Crossing Paths Who: Kenzie and Zania When: Late afternoon Where: Lance & Kenzie's Place
Kenzie was feeling okay as she walked home to Lance’s house. She was tired and hadn’t had a very good morning all together. There was nothing specific wrong, just a lot of little things that had begun to work their way underneath her skin. Lance’s depression, and still being stuck in the dome. Skylar decided he would rather kiss only Clementine. And Clementine. It wasn’t a big deal, not really. Kenzie didn’t have any deep feelings for the guy at all, but she hated being rejected, even if she didn’t always show it. When a boy pushed her away, all she could hear was her dad’s voice in her head, calling her names in between punches to her face. Stupid. Worthless. It was nothing that was anyone’s fault but her own, and Kenzie couldn’t always avoid the triggers.
She was thirsty though, and hoped Lance maybe had more of that moonshine. Or something. Maybe he had weed, because she was all out. Without knocking, Kenzie pushed open the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her before toeing off her shoes to get comfortable.
Zania was in the kitchen, getting a drink of water. Her plan was to go back to sleep after her brother left, but she just hadn’t made it there yet. When she was awake, it was hard not to worry and wonder, knowing that there was nothing she could do to prevent the inevitable. She just hoped the preparations that had been put in place were enough to prevent a disaster.
Though she knew that Lance lived with his cousin, Zania hadn’t seen her since she arrived. Granted, that was just before dawn, and then they’d spent most of the day in his room, so that might have been normal. Still, she froze when someone walked in the house, coming around to see who’d come in the front door. “Hello?”
The voice Kenzie was expecting to hear was a male one, so when the girl called out, Kenzie paused, immediately wary and suspicious of anyone around who wasn’t her cousin. Expressionless, but for a slight narrowing of her gaze, Kenzie eyed the woman who suddenly appeared. She was pale, with some red hair. Pretty, Kenzie supposed. “Who are you?” she asked, tilting her head curiously.
“Zania,” she said, not moving from where she stood. She supposed she could have rushed back to the room rather than call out, but that didn’t occur to her till now. “You must be Kenzie? I’m a friend of Lance’s.” A friend that had stayed the night… or the day, in this occasion. Her eyes scanned the other girl quickly, thinking they were about the same age, both pale, though Kenzie had dark hair and way too much eye makeup. She looked nothing like Lance, but cousins rarely looked alike.
Zania. Kenzie couldn't remember if she had ever heard the name before. It was a weird one, so if she had, she supposed she would have remembered. Kenzie stayed where she was too and tugged idly at the hem of her shirt. "Yeah, I'm Kenzie. Where's Lance?" A friend of Lance's who was a girl probably meant he had been sleeping with her. Which wasn't a problem, but she wondered if it was a good idea after his mood yesterday. Not that either of them ever made good decisions, but still.
Okay, good, at least that confirmed it was Kenzie. Zania wasn’t sure what she would’ve done if it wasn’t. She didn’t like any of the other options that popped into her head. “He’s in his room, sleeping. I think he was up all night. I saw him on the porch when I was on my way home. I live next door.” Kind of. Not exactly, but close enough that she could see Lance from the sidewalk in front of her house.
“Oh.” Sleeping. Kenzie glanced toward the hall leading to Lance’s room. She probably would have gone in and crawled into bed with him to doze for awhile, but she couldn’t do that with his friend, Zania, here. Maybe if Zania left soon. If not… oh well. “Okay.” She glanced around Zania toward the kitchen. “Were you making food, or something?” Because Kenzie was pretty hungry and Lance’s new friend would have definitely earned points if there was something worth eating in there.
“I just came in for a glass of water, but I thought about making pie or something, if you have the ingredients,” Zania said. Pie was her staple. She’d live off it, if necessary. It was easy to make and delicious, and rarely did anyone turn it down. But it did require that they have some things in the fridge and Zania had yet to go snooping around. Even if they didn’t have what she needed for a pie crust, she thought she could do a crumble if they had oats. There were options, plus she thought Lance would like it when he woke up. “You hungry?”
Kenzie chewed on her lip for a second, wondering if she and Lance would have ingredients for pie. She tried to imagine either of them actually cooking or baking something and her mind just came up with the mental image of the kitchen exploding into a big ball of fire and food. The laughter that thought prompted got stuck in her throat before her gaze ticked to Zania. “Uh. Pie. Maybe. But yeah, I’m hungry.” She walked toward Zania and past her to the kitchen. Lance always got the food because Kenzie could only go by the pictures on the cans or whatever else. She chewed on her fingernail and started opening cupboards. “What do you need to use?”
