Ronnie Masters | the MENTALIST (COMPLETE)

CHERRY COLA pt. I

"Can I ask you a personal question?" Grace peered across the table at Ronnie through auburn eyelashes and tipped back a swig of her beer.

Ronnie let her elbows rest on the bar and tapped her short nails against the lowball glass of club soda. Drinking sixteen ounces of sugar and carbohydrates only to feel it sit like a rot in her gut and send her crashing into a heavy night's sleep hadn't been an appetizing thought, so she'd ordered non-alcoholic.

If that's what Grace was asking about, she didn't know if she felt comfortable admitting that she wasn't drinking because she needed to stay alert and clear-headed.

Her eyes flashed to Cho, who had his own beer but had barely touched it. His eyebrows climbed at her glance, but all he did was roll his sleeves up past his elbows.

Ronnie liked when he did that.

Finally, unable to see herself getting away with pretending Grace hadn't said anything, the muscular blonde nodded nonchalantly. "Shoot."

The newer agent seems to be having trouble getting the words out delicately. "We've all heard stories about your mom," Grace paused, and shot her eyes over to Cho to make sure he's not warning her off of continuing.

But he was only listening in silence, so she went on. "But I've never heard anything about your dad."

Ronnie sipped her soda, not breaking eye contact with the redhead. "I do have one. My mother wasn't the Virgin Mary."

Cho snorted into his beer and finally took a drink, though Ronnie would soon notice that it was the first and the last time that night that he drank any of it.

A blush rose in Grace's cheeks and she laughed softly, shaking her head and playing with the label on her bottle. "No, I mean..." her big, sincere eyes bore into Ronnie's. "Is he like her? Did you have a relationship with him?"

Ronnie felt Cho's stare burning into the side of her face as he waited for her answer.

They both seemed to expect her to be overcome by some sea of emotion at the mention of her parents, and she grasped for some kind of feeling within herself, but as she considered what she knew of her dad she felt only blankness. "Who can say?"

Grace frowned in confusion, but a dreading realization seemed to seep in around the edges. "What do you mean?"

"Carla has spent a hundred nights with a hundred different guys. My dad could be anyone from a cop to a trafficker. I doubt that even she knows which misadventure I was born of."

the MENTALIST

She hated her apartment.

She hated going back to her apartment.

She hated sleeping in it.

Ronnie could barely remember how she felt when, so few years ago, she'd found the tiny space in the nice part of town, with halls that didn't smell like cigarette smoke and a parking lot that didn't smell like human waste. She couldn't believe her luck to find a place so nice that she could actually afford.

All of the pride and accomplishment for renting and paying for her own personal living space had disappeared the moment Carla announced her presence in it.

No longer was she gaining independence by having her own home; instead she felt like a mouse that had taken up residence in its own trap, just waiting for the spring to fly.

After leaving the bar and parting ways with Cho and Van Pelt, Ronnie straddled her bike and spent the entire 15-minute drive home to psych herself into actually going inside and going to bed.