2019-11-23 - The Morning After

It is in fact morning and not night. The Grizzly Bear Den Diner is as campy and kitsch as ever. It smells like maple syrup and overcooked omelets.

Beth is, surprisingly, not dressed in the somber skirt and jacket or pantsuit she normally wears during the day while performing the duties that go with her job. Instead she is wearing athletic leggings, a t-shirt, and a zip up hoodie thrown over it. The only makeup she wears is the mascara she couldn't manage to scrub from her face last night. Her hair, usually neat, is piled on top of her head in a hasty bun. She looks distinctly hung over.

She stares down at a plate of nearly untouched pancakes with an exhausted expression on her face.

Gabe, for his part, must be off duty. Beth knows that because he is in a leather jacket and a red henley and jeans rather than his usual homicide cop attire of a blazer and slacks. He passes through the door and looks around, considering his seating options. And then.

"Beth?" he crosses over to her, leaning in for that awkward still-friends hug and kiss on the cheek. "Rough night?" Good work there, detective.

Beth's head turns when she hears her name, and her green eyes widen slightly in mortification. After all, who wants to run into their ex looking like this? She stands up from the stool to return that awkward hug and kiss on the cheek before she sits back down. "I...yeah." She laughs consciously. "Bad day at work. Probably overdid it last night to compensate." She reaches for her mug of coffee. "How are you?"

"Yeah? The bodies talking back to you?" asks Gabriel, teasing her lightly as he goes to sit on the stool next to her. "I'm doing all right. Getting close on one of the investigations. The Kreugers, down from the Sea View? Don't know if they were your customers." One dead-body-worker to another humor here. But his voice then drops. "I'm sorry to hear that. Something you want to talk about?"

It's been long enough he can offer that, right?

"Not yet, thankfully." Beth says in a wry tone. When he inquires about the Kreugers she thinks a moment before she shakes her head. "Probably went to the big chain funeral home. Walmart for the dead." Her nose wrinkles as she says Walmart of the dead, expressing her thoughts on it all. At his offer she looks at him a long moment before she admits. "It was a overdose. Heroin. Same age as my brother when he died. He sat in that trailer by himself for days just like my brother in his apartment." Some pain shines in her eyes. She glances down. "I don't need to talk about it. That's just what it is."

"Yeah. Well." Gabriel isn't sure what to say. Unattended deaths go to homicide, too, so he's seen his fair share -- more than his fair share -- of overdoses as the heroin epidemic hit Gray Harbor as it did everywhere else. He asks for a coffee and a waffle from the waitress that comes by. He gives her hand a squeeze. "At least they had you. Not those big box guys. To help with the transition."

"You know it's stupid. I can handle car accidents where they are all beat up. In fact, I do a damn good job at those. Murders. But anything reminds me of Ricky, and..." Beth lets out a self-depreciating huff. "Guess everyone has their limits, huh?" She squeezes his hand back, and nods her head. "Yeah. I'll make him look good, but it's not going to change it for them." She looks into his face a moment before she breaks contact and pulls her hand away to try and eat her pancakes. "What else is going on with you? Besides for work?"

"It never changes anything for anyone," points out Gabriel. "We can't bring people back. I just try to catch the bad guys that did them in or give them an explanation for what happened and you give them the best memory you can." The coffee arrives and he adds milk and sugar. "But yeah. I hear you. Everyone's got something. Mine are kids. I mean, kids kids." Not teen gangbangers. "Just need to do what you can. Me? Work. You know." The thing that drove them apart. "Garden. Working on the trees now that winter's coming."

"You're right." Beth admits with a shallow nod of her head. "Little kids are everyone's. I don't like those, either." She cuts into her pancakes and chews, but she doesn't seem very into her pancakes. After washing it down with coffee she gives up trying to finish, and instead pushes her plate towards the other side of the bar. "Yeah I know. Work for both of us, huh?" She smiles gently. "What trees are they?"