“I’d offer more, but that’s all I really know how to make,” Zania said with a little laugh, wondering what it was exactly that Kenzie was laughing about. She supposed pie ingredients weren’t exactly a normal thing to have around. “Any kind of fruit will do as a start. Then sugar, butter, flour, and oats. I can make a crumble using those. What do you like?” And, a better question, what did Lance like? Though she’d go with Kenzie’s opinion, since it was her kitchen that Zania was invading. “I can always help you make something else and hopefully we won’t burn down the kitchen.”
“I don’t know if we have fruit.” Kenzie gnawed on her lip briefly. “There might be apples in there?” Maybe Lance actually got some decent food. She hadn’t had pie in forever. Years, even. And honestly, she wasn’t sure what a crumble was. “I like anything with sugar in it,” Kenzie added after a moment. “We might have some of that stuff…” She pushed a few boxes around and grabbed a canister of what she assumed were oats. The picture looked right. “Lance and I aren’t big bakers, honestly. We just kind of throw together something easy that we hope tastes decent.”
“Apples are the best,” Zania smiled, checking the fridge to see what they had. “And they keep the longest.” She understood not stocking a lot if they didn’t know how to cook. Before the dome, most of what she and Nic had eaten had been fish or anything they could hunt or pick, find or trade. Things like pie hadn’t come back into her life until the dome. “This all should work,” she said, looking at the supplies they had. There weren’t a lot of apples, but there were enough for a crumble. “I work at the diner and the cook’s been teaching me things. The first thing I learned was to bake pies, so I’ve kind of become the pie girl. I’ve also mastered macaroni and cheese. What did you eat outside the dome? Lance said you were traders?”
Kenzie stepped back to give Zania some room, and her eyes shifted between the ingredients and Zania’s face. She was trying to figure out just how good of friends Lance was with this girl. They couldn’t have been too close, since Kenzie didn’t remember Lance mentioning her before. “Yeah. We ate whatever we could find. Sometimes my uncle would hunt. Or we’d trade for food. We didn’t starve or anything. When did you meet Lance?”
“Just curious,” she said with a little smile. They’d all managed to get by somehow. It had certainly taken Zania and Nic a while to figure out what they were doing on the hunting front, but fishing was easier. “I met him, um, a few days ago? I was offering moonshine at that little town center thing. He made off with the rest of my jar.” She had more, though. It was her little side business that few knew about, but brought in good money when she used it.
“You made the moonshine?” Brows raised, Kenzie’s lips twitched into a grin. “That was pretty good stuff. Between you and Skylar, I’m not missing out on a lot of things I was able to get while trading.” The weed. And moonshine, if Zania made anymore of it. She would take what she could get, between that and the pub. Kenzie paused and then shrugged. “I can’t even remember what we talked about when he brought that home. I guess it served it’s purpose.” Lance had been drunk and she had been high and she only have vague memories of the conversation on the front porch.
“Thanks, it was always good for trading. I’d love to figure out how to make tequila at some point. Or bourbon. But at the moment, moonshine’s good enough,” Zania smiled as she began to peel the apples. “And yeah, Skylar’s got good stuff. Not really my thing, but I know a few people who enjoy it.” Her cousin and roommate included. When she mentioned Lance coming back drunk that night, Zania laughed a little and nodded. She might not have been in a good mood after it all, but he should have been. “He was pretty drunk when he left, so if he kept drinking I can only imagine how that conversation might have been.”
“I don’t like tequila,” Kenzie said simply, her eyes watching Zania peel the apples. Tequila was what her father drank when he was really bad. She hated the smell of it alone. She pushed passed those memories before they could resurface and set her off, instead ticking her gaze to Zania again. “That’s right, he was… you were the girl he told me about when he got home.” And she wondered if Zania was the same girl who had sent Lance into his depression yesterday. The girl he felt bad about sleeping with. And was apparently sleeping with again. Pixie of a redhead opening a club and making moonshine.
"I like margaritas," Zania said with a little smile. She also liked tequila shots, but that was the sort of thing that would get her into trouble. She could understand why people wouldn't like tequila. It only took a few bad nights with it to earn a bad reputation. "Oh? What did he say?" she asked, eyes ticking up to Kenzie as she continued peeling the apples. It could be good, but it could also be bad, since their meeting inbetween then and now hadn't been the most uplifting. She tried not to think too much about it. She was happy now and that was what mattered.
