Alliyah

The odor of meat being grilled made her hungrier, as she chopped half of a tomato on her wooden kitchen counter and spoke:

“I just… Wanted to help her, but she was like ‘nope!’ and zoomed out of the coffee shop!”

“Well, that’s Rayne. She’s kinda weird and mysterious, and that’s why we like her.” Ocean shrugged the subject off as he sat on her kitchen island. “I’ll tell you this: if you worry so much, give your landlord her number and tell him she’s interested, then he’ll call her.”

Alliyah bit her thumb's nail in contemplation.

“…No. We’d be violating her privacy.” She concluded, before going back to chopping, now a cucumber.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. I… Well, I hope.”

She uttered to herself, then bit the inside of her cheek, while Ocean snacked on a bag of chips that belonged to her.

A song swam through Alliyah’s ears, who kept a pencil between her slightly crooked teeth, while she carefully examined a 3d model of a client’s house on her old laptop.

“This staircase is… Absolutely… Awful!”

She pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Why…? Why does she want a spiral? Nobody genuinely likes them…” She played with the rose ring on her middle finger absentmindedly, as she searched for more appealing spiral staircase models online. It was three in the morning, and she was wide awake due to the stress and pressure of the job - and the black coffee flowing through her veins.

After a few minutes of searching, the sleep-deprived woman found a spiral staircase in sleek glass:

“Holy guacamole, that’s glorious. I wish I had had that idea.” She held the pencil between her teeth.

That night she slept roughly three hours, before Lamar woke her up asking for breakfast.