That Girl in the Diner

15 - Robbed

15-robbery

It had been a month since that night they'd gone out dancing. Everything and nothing had changed at the same time. She'd never felt like this before and she was really starting to think that she could get used to that. She was in love. Madly in love. She didn't think anything could ever change it. They were spending more nights at her place together than they were apart. Fluffy even seemed to like the arrangement, as Julian was almost always at her apartment, he got some company. Julian even walked him on occasion when Madeline was too busy. It was almost like they were starting to be a little family of sorts. Madeline didn't want anything to get in the way of this. She had not ever been this happy, even if she had to work late shifts and go to school until three in the morning. She didn't care. Julian was always around now, and she could always cuddle up next to him at night amidst the tangled sheets. Her parents would be furious if they ever found out about this, she knew it. But she didn't have many friends and Julian only had a few close band mates, so nobody really cared. It was their own little secret, just between them, how good this felt. She couldn't imagine what she'd done without him. She just wanted to be with him every second of every day.

Of course, that wasn't actually physically possible. That evening was one of those times. She had finished studying for the night, her brain was fried, and she would go bother Julian down at the park if she didn't know that he had been somewhat short on cash recently. She didn't figure he'd need anymore reasons to leave his post, so she decided to go take Fluffy out for a walk. She knew that it probably wasn't a great idea to go walking after dark in the middle of LA, but she did have a male Rottweiler at her side, and her neighbourhood wasn't exactly a ghetto- it wasn't' a gaited Stepfordesque community, but it wasn't bad. It was raining a little but not too hard, and she did need to clear her head a bit. All she'd been able to think about recently was Julian. She didn't want to go all obsessive on him and start making a shrine of him in her closet or anything. She was almost a bit worried that things were going too fast. After all, they hadn't been dating long and they were already quite infatuated with each other. What if they burned out quickly too? She didn't want to become one of those on again, off again couples. She wanted things to stay the same...

It wasn't hard to get lost in thought that way, and soon she found herself soaking wet, with sore feet and realizing she'd walked almost out of town. She glanced at her watch. Well, maybe Julian was home now at least. She didn't think he'd stay out there in the rain for too long. There wouldn't be many customers at this time of night anyway- at least, not any that you'd want to run into. Fluffy was quite wet too, and starting to shiver so she headed back, still deep in thought, but at least going in the direction of a nice warm shower, and cozy blankets to cuddle up in this time. She'd call Julian once she was home and they'd talk for awhile, maybe if she was lucky he'd come over. The first thing she wanted now was to get warm though before she caught another cold.

Evidently though, when she got to her door, she realized that wasn't going to happen. She'd locked her door before she left but now it was wide open, with a huge dent in it like someone had kicked it. She gasped and Fluffy started barking viciously, his nose going a million miles a minute. She peeked inside her place. The whole thing was trashed! Books and papers were everywhere. Her tv was gone, her stereo too. She imagined that most of her jewellery was probably gone and she could even see her fridge door open out of the corner of her eye. They'd stolen her food. Damn it! She let go of Fluffy, and let him go inside the apartment. If anyone was in there, she didn't want to be the one to find them. She trusted Fluffy to find them though, if anyone was hiding out. She pulled out her cell phone and called 9-1-1. She was going to be spending the night at Julian's that was for sure, but not exactly under the circumstances she'd hoped for.

The police didn't come quickly. It took them a good ten minutes at least to get there. Once Fluffy had checked the place out, Madeline proceeded to go inside to find what was missing. It was just as she'd expected and she told the two cops so once they got there. They took her down to the station and questioned her about the incident several times while they sent some kind of forensic crew to go look for evidence. It took about an hour until they were satisfied with her story. Madeline was quite annoyed by the time it was over, seeing as how she wasn't a criminal and she'd been interrogated rather like one. It was midnight and all she wanted to do was go home and sleep. Fluffy seemed to be tired too- though his sluggishness might just have had more to do with the receptionists in the robbery department feeding him parts of stale doughnuts while Madeline was answering questions, rather than being tired from walking around all night. She got dropped off in front of Julian's apartment building with not very high hopes that she'd get any of her stuff back. She was grumpy and still kind of damp and tired. She didn't want to have to deal with anything else tonight. Julian usually made it all better though. She was hoping that he still could tonight.