Lifting a shoulder, Kenzie leaned over, placing her elbow on the counter and resting her chin in her palm as she watched Zania. “Pixie of a redhead, opening a club and making moonshine,” Kenzie said, speaking her thoughts out loud then, since Zania had asked and all. “Are you the one he made feel sad too?” Because she remembered that from the day before when he had been unable to get out of bed.
“That would be me,” Zania answered at the description. She was glad it sounded positive, since he’d walked away from her that night in a good mood, not knowing how she’d felt afterwards. She’d told him later, when they were both sober, though it really had nothing to do with him. Though it seemed that part had made it back to Kenzie as well. Her smile died, but she kept peeling apples. “It wasn’t his fault I was upset,” she said. “I’m just… having a difficult time of things. We talked about it. I think things are okay now.”
“He thought it was his fault,” Kenzie said simply, but didn’t sound too perturbed about it. She reached out to snag one of the peeled pieces to take a bit out of it. Her lips twitched in dry amusement. “Well, since you’re here and he’s sleeping, I’m assuming things are okay. Plus, you’re making food in our kitchen. So things must be really okay.” Because she had never known Lance to keep a girl around after fucking her. “You like him?”
“It wasn’t,” Zania said, shaking her head. She hadn’t meant for him to feel that way, but she could see how he’d draw those conclusions. It was her own insecurities, her own desire for something more that upset her. Lance had made it pretty clear he wasn’t interested in anything more, so she tried not to let herself get emotionally involved. It might have been too late. “I like baking for people,” she said with a small smile. “And yeah, I like him. I’m just not used to the whole ‘no strings attached’ thing. I’ve always wanted something more.”
“Gotta get to know someone before wanting more,” Kenzie said, shrugging lightly. It didn’t make a lot of sense to her to instantly want a relationship with someone you barely knew. Not that she ever wanted a relationship, but still. “You may have sex with him for a couple more weeks and realize you have nothing in common and there’s nothin’ else there but physical attraction.” She couldn’t speak for Lance and say he’d never ever want a girlfriend. But he could barely take care of himself, let alone try to maintain a healthy relationship. Her lips twisted into dry amusement. “What’s that saying? Uh… something like, love never happens while you’re lookin’ for it? Or, love happens when you’re not looking? I don’t know. Something like that.”
“No, I know, it’s just that… I usually go about it the other way. Know I want to be in a relationship with someone before I start sleeping with ‘em,” Zania said, glancing up at Kenzie. Going about it the other direction still made her nervous because Kenzie was right, she might not have anything in common with Lance. She enjoyed his company, but who was to say she’d want anything more? The physical attraction was there most definitely, but everything else was up in the air. “It’s something like that,” she smiled. “I’m trying not to look for it. It’s hard, though, when you want something to try and forget about it. It’s kind of like a watched pot never boils, but who really leaves a pot to boil and wanders off?”
Munching a bit more on the apple peel, Kenzie lifted a brow. “Seems like you are looking for it, if you know you want a boyfriend. You don’t even have to forget about it, I don’t think. But if you see someone you like… I guess it makes sense to just let things happen. Expectations can be a bad thing sometimes. Seems like a lot of pressure to look up to before you even get to know the person.” And she could see Lance liking some girl but balking the second ‘boyfriend’ escaped her lips. Kenzie grinned and shrugged one shoulder lightly, her gaze falling to the stuff Zania was putting together. “I don’t think I’ve ever put a pot on to boil in my entire life.”
“I’m just trying to get to know him,” Zania frowned as she began to grow frustrated. She didn’t need another lecture on why things weren’t working out for her. She wasn’t trying to put pressure on Lance. In fact, she wasn’t putting pressure on anyone at this point. Guys didn’t want to get to know her if she wouldn’t sleep with them, and she didn’t want to sleep with them until after she got to know them. Something had to give and she’d given first, but that didn’t mean she was happy about it. “Not even for soup?” she asked, not looking up from her task.
Kenzie didn’t see it as lecturing. She simply said what she was thinking, though she was aware that not everyone always liked it when she voiced her thoughts. Not that she really cared. Kenzie shook her head at Zania’s question, lifting her eyes up from the apples to Zania’s face. “I don’t like to cook. When I did cook, my dad never liked what I made.” And give her a black eye for it. “Lance cooks for me, usually. Or we go to the diner, or something like that. It’s easier.”
