May 2, 2000 - Evening

“Mind if I borrow your phone for a minute to call Victoria? She's home so I need to tell her I'll come later. I can buy you another phone card before I leave or pay for your minutes.”

“Sure, and don’t worry about it,” said Frank, grabbing his phone. “I will instead be flattered that you decided to stay and eat with me instead of running out of here as soon as Victoria got home.”

She took the phone from his hand and dialled Victoria’s number. Neither of them had a cell phone, but Victoria had a landline phone service in her dorm room.

“What made you think that I would have run out of here as soon as she paged me?” said Coralis, and Victoria picked up the phone before she could add anything else. "Hey!”

“You do know that I have caller ID, right?” said Victoria from the other end of the line. “Mind telling me from whose phone you’re calling me? Caller ID doesn’t give me a name when the call comes from a cell phone but it shows differently when it comes from a payphone.”

“I don’t know about any of that, you’re talking a foreign language to me. I am with your friend Frank and he passed me his phone to call you. He’s currently making dinner, I’ll come down after that. You’ll be home for the evening?”

“Oh, I see! Yeah, I’ll be home, just come whenever and don’t forget to tell me everything.”

Coralis hung up, gave him back his phone and looked at Frank.

“So, now tell me, what made you think that I would have run out on you as soon as Vic paged me?”

She was perplexed about that and wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. The guy had already prepared the food and was taking the time to cook for two, she didn’t feel like it would be fair for him to leave just like that.

“You claimed that you weren’t good and working two full-time jobs doesn’t qualify as bad in my opinion. From where I'm standing, I don't think you're bad and I wonder where's the catch,” said Frank, looking at her.

Coralis wasn’t expecting that answer. She thought that some girls must have done that to him.

“Well, it is bad if it makes me leave in the middle of a date, and it makes me the asshole if I can’t ever have the time to spend time with the guy. I'd think good guys deserve better.”

Frank made the plates and refilled their wine glasses as they began discussing previous relationships, sitting on the couch to eat. Coralis didn’t get into details and attempted to make her past boyfriends look as if they were humans.

The EBEE discouraged their agents from getting involved romantically with anyone so there wouldn’t be any potential leverage to be used against them or to distract their focus. Nonetheless, she tried dating, applying lessons from Martha to cage some core memories, allowing her to give a fair chance to the few men she got close to.

Beside Rowan, she dated a werewolf for a month, until he left her for a girl that he claimed was his true mate. She was happy for him but 2 weeks later, he got killed in a rogue attack. She also dated a vampire from Rome, but he couldn’t accept that she wouldn’t drop her career and work for his clan instead.

They opened a second bottle and lost track of the time. Frank didn’t want to think about his essay. He wasn’t drunk but knew that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it even if he wanted to, so he decided to wake up earlier in the morning to work on it instead. Spending time with Coralis was more appealing to him. He liked her.

Coralis metabolized alcohol quickly so she wasn’t even tipsy. She was having a good time, enjoying the feeling of anonymity, being in the company of someone clueless about what and who she was.

As the evening progressed, they sat closer on the couch. Frank was to her right and his left arm was stretched behind her, touching her left shoulder at one point and she let him.

Then they kissed.

As they were deepening it, Coralis felt her hologram vibrating, which made her jump. She looked at the time and saw that it was 22:53.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I almost forgot, I need to go to Victoria,” she said as she stood to head to the door.

Frank was still processing what just happened.

“Hmm okay, sure,” said Frank, searching for his words and watching her walking toward the door. “Are you coming to the semester party at the end of the month?”

“I think so. Unless I have to go to work, I’ll come. I’ll see you there,” said Coralis before closing the door behind her.

She didn’t know what got to her. She used the stairs to go down to her friend, trying to put her thoughts in order. She had a good time with Frank but didn’t think it was a good idea to get involved like that with a human.

She knocked at Victoria’s door.

“Finally!” said Victoria as she opened the door. “So, Frank, uh?”

“Well, we got hungry and you weren’t back. I offered to order something, but he insisted on cooking. I’ve got manners, you know, I couldn’t just bail on him like that the second you got home.”

“5 hours later?”

“Well, yes. So, you said that you found an apartment?” said Coralis, checking her hologram.

“Yes, but the moving day would be on July 1st. Depending on when I need to be out of here, maybe I’ll stay with my parents for a few days, I need to check on that. It’s on the top floor of a triplex in the South-West borough of the city. Quiet area, I think. If for some reason you can’t use the rooftop to land, there is a large wooded park nearby.”

“Sounds excellent. I don't think I can help with the move, though. I’ll be playing in Asia, it's the last week of the season,” said Coralis, viewing the recording that Andrew, her EBEE mentor, left on her hologram.

“Don’t worry about it, I think the guys will be able to help. I mean, technically it’s nothing for us to move… but from here to another human area, it would raise suspicions if no one sees a car loaded with boxes so I’ll accept the guys' offer to help and pay them with pizza and beers.”

“Do you want me to pay my part of the bills once per month or as you need to pay them?” said Coralis, hearing her pager. “I can also give you a large check and you tell me when my balance is over. Mind if I borrow your phone?”

“I’ll let you know once I have a better idea of the total living cost per month,” said Victoria as she handed her the phone.

Coralis dialled the number of her pager.

“Did I tell you about the werepanther clan I stumbled into?” said Coralis, waiting for the recipient to pick up the phone. After the 3rd ring, a female answered. “Hey, Samantha! What’s up?... Okay, I’ll be on my way.”

“Werepanthers? Didn’t know there were any in the area,” said Victoria.

“There’s a clan of them but they’re quite scattered and their leader is an ass. Samantha, the one who paged me, is only 12 and her mom doesn’t know about her. I think her dad was one too but he left when she was a young kid.”

“Oh wow, so you need to go to them tonight?”

“Yes, I don’t know what happened, but their leader tends to pick a fight with their younger members over anything and that doesn’t sit well with me so I told her to reach out to me when there’s something. I couldn’t guarantee them that I’d be able to show up right away, but that I’d try to help them however I could.”

“Well, be safe. You’ll come to the semester party at the end of the month, right?”

“Yeah, most likely,” said Coralis jumping off the window to take off.

She didn’t want to risk running into Frank when getting out of the building.