April said. Her tone sounded neutral, because it always did, but there was a very light trace of shame that people who knew her well could probably pick up on.

Cliff also wanted to say hello, and ambled over to sniff at Victor. April thought Cliff was a bit mean to subject her to that kind of awkwardness. Still, she gave Victor a nod. "...'Sup?"

"Nothing," Victor said eloquently. "Just .... out of Doritos. Needed more."

Fascinating conversation. He bent over to offer his hand to Cliff. "You have a really cute dog."

Cliff personally agreed with that, and awarded Victor with a whole bunch of hand-kisses, head-cone or no head-cone. Because someone was a lot friendlier than his owner.

"Thanks," April said.

...So yeah.

Assuming an exaggeratedly jocular expression, she added, "So hey, congrats on being alive, bro."

Why beat around the bush, really?

"Yeah, it's one of my favorite things," Victor said, after taking just a second to figure out she was probably kidding. "No Doritos or cute dogs when you're dead. And ... congrats on getting over the fang situation."

"Yeah, I thought it'd be cool to never have to pay for food again, but I forgot to consider all the running I'd have to do," April said easily. "I'm good being a human again."

"I guess that's why there aren't any fat vampires," Victor smirked. "So are we good? No lingering urge to chomp on me?"

He'd thought he was a lot more mad at her than he actually was, now that he saw her with her conehead dog in the park on a warm spring night.

"Not really," April confirmed. "I'm more in a taco mood."

So yes, Victor. It was all good.

"No lingering urge to electrocute me or whatever?"

Victor glanced at his hands, flexing the fingers in sudden guilt. If things had gone a little different, he could have been the killer instead of the victim here, and he knew it.

"I only zap things that attack," he said. "Promise."

Shrugging it off, he added, "Also, did you find a taco place that doesn't suck? 'Cause if you did I'm impressed."

"Ugh, no, there's like nothing," April ~~whined~~ whined. "I've been going off-island or making my mom cook and send me stuff. It sucks."

Yes, her life was so hard. Truly.

"I almost wish I could cook."

"I don't even know if you can get the right stuff here," Victor whined right back. "Like their water is different to the tortillas taste wrong, and the vegetables are all trucked in from places, and I know nobody sells menudo." He sighed. "I really miss L.A."

For someone who put pickles in chocolate chip cookies, Victor was very discerning about these things.

"Is your mom Mexican?"

"Puerto Rican, but the only non-diner food our town has is Chinese and Mexican," April explained without inflection. "So she got really good at tacos from eating at the same Mexican place nine hundred times."

Or something.

"What about you?"

"She was Mexican," Victor answered. "And that sounds like a really tiny town. Kind of like here?"

"Kind of bigger, but with fewer restaurant options," April clarified. "Pretty sure like thirty percent of the town subsists exclusively on Sweetums candy, so we don't need a ton of variety."

She'd still kill for a place that served decent arroz con gandules, though.

"Lemme guess, LA's food options are way better?"

"Um, yeah," Victor said, slightly sheepish. "I hate to be that guy who moves to a small town and whines about the food all the time, but ... yeah. Not that I don't know people who basically live on candy."

"You get to complain when there's literally nowhere to eat that's even vaguely Hispanic in this town," April assured him. "At least Baltimore has some options, but whenever I try to get them to deliver, they're like, 'No, the last time we sent a delivery guy there, a talking bear ate his arm.'"

April clearly thought that was a wimpy excuse.

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The Park, Friday Evening

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