location: Blue Sage Apothecary.
time: early morning.
Naomi had continuously attempted to stretch the knick from her neck periodically throughout her early morning shift at Blue Sage Apothecary. She needed a new mattress, but a new mattress meant money, something she. was in short supply of these days. The impulse buying and late night infomercials didn’t help much either. Though the thought of how much new bedding she could afford was replaced by another when green eyes had come to focus on the bottles she had been mindlessly setting on the shelf nearly too tall for her short stature to reach. All this time working here and Naomi didn’t think to reap some sort of benefit by finding something to cure the kink. But that was a thought that had gone just as quickly as it came. One that was now proceeded by profanity. “Shit,” Naomi murmured when one of the glass bottles she had just stocked the shelf with fell to the ground. Of course it shattered everywhere, the clear liquid puddled around her white hightop converse. The real cherry on top though had been the individual who proceeded to walk forward right into that glass mess just to ask a question that was clearly labeled on the bottle.
“Oh, no sir you’re going to —”
“Is this glass?” He was stern in his delivery as he glanced down to the obvious remnants of the bottle crushed beneath his feet.
“Yes,” she sighed. “Sir you’re stepping on glass please step back.”
“I could sue.”
Really? That’s where this whole thing was going? Naomi gave him a narrowed eyed glare, a moment of her less than professional behavior that flickered across her features. She cleared her throat. “Okay,” she breathed. “Sir you’re not injured and I was going to clean this up so —”
“You saw this?” The man turned to question another customer, a young unsuspecting woman. Blonde hair, a comparable stature to Naomi and someone she had recognized as a frequent customer. “Hey, girl,” the man gave a snap of his fingers and pointed to the glass beneath his shoes and puddle of liquid by Naomi’s own. “Negligence, isn’t it,” he clarified.
Beau put the cigarette down for a moment, but once the air of the Salty Dogs filled his lungs he had pursed his lips around it again almost immediately. He was trying to be good. He was trying to be normal. All Beau wanted was to be able to hang with his friends the way they always had, and the way almost everyone did their age. He was just trying to resist the urge to indulge himself too much. He was suppose to have Andon tomorrow night and a heavy hangover wouldn’t be any good. He decided that he could ease himself through the high that came with chain smoking instead of knocking back shots like his friends were.
As Beau looked around the bar, he caught a familiar face. He didn’t think anything of it until he looked again with a squint and he sucked in a small fuck! as he took a deep inhale. He scrambled to keep himself behind one of his friends but it wasn’t a very good attempt at hiding. He may have been thin, but Beau was just as much tall as he was lanky. His eyes peered over his friend’s shoulder with ease.
“You’re very bad at this,” Naomi confessed. She shifted her petite frame so that she was no longer faced away from the bar and instead positioned right at the counter with her so called friend by her side. The term was one to tread lightly on unless a shared desire for a cigarette and need to talk to someone constituted as friends now. Maybe for Naomi it did, especially here. “So, look at you,” she gestured to his tall, lanky form. “Now look at me,” the woman then gestured to herself, the staggeringly tall height of a whole 5′1″ hiding behind her was asking to get caught or seen by whoever the brunette male couldn’t seem to part his gaze from. “Just about anyone would have been a better pick.” But since she was being used as a cover, despite how poorly of a job she was doing being said cover, she wanted in on the story. Tapping the other’s shoulder to gain his attention, Naomi subtly gestured an index finger between him and the individual that was his prime focus. “So what’s the story here?”
Her hand had been waving people down for the last twenty minute after she’d had her thumb up for the last 30. All she wanted was for someone to help her with the damn flat tire she had on the side of the road after realizing she hadn’t brought her jack. Frankly, she was getting pretty fucking fed up. When the next car came, the brunette stepped further in the middle of the road and lifted her shirt in the desperate, yet idiotic, way to stop the next individual who drove by.
Oh my God, Oh my God!
The tires screeched to a halt, an ear piercing noise that left Naomi wide-eyed with her knuckles white from how tightly she gripped the steering wheel of the cream colored mini cooper. She could feel her heart racing in her chest and as Naomi finally allowed her posture to relax back into the seat she had to pause and take a deep breath. Inhale...exhale. “Are you insane?” Naomi finally verbalized what her facial expressions to the brunette already conveyed. The car door which had been pushed open remained as such while the petite woman shifted in her seat with her hands coming to rest against the open door frame. “You know the breaks on this thing aren’t great.” Naomi caught her bottom lip between her teeth as her brows knitted together. “What if someone was staring and forgot to press the breaks? Didn’t think of that one, did you? Death by boobs.”
