[hr][center][img]https://txt.1001fonts.net/img/txt/b3RmLjEwNi43NjY3NjcuVTJ4dllXNWxJRVpoY21sei4w/bachelorette.regular.webp[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/r7scdkh.png[/img][/center]
 [right][b]Interactions:[/b]  Anya [@Fernstone] & Jack [@Blizz]
[code]Resort Bar. The Halloween Festival[/code][/right][hr]

Sloane edged forward as Anya was about to dish out her heart’s desires, her eyes darting to the waitstaff to throw a look that could read as annoyance their way instead of delivering the actual disappointed face to Anya. Although Sloane wasn’t actually disappointed: she was jealous. [color=9966cc][i]I’m quite happy being single[/i][/color] and [color=9966cc][i]romance doesn’t appeal to me[/i][/color] were the kind of things statements she wished she could deliver with such earnesty and sincerity as Anya did, but while Anya had told the truth for Sloane they would’ve been a lie. Perhaps she could say something like [i]I’m certain I’ll end up alone[/i] and [i]romance refuses to work with me[/i] with some kind of conviction given their basis in reality, but who would want to hear it? 

A fourth drink magically appeared before her, or perhaps she had just looked the wrong way when the server dropped it off. Nevertheless, she had someone to whom she could whisper her secrets. She told her drink that she was jealous of Jack too. Leaving Shimmer wasn’t an option for her—she had locked herself inside of a gilded cage of her own design—but she imagined despite Jack’s insistence that there would be hundreds of handsome men just dying to go on not only a globetrotting but a dimension hopping adventure. 

[color=silver]“It sounds like Jack doesn’t trust our taste in men, Anya,”[/color] said Sloane, with a hint of humor and a click of her tongue. 

Then again maybe it was just a hint of a slur coming from a woman whose wildest nights typically consisted of a small glass of red wine and two and a half aspirin. She swirled her drink, the ice clinking against the sides of the glass. Why’d they have to make the cups so small? Not that she was close to finishing this one anyway. While the last glass had been way too easy, the task of finishing this one seemed daunting. She stuck to drinking it like one of those perpetual motion toy birds people would put on their desk to say that they weren’t just a loan officer but a fun loan officer, only her motion was reversed—picking up her glass, wetting her lips without hardly taking a sip, setting it down, and picking it back up again to repeat. 

Anya had mentioned her parents. Bad parents were just another thing that the two women had bonded over. It was surprising that Anya had even brought them up. When it came to most people Sloane acted as if her parents were dead, often simply putting it as “they’re gone” and fixing anyone who pushed further with a stare so uncomfortable they had to fold on their line of questioning. However, with Anya and Jade she had shared everything: their crimes, their abandonment, their general awfulness. She glanced at Jack, curious to ask if he also resented his parents, but certain that she could guess the answer judging by how he’d spent the past decade outside of their world. 

Plus, something else was weighing on her mind and for some three solid reasons (plus  a few sips of the fourth) she found the heavily guarded gate and barbed wire fence that surrounded her personal thoughts suddenly manned only by a single sleeping guard with the door left ajar. 
 
[color=silver]“I saw Drake,”[/color] she said cautiously. [color=silver]“On the ferry. That’s why I wanted to come here. I was worried that we’d run into one another and it’d be a thing. I know I shouldn’t have said what I said, but it doesn’t even come close to justifying what he did. And then he just went about his life, not once thinking to call or even text an apology, not even checking in to see if I was still alive. I don’t get it.“[/color]

Her right hand began to tremble. She placed her other hand over it and squeezed it to make it stop. Drake not apologizing for striking her wasn’t the only injustice that existed in the Coven. Britney was welcomed back with open arms while the splinter faction that her actions had created were kept out in the rain. Layla had been stripped of something that, as detestful as it was, could defend her while they were all being hunted, yet Luca was left to suffer with whatever he was dealing with—she didn’t know the full scope of the Rot, but she had seen the meds. Jinhai was a jar in a cabinet and his sister was still a bitch but a bitch with more love in her life than Sloane ever had and yet she was still an ice cold bitch.  And, for some reason so stupid she couldn’t comprehend, as if he was only doing it just to do it, Jasper still hated her for some inconceivable reason. 

[color=silver]“I don’t get it,”[/color] she repeated, the follow-up question only in her head: [i]Am I that unlikable? It shouldn’t bother me.

But it does.[/i]

[color=silver]“Whatever!”[/color] Sloane found the will inside of her to finish her drink, practically slammed the table with her hands, and stood with only the slightest of stumbles. [color=silver]“Drake doesn’t deserve to occupy any of our thoughts just like these hoity-toity snobs here wouldn’t deserve either of you if you had been interested. Let’s go back to the festival and check out the stalls.”[/color]

Sloane looked at her watch and frowned, [color=silver]“I should probably check in on mine, actually…”[/color]