Going Home.

Chapter 7

I wake up to the sound of my alarm going off. Today is my first day of work. I went home after talking with Lincoln and Mae and thought about what he had said 'take each day one step at a time'.

My step for today was to have a good first day. I shower, do my hair and make-up and then find an acceptable outfit. As I take one last look in the mirror, I can not believe how my fashion sense has changed so much. Cute corporate outfits for the weekdays and ripped jeans with metal shirts for the weekends.

I head to the kitchen and make my morning coffee. I check my phone and see that I have about 20 messages. I skim through them to see if any are important while I sip my coffee.

I come across 2 messages from Ariel about her plans for the day, asking if we can try and line up having lunch and 2 messages from Carrie about what she is doing today along with asking if I want to catch up for lunch.  I realise that I do need to speak to them both about what happened and I know straight away that it is Carrie trying to line up something by getting Ariel involved as Ariel would never have picked up on the fact that something must had happened since not hearing from me after the meeting.

I reply to them both about meeting at twelve for lunch and leave it at that. I have a message from Kitty asking if I can come for dinner tonight, she will be dying to hear how my first day went and I guess I will need to also talk to her and Uncle Roo about Ryker and what happened.

I start to wonder if they knew that Ryker had a baby? I am more than sure that they would have told me, heck Roo would had probably strung him up the flagpole if he knew.

The rest of the messages are from Eddie. It's mainly pictures of the new lines and also of a few new models who have started. He is the horniest gay fella that I know.

I go to put my phone down when I get another message.

New Message
Ryker - Mia, I hope your first day goes well.

I just stare at the message. My morning was going well until he messaged and brought me back to thinking about yesterday.

I put my phone into my bag and grab my travel mug so that I can take my coffee with me as I dash out the door and drive to work.

####
I arrived at the office, met my new boss and went over all the paperwork with him. I was deep in reading the code of conduct information when Ariel tapped on my door frame.

"Are you ready to have a break?" Ariel asked.
"Oh yes, I feel like I'm getting writers cramp from all these forms." I reply.
"Great, Carrie will meet us there." She replies as I grab my phone and purse and follow her out the door to head up the street to the cafe.

As we arrive, I see Carrie sitting out the frount as she waves our way. We take a seat as she pushes the menu's our way. The waiter arrives and takes our orders while he puts down some water and glasses on the table. There is a tense quiet and I can feel Carrie fidgeting in her seat.

"OK, I can't be silent any longer. What happened?" Carrie asks.

I sigh and tell them both about how I met Ryker and he explained his part, how I was calm and let him speak his piece. And then I dropped an edited version of how I lost my shit at him and stormed out.

Both Ariel & Carrie as just looking at me. Ariel puts her hand in frount of Carrie and says "You owe me $20."

"Are you serious Ariel, you bet on me?" I say. Ariel can sometimes not realise that she has no tact in some situations.

"What, I bet Carrie that you would kill him, I think you loosing your shit at him is pretty much the same." Ariel replies.

Carrie is pushing Ariels hand away and trying to whisper to her that "this is not the time for this". Ariel realises her error and quickly slides her hand away. She is lucky that deep down I know and love her as anyone else would had lost their shit at her for a move like that.

"So what are your thoughts now?" asked Carrie as our food arrives.

"I'm taking one step at a time." I reply. Carrie smirks "Let me guess, you ran into Doc Daniels? It's his signature saying whenever anyone is not sure what to do. Makes sense though cause as the days pass, your mind tends to let go of the emotional side of things and then the thinking part kicks in."

"I don't know what I want to do. I just think at the moment I want to continue on with what I started and get my life back on track eventually." I say. I feel like that is the best answer I can give at the moment, I don't totally believe it, I just know I need to change this conversation.

"Did he have Jae with him?" Ariel asks.

"No, he came alone." I reply " What do you know about Jae's, ah, mum?" I cringe when I say it but I just want to know as much as I can so that I can justify why it all happened.

"Not much." says Carrie "Apparently they got together the night after the mechanic was killed by the Bandits MC. The boys all got stupidly drunk while drowning their sorrows. Ryker never even remembers her, he was that wasted I don't even know how he would had done anything with her but apparently the pictures are pretty believable."

"Have you see the pictures?" I ask

"No, only Slater and Xavier have." Carrie replies.

I look at Ariel and can tell that she has something on her mind. "Spit it our Ariel?" I say.

"Xavier asked me to look into her, I asked David from the Vicky Point station to run a few checks." Ariel says. Carrie snort laughs when she mentions the copper. I make a mental note to ask about that later.

"She had a few priors but was generally a gypsy, always travelling, no solid address and no family from what they could tell. When everything happened at the hospital, the staff could not find anyone to contact and she had put Ryker down as an emergency contact for Jae so they just thought he would be able to do it all. I tried to do a few searches, just so that we could tell 'someone' that she has passed and find out where to send her ashes but all I could find were that her parents were deceased." Ariel is looking at me while she says that last part. I know that this would be weighing on her. Her parents died just after we finished high school and she has no other family, so she can understand what it would feel like to be the last of her family.

I start to feel a little upset with myself for the way that I acted. This woman may have caused me a lot of heart ache in such a short period of time but this is not really her fault. I should not hold it against her as she does not really have the opportunity to defend herself.

I sigh and look at my watch at the same time that Carrie does. "Ah Crap, I have to get going. Love you both and we will make plans for dinner soon OK?" Carrie says as she gives us both a kiss on the cheek and then dashes away.

"Her name was Clarissa Brown." Ariel says.