“Is your dad here now?” Zania asked, highly doubting it. Most people had lost their family in some way or another. She was lucky to have her brother and her cousin. And some people were glad to lose their family. “I didn’t really know how to cook until I got in here, and I’m still not very good. But I can bake. I work at the diner and the cook’s been teaching me. We started with pies and I think I’ve finally perfected them.”
“No.” Her dad was probably dead. She hoped so, anyway. “Maybe I should learn how to cook,” Kenzie said, moving on from the subject of family. “I think baking would be harder. If you mess up, it’s harder to fix, right?” She grabbed another apple peel to take a bite out of it. Maybe it was the other way around. Kenzie didn’t really know, as she didn’t spend a lot of time trying to make food beyond putting something in a microwave before the world went to shit.
“Depends on what you bake,” Zania said as she continued peeling the apples. This was the most tedious part of the process, but she’d gotten good at it. It also helped that she wasn’t as worried about cutting herself as she used to be. “I think cakes are hard because, yes, they are harder to fix. Pies take work, but aren’t all that hard, in my opinion. I’d like to learn to make other things, though. My cousin, Nic, he was the one that did most of the cooking while we were outside the dome. He taught me how to make a stew, roast a rabbit, and fillet a fish. They were good things to know out there. I don’t use ‘em as much in here.”
“My uncle could roast rabbits,” Kenzie said, perking up a bit at the thought that maybe they had something in common besides her cousin. “But I guess you don’t gotta know that stuff in here when you’ve got stoves and food to buy. Can I cut the apples?” She motioned to the ones that Zania had already finished, because it would be more fun to help than to stand there and watch like a wide eyed five year old.
“They’re good, aren’t they? I haven’t hunted much since we came into the dome, but occasionally I like to cook one over the fire,” she smiled. Someday she’d learn to skin one properly and make herself a coat, but that was probably a ways off. She had other things to do in her spare time. “Sure,” she said, glad to have the help. They’d get it done quicker with two of them peeling apples. “We can buy food in here, but someone’s still making it all by hand. There’s no plant manufacturing spaghetti sauce in some giant vat, but someone sitting over a stove for hours and pouring it into glass jars. I tend to feel like, if they can make it, so can I, at least someday. Right now, I’m sticking to pies.”
Kenzie found a knife similar to Zania’s and began to peel. She usually never peeled apples, so she was careful about it, not wanting to slice part of her finger off. At least she was learning how to do something new. Lance would probably laugh at her if he walked in at that moment and saw her helping make a pie. Or cobbler. Whatever it was. “Never hurts to learn how to do something and do it good,” she muttered, concentrating on the apple. “Everyone’s gotta have a skill of some kind.” And of course she nicked her finger, dropping the knife with a clang onto the countertop as blood began to bead from the cut. Kenzie cursed and lifted her finger to her mouth to suck the blood off. “Guess mine’s not gonna be makin’ pies,” she said around her fingertip.
“What would you say you’re good at?” she asked curiously just before Kenzie cut herself. Zania hissed softly and bit her lip, the scent of blood taking her by surprise. Even though she’d just fed, she wasn’t ready for it, and she could feel her fangs cutting into her bottom lip. “Are you okay?” she asked, then shut her mouth, not wanting to seem unsympathetic, but also not sure she needed to advertize what she was to a girl she’d only just met.
"I'm fine," Kenzie said, pulling her finger from her mouth to look at the cut. It wasn't so bad. The blood started to seep again, so she sucked at it again, wondering if they actually had band aids in the bathroom. "Just gotta be more careful, I guess." Kenzie shook her finger lightly and glanced at Zania before lifting a dark brow. "Are you okay?"
Zania swallowed, took a deep breath, and used that focus that she’d been working on to make her fangs retract. “Yeah, it just looked like it hurt,” she said with a small frown. If she were a better friend, she might’ve offered blood to heal it, but… no, that wasn’t a good idea at all. She would come across like a total freak.
"It's fine," Kenzie murmured again, looking down at her finger. "I've felt worse." Twitching her lips to the side, she glanced up at Zania again. "I'm gonna go put a band aid on it, and check on Lance. I bet he'll really like whatever you make. Food always tastes better when it's free, or you don't have to cook it, right? Something like that." She was still curious about Zania, and she planned on interrogating her cousin later, once the other woman had left.
“Always,” Zania smiled, not minding a few minutes alone to work on the sweet. As Kenzie disappeared to bandage herself up and find Lance, Zania began humming softly to herself. It made her happy to bake for other people, even if she barely knew them. Plus, she thought Lance would like it. He might not want a girlfriend, but friends were good too, and she could live with that.