The Ties that Bind - Ch. 01

"The road looks like it's back to normal now, but I can't really tell what the heck they were doing out there for the last month." Mike was passing the hand sanitizer to Tal as he finished rubbing his own hands. "At least it's easier to get here now. I think they've moved on to the bridge west of you."

"As long as it's away from here I'm happy," Andy laughed, wandering to the kitchen. He grabbed the fancy self-rotating bottle opener that Jenny had given him for his birthday last year and opened the bottle to let it breathe before the main course. "It's been so nice to be able to open the windows and get a bit of airflow in here without the constant noise of industrial machinery going."

"I can imagine." Tal had plopped down across from Mike at the table, seating himself next to Jenny to whom he gave a quick peck on the cheek. "By the way, have you heard anything from your production buddies down in Hollywood? I'd been seeing in the news that basically everything is halted and everyone's out of a job."

Andy grimaced a bit, "It's not good. My friends have some savings, but they're burning through them pretty quickly. They're getting to the point where making rent may just be impossible. Terry, I think I mentioned him, he inherited an RV a year or two back and finally took it out of storage. He talked about getting his girl and her brother and heading out somewhere away from everyone. His dad had a cabin out in Wyoming that's been unattended for decades now, so he's probably going to head out there soon."

"That's not a terrible idea honestly," Mike was serving the salad out of the communal bowl to everyone as Andy came over with some white wine aperitifs. "I'm not quite at the cut-and-run stage, but if we have to, I have a couple of ex-Airforce buddies that have a big place we can hole up in. They already gave me the keys. Honestly, nice guys, but a little loopy. They headed out to a bunker of theirs in March and haven't heard from them since. They said something about 5g microchip implantations, and that's about where they lost me."

"Alright, enough with the doomsday talk and let's focus on what's important," Jenny clapped her hands together and paused. "What do we think Season 2 of the Mandalorian is going to focus on?"

"It's gotta be Jedi Academy, right? We're finally going to see Luke taking on disciples. Will they make Mara Jade canon?"

"Where does that leave the Mandalorian then? He's gotta be in it, he's in the freaking title."

This conversation and many similar played out over the course of dinner. Andy would routinely break to grab the next course while Jenny was on wine duty, breaking out paired wines for each dish. It was easily one of the best dinners they had had in quite a while. Partially because they were all too lazy about cooking, but mostly because Andy was basically a Michelin rated cook.

After dinner they spent several hours setting up and playing Kill Teams on Andy's table. He had a wide assortment of custom made and painted set pieces that they used for the terrain. Mike's Ultramarines were painted and finely detailed, as were Jenny's Orks, while Tal's pieces were mostly still unfinished. Tal didn't really have the patience or steady hands to do fine detail painting, so he usually gave up after only doing the minimum amount of effort. Andy had already started painting some up for him as it was driving him crazy having a bunch of grey figures breaking immersion for him. Andy had not only finished his own models in stunning fashion, but even customized and posed each piece individually, giving them tiny kill trophies, armor damage, or decorating their bases with terrain features.

They ended up playing their last match around 11 and decided to head back since they all had to get to work the following day. Tal and Mike left with the customary basket of fresh baked cookies and this time an assortment of rice cakes that Andy had tried making. Jenny stuck around to help with the cleanup, even though Andy tried unsuccessfully to stop her.

"I appreciate you helping Jenny, but I know you hate doing dishes, you don't have to." Andy finished cleaning the last of the wine glasses, which Jenny took from him and started drying.

"I'm hardly doing anything here; you won't even let me get my hands wet. This is the least I can do."

"I didn't want you to mess up your nails. Also, I was afraid that you were going to spray me with water."

Jenny rolled her eyes at him and grinned, "I'm not going to bully the host after such a wonderful meal. If anything," she placed the dry glass on the table and stepped closer to him, "you should be worried about what I might do to you when both your hands are occupied." She smiled sweetly at him.

Andy slowly moved the scissors away from her, "I know you don't like it, but I wanted to try it out. It stays."

Jenny glared at him, or rather, the offending man-bun he had grown over the course of the year. She huffed, "You are so lucky. If you weren't still like, 80% hunk I'd try and shave you in your sleep."

"And that's why you don't have a key to my place."

Evy was sitting on the balcony, feet up on the banister, working on something on her laptop. The breeze tugged at her blonde hair occasionally, so she swept it behind her ear as she sipped her afternoon coffee. She would occasionally read something aloud a few times, scrunch her nose and then set to typing again. This was one of the quarantine hobbies she had picked up that she really enjoyed, writing. She wasn't aiming to be world renowned, hell, she wasn't even interested in being published, but it was a great outlet for her.

She visited a few budding author sites where writers could post excerpts of their work, get feedback, and just generally talk about writing. She didn't care too much about the theory part, hero's journey, and all, but was interested in seeing different writing styles. All her stuff was just short stories, with the occasional one-shot drama scene, so she never really looked to structure anything like an actual book. No worrying about first, second and third act, just writing for the joy of it.