"Oh, you know, the oaks out back." The ones on Gabe's house on Oak Street, the old three-bedroom house that is just him, but he bought it to get the yard and the trees and the garden that he could work on. "Taking down some of the branches. Make sure that they last another fifty years." Yeah, Gabe's house dates to the post-war housing boom, though it's been fixed up more than a few times since then. His waffle arrives and he digs in.

"I remember them. I still think you need a pool back there." Beth says teasingly. It was always her favorite thing to tease him about when they were together. She would suggest random renovations to the garden or backyard. "Maybe a gazebo. A firepit. Mother-in-law apartment." She picks up her mug of coffee and takes another sip.

"I've got two empty bedrooms and I need a mother-in-law apartment for my Mom who is still in San Fran with my siblings and Dad or my non-existent actual mother-in-law," laughs Gabriel. He had been thinking about the gazebo, though. Too expensive so far. "Pool is just a liability trap and when is even good enough we -- oh, I know you're yanking my chain." He sighs. That was why she did it. He always thought she was serious. "You still in your place?"

Beth's lips twitch upwards in amusement when he realizes she is in fact yanking his chain. "Liability trap? Come on and live a little. Besides, where will your mother-in-law hang out if not by the pool?" She laughs outright then. "I forgot how adorably gullible you could be in regards to home additions." She nods her head at his question. "By myself now. My mom and dad got a bungalow nearby because the stairs are getting to be too much on my mom's knees." Beth lives in the funeral home, a large white victorian on Spruce Street, on the top floor in a spacious apartment meant for the funeral director's family.

"At least you find something adorable about me," says Gabriel with a shake of his head as he digs into his waffle some more and adds a bit more syrup flavored sigar to make it more edible. "I still can't believe you live above a funeral home. Is it haunted yet? I bet it'd be haunted."

"I actually find a ton adorable about you, believe it or not." Beth says before she furrows her brow as if trying to recall something before she says teasingly, "I think I even asked you out once or twice." She takes a sip of her coffee. "My house is not haunted." She says certainly, "No one dies at funeral homes. That generally comes before they arrive."

"I definitely asked you out first," replies Gabriel, though his brow furrows as if to try to remember just how it all went. "Anyway. Still. I bet some ghosts come in with the coffins. At least one in there. I'd at least get an apartment somewhere else. It was always creepy staying over."

"I mean technically you asked me out first." Beth says in lukewarm agreement. "But I was going to ask you out if you hadn't of. And I asked you out on the next date." She laughs, and puts a hand over her chest like he's just wounded her. "Creepy?! I grew up there! Besides for a college dorm it is literally the only place I have ever lived."

"I am just saying. I love being a cop, but I don't sleep in the police station!" Gabriel has a house! As they covered. "Ghosts just all up in your place, chica." He waves for the check from his waitress.

"Shush. I have to sleep there by myself. Don't tell me that." Beth says, and she puts her cup of coffee down and gets her wallet out of her pocket when her check comes along with his. "Hey..." She looks at him a moment, presses her lips together, and then shakes her head as she smiles. "Eh, nevermind." She gets the cash out of her wallet and outs it on the counter.

"What?" asks Gabriel as he puts down some bills for his own check, tilting his head at hers. "You can't say 'hey' and then say it's nothing to a detective. That's not how this works." He is curious now!

"It's nothing." Beth says with a shake of her head. But he's right. She can't just say hey and then not say anything else. "I mean I was about to suggest something incredibly stupid knowing that I am actually working more than I ever have before, I don't know where you are in your life because I don't see you much even as a friend because I work so much and you work so much. All because I'm lonely and nostalgic. So I just won't say it."

Gabriel considers this for a moment, but then says, "You had a rough night. Don't make decisions based on that. But. Nothing says if you need someone to watch a movie with sometime you can't text me, yeah? Six months means I can at least give you that." He gets up to give her a quick hug, this one hopefully less awkward. "Keep in touch, yeah?"

"Gabe you don't owe me anything." Beth says, but she hugs him back nonetheless, and when they release she smiles and nods her head. "I will. Now this is the first Saturday I've had off in a long time so I think I am going to go back home and sleep. Have a good day, alright?" She casts one last look his way before she starts towards the door.