Out of all of the Cafe's in LA... [Closed to Ani]

Zoe watched Sam leave before turning back to Salone.

“What happened to him?” The pregnant woman asked quietly. “He seems off…”

Zoe sighed, looking at Salone. “A lot of things happened and I’m not supposed to tell you unless he wants me to.”

Salone nodded, her jaw tightened and she looked at the grains of the table. “How did you two meet?”

“Well,” Zoe shifted, crinkling her brow. “I kind of growled at him. One who has been clawed by a demon doesn’t like to be touched.”

Salone made another noise of amusement, “Sounds like a better adventure than mine, a café in England while my best friend was at a meeting.”

Zoe smiled slightly, the bridge of her freckled nose crinkling. Then the serious questions started, mainly what had happened between her and Sam.

“Sam,” Salone sighed. “He was sweet and nice… like that guy who goes out of his way to do the right thing, but-“

“Your heart had already been stolen by someone different?”

“Exactly. I felt bad about it afterwards and I never would have dreamed of finding him here in California. He had no idea how much I had changed.”

Zoe smiled faintly, “I understand completely.”

With that the conversation trailed off into an unimportant area of conversation, mainly horror stories of misadventures. One involved Salone running into a wall while playing volleyball in gym class. Zoe shared a few, none to the same embarrassing extent as Salone’s but it was funny.

A 15 minute walk was the time that Sam needed to head to the local store and pick up some cat food and some chocolate, some for him and some that he would somehow trick Zoe into consuming for his own amusement. He returned home to hear the two women still chatting away, he felt like he was going to return to a wall of awkward silence, but thankfully he was proved wrong. Amber followed Sam into the kitchen as she knew what was going on, Sam yanked tore open the bag and poured some of the food into Amber's bowl, he stared at it for a short while and noticed how disgusting it looked and yet it tasted good enough to keep Amber running back to it over and over again. Sam tossed the extra chocolate into the fridge to keep it cool and stood by the door of the kitchen, "Zoe you should taste some of Salone's cupcakes, I don't know what she puts into this things, but they are amazing, if I had to guess, I would have to say Nicotine because I could never tear myself away from them." Sam reminded himself of how good Salone's cupcakes were, in doing that, he realized that he had not eaten one of them for a whole year, although he did not have much of a choice with Salone disappearing off of the map completely, a part of him almost didn't want to eat another one again in case he ended up back on he addiction, it was actually one reason why he had picked up on exercising so much.

Sam peaked back around the corner into the kitchen to see how Amber was doing with her food and was startled, Amber had changed into her human form, something that she did not do too often, to be honest if Sam had the ability to change into a cat, he would be leaping all over the apartment as a small feline. She smiled at Sam and he smiled back at her, he ruffled her blonde hair slightly, but not enough to mess it all up, she stepped by and stood in front of him, he placed his hands on her shoulder and looked over to Salone who had not noticed yet, "Salone, I have someone I want you to meet"

Salone smiled slightly, the corners of her mouth twitching upwards in a valiant attempt, “Sam, you know that I don’t use drugs in my food. You just have a massive sweet tooth.”

She had honestly cut back on cooking the delightful treats herself because she was eating way more than was healthy for a person. Zoe snorted at Sam’s cupcake comment, no doubt they had chocolate in them and Sam was always trying to get her to eat some.

“But I can make some more if you want,” Salone stated with a voice of amusement before fishing her cell phone out of her pocket. That was about the time Amber shifted back into the girl and Sam introduced her to Salone. Salone looked at the girl before holding out a hand. The eyes were still mismatched and Amber smiled hesitantly.

“Never would have guessed,” Salone mused, rubbing her chin. “How long has she been able to do this?”
Zoe watched, winking at Sam as she caught his eye before mouthing ‘good move’ over Salone’s head.

Sam didn't believe that there were no drugs in the cupcakes, the only other thing that Sam could think of that he was addicted to was the Nether energy that he was only recently introduced to, but even then he was not killing constantly to get his fix, it was just a nice energy to be around, he felt like he would need to witness the cupcakes being made just to be 100% sure though.

Sam began to feel bad now because he felt like he was pressuring Salone into making him cupcakes, and in the state she was in, all she should be doing is laying down and relaxing. "You really don't need to, I was just kidding around, I've been cupcake clean for a year now, don't want to get back into habit now" he said.

Sam took a step back as Amber approached Salone, it felt like watching a baby tiger cub return to its mother after a certain amount of years, and the similarities in that description where scarily similar. Sam gave a nod of approval as Zoe mouthed something over to him, he had no clue what she said, but he just decided to nod and act as if he did. Amber grasped onto Salone's hand, it must have been a strange experience for her to be able to speak to the women that practically took her off of the street and passed her on to Sam. "Only a few months" she said with a smile, "I like it better as a cat though, so I spend more time as that, these two seemed to enjoy my feline presence too" she said as she looked to both Zoe and Sam. "It's nice to finally be able to speak to you Salone, I wanted to thank you for that day back in London, without you, I wouldn't be here right now" she took a slight bow of respect before sitting down onto the couch, who was then joined by Sam soon after.

Salone laughed at Sam and shook her head, before watching Amber leave to go sit on the couch. After a few more minutes Salone ended up leaving, as she did have some stuff to take care of. She waved, ruffled Amber’s hair and flashed a small smile around the room before ducking out the door. Zoe let out a pent out breath and slid onto the couch, adjusting herself so that she could rest her cheek on Sam’s shoulder and slip her arms around his middle.

“I’m glad you brought her,” Zoe said looking up at him. “It looked like she could use a little bit of a smile in her life right now.”

It did indeed seem so, her face did seem sad even though the woman was beautiful. But Zoe was not going to comment on that, instead she was going to curl up next to Sam while she was feeling sleepy. Her blue eyes were dark and half closed as she looked up at him, long red hair falling over his shoulder.

Sam said his goodbyes to Salone and reminded her that she can come back whenever she wished. Sam sat on the couch and was pleased with what had just happened, it was always good to find and catch up with old friends, especially ones that you used to spend so much time with. A short time later, Zoe slipped in beside him and rested on him before latching around his waist. "She did, things had not exactly been going her way as of late, just tried to get her mind off of everything to be honest, just trying to help her" He said as he looked down into her eyes, he gave her a light kiss on the forehead before gently leaning his cheek on her, the both of them ended up staring into space as Amber had turned back into her cat form and was lying down in her bed.

Sam was starting to become very warm due to the close proximity of him and Zoe, and when Sam was in a comfortable, warm position, he would usually become sleepy, his eyelids slowly began dropping over time until he was in a full scale snooze.