Lost In The Moment- Wilbur Soot

The Last Sunset I'll See

The yelling only got louder, and although it was across the house, Sariah could hear every word being spat in her mother's face. Her mother. She wanted to hate her mother like she did her father, but she knew that her mother was a victim too; a victim who had fallen into abusive patterns to preserve her safety.

Sariah clutched her younger sister tighter, hand over her mouth trying desperately to muffle Emmy's sobs as the yelling stopped and footsteps took its place. Approaching footsteps.

"I was twelve then. Emmy was six. That was the last day I ever saw her, the next day the social worker came and took us both. She separated us and last I heard, they changed Emmy's name just in case and put her in a good home. I wasn't so lucky." Sariah or Ri as most of her friends called her, was sitting across from her newest therapist talking her through Ri's entire history. "I bounced around from foster home to foster home, each of them worse than the last until I finally hit eighteen. From there, I took all the money I had saved up across all those years and moved to a completely new country and enrolled in a community college. I graduated last spring and now I'm just trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with my life."

Ri was bad at talking to people. That's probably why she'd gone through so many therapists, just trying to find one she 'connected' with or felt safe talking to. It's kind of ironic since talking is her entire job. One of them, anyway.

As Ri opened the door to her apartment, her phone rang. A call from her best friend, Anna.

"Hey Ann, what's up?" 

"Just calling to see how the latest shrink went."

"Not well. I told her the gist of it and then she just kept pressing for more and more details even though I told her I wouldn't be comfortable discussing that first session." She said, heading through the apartment towards her bedroom.

"I mean, yikes, but also you need to pick someone eventually. What about Dr. Kang? You said she was nice."

"Too nice, though. Besides, I'm doing fine. I'm totally over it."

"Mhm. I'm sure you are, Ri."

"Whatever." Ri sighed. "I have to change and go to work. Love you, Ann, bye."

"Love you too."

***

September. The beginning of fall most places, but in California, it was the beginning of summer part two: now with trendy college students flocking to coffee shops and cafes to 'study'. Ri walked out of her apartment building and started heading down the street to the small, hole-in-the-wall local coffee shop where she worked. 

While she walked, she checked her twitter and saw a few of her followers asking when her next video would be out, it had been three weeks since she'd last posted. Ri quote-tweeted one of them saying she'd have one out by the end of the week and she'd been working on it for quite a bit just trying to make it perfect.

Ri was a small YouTuber with about 22k subs whose audience loved her mainly because she didn't stick to one type of content; she did lots of things on her channel, gaming, cooking, music, book reviews. The first two were especially interesting to her audience because she was quite bad at them.

She arrived at Hal's Coffee House and headed behind the counter to put on her apron, throwing a quick hello to the owner, Hal, a sweet old man with a passion for latte art who was currently wiping down one of the few empty tables.

"Busy today, yeah?" She said to one of her coworkers, Val.

Val wasn't exactly the chatty type and only hummed in response as she swirled whip cream onto a delicious looking drink. She didn't make bad company, Ri decided.

After an hour or two of dealing with angry Karens, tired students, and the non-stop revolving door of customers, a tall guy walked in. Not a regular, as Hal's usually gets, but someone new.

"Welcome to Hal's Coffee, what can I get you?"