Hearts of Delmar (Book 1 of 2)

Chapter 7: Old friends

Nicole stepped out of the hover taxi, scratching her head and heading down the elevator to her cave.

"Hey honey, how did it go?" Vinn asked.

"Great." She said coldly.

"You don't sound like it went great."

"No it went great, I just feel weird. I didn't sleep very good and I think I've had too much caffeine to compensate. I feel like I was in that waiting room for hours but I also feel like I just went right in and then an hour passed."

Oh you never get right in, they make you wait forever. You probably dozed off. It could also just be the weather, my head is pounding for some reason. So what did Gizzy say?"

"She said the paperwork should take about 2 weeks and then I can have my old name back, and we'll be legally un-married."

"And you can go back home and forget all this nonsense. Hopefully we can still be friends." He sighed.

"VINN! I'm not breaking up with you, dumbass. I'm just getting back my right to choose. And my name, I hate the name, I'm sorry it's just so bad. I don't want to feel like I have to love you because I'm stuck with you, I wanna get to know you and see if I really do, or if it's just an exciting fling. I hope we fall so deep in love that it doesn't matter, but it has to be real and sometimes it's just not. That's why we take time, why we date, why we move in for a while at least on my world. I'm a slower burning fuse, humans are indecisive emotional creatures and we need our time to understand ourselves first." She explained.

"That's fantastic because I sort of thought you weren't coming back." He smiled. She strolled to his side and hopped up into his lap. "You gotta do something really shitty or turn out to be a jerk for me to give up that quickly. Do Delmarians ever just sit on the couch and watch movies together?"

"Yes...that's why I bought a big couch and a huge TV. That's why they make those here, they're just way bigger couches."

"You ever see the movie Seven?"

"I never saw the first 6." He shrugged. She giggled and got comfy, swiping her phone to the selection menu. "You're gonna love the ending. It's so fucked up."

Vinn woke, sat up, reaching over to find Nicole missing, and then he remembered her heading to work and him rolling back over on the couch. Days off don't have the same appeal when your partner is gone. He had his breakfast, fed lil Reeves, tinkered with the stone cutting laser a bit, normal as can be. A gentle buzz from his phone got his attention, expecting to see either work related or Nicole related, since that was basically his whole life, but to his surprise it was an unknown number with the text reading simply "Go outside, asshole." Naturally he made his way up the freshly placed steps and opened the door. Silence. He took a few steps and his ears perked up to the sound of rustling to his left and the moment he took a step in that direction something struck him in the back like a cannonball. He turned to defend and paused in confusion.

"HEY DICKHEAD!" hollered a very familiar looking Delmarian, throwing playful jabs at him.

"Kraken?" he asked, looking perplexed. "Why are you on this moon, and how did you find my home?" he asked.

"More like how has it been, you doin good, still alive bro?" Kraken shrugged.

"Sorry, I was really distracted and been working a lot, Just didn't expect to see you or...anyone from the core." He admitted.

"Yea well the war ended pretty damn fast so we all went somewhere. I've been hopping place to place and doing some odd 'under the table' jobs myself, and they offered me a security gig here for some big convention in a few weeks. Next thing I know I hear someone talking about "Vendetta" getting building permits, and I thought, no way it's the same bastard I knew from the core. Looked you up, sure as shit here you are. I had a hell of a time finding the place, your listed address was just a square hole so I asked the cube moving services if they recently did any air lifts and they gave me this shitass map on a napkin. You went WAY offgrid."