The phone didn't need to slide into someone's pocket, Julia could have said. The words sat on her tongue, because there was a cop - or at least, a couple of cops - at the thicker end of the clump of people deep into the bar. You didn't forget how to see them, even if there was a span of fifteen years since last they meant anything at all. Julia didn't believe in badges or guns or uniforms; people were people, some good and some bad. And the phone could dwindle and die, wink out without a sign if she felt like it. The dull presence of it twinged in her head. She didn't feel like it. She'd decided that as well.
She twined her thumb into the leather strap woven into a bracelet around her wrist and considered the half-smile and the woman both together. What was off, when it came down to it? Her smile notched dreamy, stole a second of jaded amusement next.
"It is," she acknowledged, more husk and she took a sip of the beer. "But how do you mean?" She leaned her chin against the palm of her hand and Walmart-yellow elbow took up rest on the bar. It was a listening look, and she kept her own counsel on what she thought was 'off' about the town as her skin hummed with live electricity.