Still

09.

Chapter Nine

Being back in your space and element always felt good. Her trip with Jourdan was great, but she knew that it was time to go back home to handle her business. Jourdan was right when he said that they would have found her social media pages sooner than later. The next morning, she woke up with an insane amount of new followers, which had her changing her settings once she realized what was happening. You had delusional women that swore they were Jourdan's wife and then you had the thirty men that were making inappropriate comments about what they'd like to do to her.

"Hey, Celebrity Maia!" Naimi happily spoke as she entered Mai's office. One could tell that she was on her way out of the office by the fact that she was holding her tote bag and notepad in hand. One thing about social workers, they always kept a notepad with them.

Mai was in the middle of stuffing her face with a banana nut muffin that she'd baked the night before. She rolled her eyes at her coworker. Still, nearly two weeks later, she was still a headliner in the social media news. Any moves Jourdan made, they were wondering where Maia was. "I am not a celebrity."

"Right," Naimi stretched, "you just bump elbows with them. Hell, you even changed up your wardrobe and shit."

Maia took a moment to look at her wardrobe today. She was wearing a spaghetti strapped olive green maxi dress with a loose fitted white collared shirt over it. "I did not," she laughed. The only thing she'd switched up was wearing makeup more and actually looking like she gave a damn most times at work, but that had nothing to do with Jourdan.

"I'm messing," she replied. "How's work going? I figured I'd stop by before leaving out for these visits."

Mai looked at her workload. Because Naimi did a good job of handling her cases while she was gone, it was business as usual for her. "All of the other cases are fine. Tyler's dad is out on bond, I'm also setting up therapy for him, thanks to his foster parent's recommendation."

"Well, that's good. Does that mean he's going back?"

With a sad nod to her head, Maia replied, "In due time, he'll be back. Right now, I think they're waiting on sentencing, but there's a strong possibility that he'll be back with his mom."

"How do you feel?"

At this point, everyone was aware of her feelings on the matter. When she got attached, she got attached. "It sucks, but I know that I have to detach myself from the case and hope for the best."

Naimi nodded her at the statement before announcing that she was needing to leave before she was late. This left Maia with her own work. As she was deep into writing notes and knocking out her to-do list for the day, she received a phone call from Gabrielle Cox, the current foster for Tyler Bailey.

"Gabrielle? Hi!" Maia announced cheerfully, unsure of why she was receiving this phone call.

Gabrielle breathed out. "Maia, hi, do you have a moment to speak with me?"

"In person? I'm actually pretty swamped with work today, but we can shoot for tomorrow?" Maia reasoned, already pulling out her calendar to see when she can squeeze her in.

"No," Gabrielle rushed, "you and I have a very good rapport and you know that I'm always here to help any child in need. However, I've been watching Tyler since the beginning and he's done a few one off things that we were able to correct, but this morning he physically threatened Cori before school."

"Wait, what?" Mai asked. "Can you give me a play by play on what happened?"

"All three of them were getting ready for the day, just like normal. Cori is into cooking and usually always makes everyone their breakfast. Today, it was chocolate chip pancakes. Apparently, Tyler didn't want to have chocolate chips in his pancakes this morning, even though she's done this before with no problem. He told her if she ever put, and I quote, "that shit in his pancakes again, he would stab her in her sleep until she bled out"."