It was nothing to find Nora Adler—Santiago—present and accounted for at the Crimson Kestrel. It was, after all, her family's bar and her sister worked there on occasion. Her brothers too. And herself. This evening, however, she was not working. At least, she wasn't working at the bar.
No, the third-born child had a stack of papers in front of her at the table she was settled at. Nachos on one side of them, a bucket of beer on the other, and looking for the world like she just wanted to dump the papers themselves into a vat of bar water.
With Mateo working late tonight, she'd taken it upon herself to take her work from the reserve home with her. Or, to be more accurate, to the bar. She couldn't focus at home when Teo wasn't there. It was too quiet. Ever since he moved in "quiet" had not been something that Nora did well in. It just didn't work for her. Her family brought noise into her life, sure, but Teo brought loud noise and now Nora found she couldn't quite center herself and focus without that loud noise.
The hustle and bustle of the bar made a decent substitute for the noise missing from home, but it still didn't help her like paperwork any better. The beer made things easier, however. Made it easier to relax as she did it instead of tense up with her shoulders around her ears and her back straight as an arrow. The nachos kept her sated in terms of food for now, until she did get back home and get real food. Or just ordered something else.
As always when she was trying to do paperwork, her mind wandered. This time it wandered to where she was going to take Bettina this weekend for drinks. Somewhere other than here. Probably Laramie. Or Billings. Somewhere more "club" and less "bar". She was thinking that she would also have Teo just invite Freddy over to have a bro's night. The two hadn't done that in a while. It would be nice for him. And Freddy, too.
"Focus, Nora," she muttered to herself, picking up her pen again and beginning to fill out all the papers. If she could get this done, she could easily get home in time to meet Teo and get settled in with enough time to watch a movie. Maybe.
Reaching out, she grabbed another beer from the bucket and popped it open, taking a long drag from the ice-cold liquid. Oh well, if she didn't make it home before Teo, it wasn't like he didn't know where to find her. And Nora knew he would. Until then, however...
The cursed stacks of paperwork were taunting her...