Who: @ko-echo
Where: K.O.
Traffic was backed up along Sunset, what was new there? Opting for an alternative en route to the house on Redcliff where the shitty part of his job required babysitting of up and coming rapper, Dom the Destroyer. Glad for the stoplights that felt like were never changing, that dreaded sense in the back of his mind that Dom, like yesterday and the day before wouldn’t be there.
Mind somewhat blank, Jordan shook out the conversations he’d had planned for Dom— a new attempt at centering. Hell, he even dipped into the rock theory. Tuck one here, stick one there you’ll absorb their energies. Not exactly something he actually believed in but, what the hell? Nothing changed, no light, some jackhammering in the distance, Yaz played on his stereo - an old tape from back in high school? Middle school? Still worked. In a daze, watching the life around him, a woman with her kid on a leash, the dogs... loads of dogs. Led by walkers and pushed in carts. Someone was yelling at someone else at one of the tattoo shops, and a familiar shape....a familiar shape of a woman he’d once known. Another world away— now he’d felt this before.
The mistake of recognition. How it instantly had his heart racing and his palms sweaty. “No way...” mumbling to himself as he followed her into a nearby entrance. Everything in him then told him to keep driving, couldn’t be her. The last he’d allowed himself to assume was she’d picked up with the clothes on her back to some cabin in upstate New York, maybe Canada. Something far enough where she could fight some bears.
But something was off right now and Jordan pulled off. No parking spot. Just stopped. Pushed the hazard lights on and almost instantly Dom and the chance of towing was well forgotten.
K.O. —he’d heard of it, even been recommended but he’d already had his loyalties.
Echo Galaeus-Petras, owner.
His heart sounded like drums in his ears, that confirmation on the doorway that same feeling of a 300 pound corner taking his best with a sack. Without much more thought he pushed the door open, that bell above a reminder of who he was about to be confronted with. When she did round the corner and was in front of him for the first time in seven? Eight years, he was hard pressed to look at the space she’d made her own. With another name.
“Los Angeles, huh?”
