Shooting Breanna with a grandiose facade on the girls departure;<i>uh huh, that’s right now scat </i>- she turned back on him and the frown that wrinkled her nose smoothed out. Of course she hadn’t left. The fuck would she go? Him around or not, Maureen was<i><b>someone</b></i>there. Someone people knew. It wasn’t popularity she vied for, and it wasn’t a faux sense of fame, but she liked familiarity and the idea of change was… Well, scary. Not to mention if she didn’t have a routine? Hah, that wasn’t good for anybody, least of all her.<br/><br/>Maureen, for all her charades, wasn’t an independent woman. She didn’t have the courage it took to pick up and take a leap. Not on her own. It’s why she wasn’t just angry when he left her (that’s how she looked at it), she was fucking<i>crippled</i>. His absence having triggered her very first episode of clinical depression that lasted thirteen days. How proud he should be…<br/>Not that she’d give him the satisfaction of knowing it..yet.<br/><br/>Apart from that, she wasn’t just comfortable in Southie, it was home. Yes there was a bad memory on every street but for every one of those two more good ones lined up. So why did he have to look at her like<i>that</i>? Try as he might to deny or hide it, there had been a fleeting sense of surprise pass through his cool gaze -- or had she imagined it?<br/><br/>Her cheeks tightened when he said her name. She had to pick up his drink and swig it to keep from grinning. Hated him remember?<i>You look exactly the same </i>- hmm. She could hate him later.<br/>Mau succumbed to the impulsive palpitating in her chest that very well could have been bouncing that necklace around, “I’m not.”<i><b>The same;</b></i>she only half lied when she sat the glass down way off to the side. Having turned her back on him, it was only so she could bend her elbows when she grabbed the counters ledge. Mau hauled herself up on to it, took care not to knock anything over when her legs swung round to his side of the bar and with a little shove? She hauled herself on to his lap, knees locked around his hips,. Needed a welcome home of some kind right?<br/><br/>It was a smooth movement, almost like it was choreographed to happen, and she let her hands reach for his face cause she wanted to feel the lines she didn’t know. Little scars here and there, maybe from shrapnel, maybe from bone fragments… some from her nails but that was neither here nor there now was it? Brazen, bold. Mau did what she wanted. No, it wasn’t normal behavior, or was it? In her pretty little head? For now at least, five years might as well have been five minutes. He missed her, she knew it, and she’d make him know it too if that’s what it took, “Ya done playin soldier, Ry? Ya comin home?”