InsaneJournal

Cin was so stressed that she thought her hair was going to start falling out. Bailey was getting more and more vocal about leaving and never looking back; Jake had been suspended for skipping school and had decided that meant he should do it more; Brody had last night followed some crackhead back to his house and given Cin a heart-attack; Cin's job wasn't covering anywhere near all the bills; and on top of all of that Barak was-

Well, what was Barak? The thing that sat and drooled in a hospital room wasn't the Barak that Cin had known, which seemed almost fitting because when Barak looked right through her most of the time, she clearly wasn't anyone he knew either. Sometimes he seemed to know her, but there was no indication beyond that of whether he wanted her around.

But she stayed around anyway, because he was her man, because she was loyal, because she'd always said ride or die and no one had died yet.

Not technically.

So she spent time there with him, reading from magazines and talking about dumb shit, when maybe she should have been at home making sure it wasn't all falling apart.

But today was about keeping things together. Today she was getting off the train in an unfamiliar area and walking the couple blocks to the address she'd been given by a man who wanted his house cleaned. Cin had done plenty of cleaning jobs before and her resume was solid on that front. (There were some questionable job endings on there, but she'd managed to make them look tidy. Surely just another point in favour to a cleaning job!) Besides, the ad this guy had put out seemed slightly off-putting and Cin was counting on that giving her a better shot at it. She didn't care if the guy was rude, as long as he was paying.

When she arrived at the address, Cin double checked it on her phone and then knocked firmly. She reached up to smooth back her hair, checking it was all still tied back into a bun. She'd decided that house cleaning wasn't the sort of job interview that would care about her being suited up, so under her coat she was in jeans and a fitted white t-shirt. Casual but neat, the perfect sort of housekeeper (Cin hoped.)