She had posted a couple of stories under the pen name Lavendar Stars to get some feedback recently. She had just happened to see some fabric softener with stars on it and just ran with that as a name. There were a few writers who made some comments, but she was interested in one author's work in particular. Adrian Chadwick, she refused to believe that anyone would name their kid that so assumed it was another pen name, had given some ideas over the last months that were pretty good, and his writing style was very interesting. He had a habit of writing very flowery when it suited him, but a lot of the interactions in his stories seemed so real, without a lot of descriptions. It seemed to be an exercise in projecting what the reader was imagining, which really intrigued her.

She sat out in the sun for a few hours, playing with different writing styles until the sun moved out of the sweet spot and started to bounce off the opposite building into her face. She stretched languidly, hearing a few pops again. She really needed to get back to her yoga. She hadn't done any since moving in here, mostly because she wanted to find a group class, but then the pandemic hit and now everything was closed. She doubted that Tal would join her, and Mike would probably just punt her out of the room.

Thinking about it some more, she shot a text out to Anna. "Hey girl. QQ, u into yoga?" She got back a reply soon after.

"bet every morn wanna face"

"How early? If you say 5 I'm blocking you."

"ljbol im not m how b 7"

"Cool. Call me up tomorrow?"

"Bet".

It was still weird deciphering her texts sometimes. There were only a handful of years between them, but Anna's style was way different from what she was used to. She also came off as way more assertive and direct than in person. Text Anna was super fun and cool, in-person Anna was reserved and shy. At some point those two were going to collide and that sounded like a good time. Evy had managed to get her to cross that threshold a few times so far, so there was hope yet.

The next morning Evy got up early, pulled on her yoga pants and halter top and did a bit of warm-up stretching in front of her mirror. She was able to maintain her lithe figure by largely avoiding too many snacks, but she really did need to exercise more if she wanted to keep her flat tummy. At 7 she was feeling good and took the call on her tablet. Anna popped into view, her hair up in a ponytail, wearing a similar halter top and sporting black tights. Evy was both jealous and impressed with how the beautiful young brunette filled out the top and tights. Her typical fashion choices were not nearly as flattering to her body as they should be.

"Good morning sunshine," she chirped happily when Evy connected. "Feeling good?"

"Yep, got a little warmed up just now. Wanna start slow and go from there?"

"Sounds good."

Anna adjusted the tablet's location and backed into the frame. She had set aside a corner of her room for workouts so that she wouldn't take up space in the living room. Evy had placed the tablet on her table, clearing out some space by her bed. They moved through a few standard poses and were in the warrior pose when Mike wandered past the door, fresh back from his run.

"Oh, sorry, I forgot to close the door." Evy said while trying to stay steady. "Want me to get that?"

"That's fine. I don't mind." They moved on to the next pose. Evy grunted a bit trying to get fully stretched out. "But if you wanted to turn the tablet a bit to give them a better view, I wouldn't mind at all." Evy caught herself just before she tipped over.

"Anna, you dirty girl. I love it!"

Anna never faltered from her pose and smoothly transitioned to the next with a playful smirk on her face. "I mean, flaunt what you got, right?"

Evy gaped in mock awe, "I need to get you on facetime more often. This version of Anna is sassy as hell! Where is she every weekend?"

"I keep her locked up tight. She doesn't get to play with others." Anna joked, pausing as she touched her left hand to her right foot. "It's actually something I'm working on getting better about with my therapist," she confided. "I think having this layer of digital and physical separation makes me feel more confident, with less social pressure, and I can just kind of be me. I tend to get all in my own head when I'm around people."

"Well, we are going to work on that together then, because if this is the real you, we are going to have so much fun."

"I think you mean get in trouble."

"Same diff. Hey, level with me on something. That body, this personality, are you secretly an OF girl? Cause I'm totally cool with that." This time Anna was the one that nearly fell over.

"Oh my god, no!" She laughed, trying to get back into position. "I could never do that. Never. Though I bet I could make bankroll with a butt like this." That was too much for Evy who fell over laughing.

"I bet a certain someone here would be very interested in subscribing."

"OMG, shut up. Don't you dare even joke about that."

They finished up their session with Evy feeling a lot looser, and sorer, than before. "Ugh, I think I've been away for too long."

"You're looking pretty good, maybe just need to work on core strength a bit to keep you steadier."

"Well, that wasn't all due to muscles, but I hear ya. Wish we were closer so we could grab coffee and chill a bit."

"Yeah, a bit too far to run and a real hassle by car. That construction is moving further west from Andy's place now. No idea what they're actually doing, but it's causing all kinds of traffic."

"Ugh. Well, I gotta get in the shower here and get ready for work. Thanks for this, it was fun. See you tomorrow. Kisses, love ya."

"You too."