(bio below. happy to be back and i think a lot of old plots i had with mollie can still work with naomi.)
It started with a green card and a large family from Russia. Irina Roslyakova and her brothers sought a better life, the American dream. Who better to give her that then Clive Eden the NYU professor on track to receive his tenure studying in Russia. One k-1 visa later and Irina was married with a daughter and one on the way (that’d be Naomi).
The family of four lived in New York for most of Naomi’s life. Occasionally she’d stay with her Grandfather in a small town in Washington when her parents had on going arguments that would last a whole summer and on one rare occasion Naomi and her sister Serena ended up staying an entire school year in Washington during their middle school years when the biggest fight of them all occurred....all over Irina’s family. Her brothers to be specific: Lev, Vasily and Georgi. They’d been wanting to come to America for years, and unbeknownst to the NYU professor had been the one to push Irina to marry an American.
So when they finally did almost a year after Naomi’s eleventh birthday, things with her parents really became rocky. The brothers were dependent on Clive’s money and eventually Irina helped them to open up a Russia Tea Room in New York; funded by Clive of course, though that part he had yet to discover. The tea room was the first job Naomi ever had, even though she wasn’t paid to work. Neither was Serena but working wasn’t exactly what Naomi called her sister’s actions...flirting heavily with some of the older patrons however? Spot on.
So Serena got the credit, Naomi did the work which seemed to be a typical sibling relationship in her eyes, but maybe it wasn’t because she wasn’t enough. Well not Russian enough anyway, not for her uncles. She didn’t know the language, hardly knew the traditions and clearly didn’t show any ambitious for well...anything. Naomi wasn’t on the fast track to marriage like Serena who was engaged by twenty-one to a man who invested. in the ever growing popularity of the team room (he was also Russian). But Naomi also had no direction in life. She gave up too easily.
At seven, she wanted to be a ballerina, but her legs weren’t long enough so she gave up dance. At fourteen she was on the fast track to being a writer, but one essay assignment later and that dream was in the trash. Literally, she tossed the paper in the trash. Music was something Naomi always loved and had a decent enough voice but her work ethic wasn’t strong enough. And art wasn’t a real job, just a hobby she hardly practiced unless she wanted to be a house painter, words from her uncle Lev. After two years of college dabbling in various studies and changing her major five times, she dropped out. Nothing was worth it to her.
One of the few consistencies in her life was that damn tea room, and the ongoing attempts to actually learn more than just a few words in her mother’s native language...and alphabet. While Serena went off to marry, have children and open an over-priced skin care line in New York and Russia believe it or not...Naomi kinda just stuck around. Her mundane day to day life working in the tea room, writing lyrics to songs she’d hum to herself and painting on her bedroom walls in her parents house. It seemed like everyone else in the family got that ambitious gene but Naomi especially on late evening when she was twenty-seven. Her uncles and their friends from the Moscow area had been in talks about expanding to the west coast, very hush, hush business. Even Naomi had never been able to sit in on one of these meetings before and while she hadn’t heard a thing about what the tea room was being used for, they still dragged her right in the middle of it all. The unsuspecting tea room waitress.
And cue life in California. Naomi was sent as a scout to the west coast for a good location, for a good fit and for the past few months she’s been looking. Though, Naomi hasn’t had high hopes that a Russian Tea Room would fit well in EastCliff, she personally found the town...charming. While her uncles were more than happy to fund her downpayment on any building rental they agree to, her living expenses came down to her, thus the new 9-5 at Blue Sage Apothecary. She hasn’t found anything yet, but every day that passes they grow impatient and between her job and still attempting to learn that damn alphabet...who has the time?
tl;dr — Naomi was born and raised in New York. Her mother married her father for a green card. Her sister Serena is perfection but takes credit for everything. Naomi lacks ambition and direction in life and doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s been working at her uncle’s tea room for most of her life, they want to expand and sent her to find a place in California. She doesn’t know it’s a front for illegal business yet.
