Apples to Apple Pie

Chapter One: It Couldn't Hurt

Chapter One- It Couldn't Hurt

New York

A few weeks later....

It almost never happened, especially in a city as busy as New York, but it was a city nonetheless, and every city had its blackouts on occasion. This particular time, Citlally Pineda, aspiring actress at the age of twenty one, sat in her darkened bedroom, the only light in the room coming from her dying phone. It only had about ten percent left in it, and what with the blackout, she obviously couldn't plug it in. Maybe she could swipe Eileen's Galaxy tablet and use that to check her Twitter...?

Oh, speak of the devil.

The bedroom door slammed open, smacking loudly against the wall behind it, and Citlally groaned internally, rolling over on her bed. The obscenely bright light of a flashlight illuminated the shadowed features of the figure in the doorway, from the mussed up brown nest of hair on their head to the stupid shit-eating grin threatening to split the person's face in half. In two large strides (or energetic bounces, take your pick), Citlally's phone was snatch out of her hand and thrown onto the dresser. A hand quickly took a swipe at the pillow under Citlally's elbows, but failed to capture its target, and instead grabbed a different one from the other side of the bed. Before she could preemptively lash out, Citlally was promptly hit over the head with the pillow, and her mad roommate quickly ran back out of the room to escape her friend's wrath, yelling back, "Blackout! Party at Humberto's house!"

Swiftly recovering her pride, Citally shouted back, "I thought you didn't like Humberto!"

Another shout, this time obviously a bit further away, answered, "I don't!"

"Then why- oh forget it.", the saner of the two abandoned the difficult task of trying to decipher whatever the hell her friend meant by that, and intended focused on finding something relatively presentable to go across the hall in. The front door creaked open and slammed shut before she could even try to stop her friend.

About a month and a half ago, they had finally gotten settled in and ready to go job-hunting, and in the six or so hours Citlally had been out looking into local stage theatres she could join, Eileen had managed to managed to make an enemy of the twenty two year old across the hall, Humberto Rojo. She hadn't been there to see exactly what transpired, but judging from the fallout, it was a very bad argument.

Eileen had eaten an entire jar of Nutella and binged Doctor Who the whole rest of the day, only taking breaks to rant about 'the utter stupidity of the guy across the hall, fucking telling me I'm not a real fan, don't tell me I'm not a real fan, who the hell do you think you are'.

The worst part was that Citlally actually liked Humberto quite a bit. He was funny, sassy, and not afraid to speak his mind. So, seeing as her best friend was friends with her 'mortal enemy', Eileen managed to have a civil conversation with Humberto long enough to establish some ground rules for their interactions, specifically for Citlally's sake. No one knew what was said or what was decided that day, not even Citlally herself, but suffice to say that since that day a little over a week ago, Eileen and Humberto had managed to keep a reasonable level of peace between them.

'Now if only they could keep that peace...', Citlally thought as she rummaged around in her drawers for something to wear.

Eileen was notorious for intentionally and unintentionally riling people up, after all.

After changing her old tanktop and way-too-short-to-be-seen-in-public-with shorts for a worn t-shirt and some sweatpants, Citlally made her way into the open apartment right across the hall. Fully expecting an argument over time-traveling aliens or wizards to be in full swing between her roommate and the owner of the apartment in front of her, despite their peace treaty, Citlally was pleasantly (if a bit suspiciously) surprised to hear nothing more than the quiet sounds conversation and the decidedly less quiet sounds of Eileen playing Call of Duty against Jose, Humberto's childhood friend who came and went as he pleased even though he didn't actually live in the apartment complex. The two of them were sitting on the carpeted floor, staring avidly at the screen from a probably unhealthily close distance away. Jose was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and it looked like he was winning, if Eileen's animalistic growls were anything to go by. The brunette in question was sitting with her legs drawn up against her chest, her arms jerking around them in time with her fingers as they danced over the control buttons.