After a disaster like that, too many people needed looking after.

I twisted my head around to look at Crystal, as she ate a spoonful of icecream from the carton. She passed it to me and I took a bite for myself, from the side she hadn’t dug into. I passed it back, watching as the movie started.

My turn to look after Crystal.

⊙

The lights were off in the coffee shop, though it wasn’t dark with the light coming in through the windows. The majority of the customers were sitting on the outside patio, and the interior was quiet, empty, and cool.

It was eerie, to go from the disaster to the more or less quiet period after. To be back on this street, where the car had hit the pillar, and where I’d seen so much grief from one person, and to try and reconcile that with the broken trigger, the ninety dead, the fact that so many were dealing by ignoring it. Moving on a matter of two weeks after the fact.

“Victoria?” the barista asked me.

My first thought was that she’d recognized me. “Yes?”

“Your friend stepped into the back. She said she’d be right out, but she asked us to keep an eye out for you so you didn’t think she was late.”

“Got it. Thank you.”

“Can I get you anything?”

I looked outside. Sunny, warm. The summer and its heat lingered in the daytime. “I can’t bring myself to drink anything hot when the weather’s like this. Do you have any suggestions?”

“Ice coffee? Iced tea? Pop?”

“Iced tea, please,” I said, noting the use of ‘pop’. A lot of people from a lot of regions had gathered in the Megalopolis.

I didn’t have to sit down and wait for her to bring it to me. It was in my hands within a matter of seconds, and I took it to the seat furthest from the door, where Jessica and I would have some privacy.

She was out of the washroom before I’d fully settled in. Her blouse had buttons at the front and a collar, but was sleeveless, tucked into shorts. I wondered if she looked less at ease in casual clothing because she was a professional at heart, or if it was personal bias and years of knowing her as the therapist in the office that colored my perceptions. Her hair was damp, and she had what might’ve been a folded paper towel, soaked with water, resting on the back of her neck. She collected a drink she must have ordered and paid for earlier.

“Doing alright?” I asked.

Jessica smiled. “I was cooling down. I’ll be glad when the weather is more comfortably cool.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s not that I mind the heat. It’s that I worry about how it affects people. I get antsy when the weather is like this.”