Human Design | Sirius Black

xxxxiii. Reckless Decisions

THE ARRIVAL OF June brought the sun, and with it, San Francisco flooded ever more full of people coming from the neighbouring cities, neighbouring states even, to celebrate Pride. The famous (if not infamous) San Francisco fog arrived with it, coating the city every evening in heavy blankets of humid clouds. Pride season was always great for business; in fact, the sole thing that kept The Trashy & The Classy afloat through the rest of the year, but it also translated to it being very busy. With all the temporary rooms above the pub booked out and customers streaming in and out for drinks at a rate at least five times that of a regular day, Reece also offered to take up more shifts to help Maggie with the workload.

He had come back early from the parade to keep the bar, though with most people still marching for another hour, only a few of the seats were occupied. He flinched when the phone attached to the wall, bending the bar, disrupted the day with its ringing, and then Maggie called from the backroom where she was to collect more drinks to stock the fridges under the bar with, "Reece, could you get that please?"

However, when he pulled the handset from the housing and pressed it to his ear, Reece didn't get the chance to say a single word before a rough voice came from the other side. "You're all going to hell, dirty tranny n–" He dropped it back into the housing.

"It was a wrong number," Reece called to Maggie, walking back to the middle of the bar to wait for new customers.

But it hadn't been more than half a minute before he heard Zeke's voice bellow, "Reece!" from the staircase, and he soon emerged in the archway that separated it from the main room of the pub. "Your phone keeps fucking ringing! It's driving me insane. Can you go answer it, please?"

"I'm working," he said, indicating to the bar to show that he couldn't leave it unattended.

Zeke walked over, dressing in only one of his many morning robes, having decided to change outfits between the parade and the after-party. "I'll stay so you can go get the phone next time," he said, ushering Reece toward the stairs. "Why can't you get a fucking answering machine?"

He scoffed. "I don't want another machine." But he walked up two flights of stairs to get to his studio flat nonetheless, sitting down on the edge of his bed to wait for the phone to ring again, something which he felt quite idiotic doing. Luckily, it didn't take more than five minutes for the caller to try again, and he was jerked out of his bored trance to answer it. "Hello?"

"Hi, hello, Reese's Pieces?" He couldn't confirm before Carlos had already continued, tripping over his own words to apologise rapidly, "I'm sorry to keep calling, it's only you said I should keep calling if you didn't answer because you don't have a voicemail, so I just thought I'd try a couple of times. I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"I-it's four in the afternoon," Reece said, brow furrowing, "you did not–you did not wake me up. I was working, and I was at the parade before."

"Right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you from that, it's just, my parents aren't home, but they might be back soon, and I can't really call you when they're around, and I don't have the change for a payphone –"

He interrupted. "It's fine, Carlos, it's okay."

There was quiet muttering at the end of the line and then another, "Right," followed by a moment of silence. "Well, I was just calling because I wanted to say that I'm sorry for being so distant lately, it's just that I had exams at college and I really need to do well so that I can get into an actual college, especially if I want at least some kind of scholarship which I do because I can't afford it otherwise so obviously I need to get really good grades or they won't consider me and I know I've still got another six months before applications but the scholarship interview is –"