- - - alone; james/ghost

The sound of metal clanging wasn’t something that you could necessarily get used to. However in this instance, with the sun reaching through the blinds and dragging it’s rays across the wall, it was simply a tap. Putting a box down and then grabbing the rectangular frame from inside of it, he lifted it and would read his name surrounded by latin with the name of his alma mater commanding attention as the header. What he had been working so hard toward. His degree from Harvard. Placing it on the oak desk, he would take a seat on the couch that would one day comfort the lost souls that simply needed someone to talk to as he waited for the guy from the maintenance department to finish hanging the nail on the wall.

”Thanks, Man.”

Rising to his feet, he would give a nod and flash a smile as the guy gathered his tools and would leave Jimmy to decorate. Walking him out, and closing the door behind him, he turned and would look at the fruits of his labor. 3 years of high school. 3 years of college. 3 years of grad school. His own office. The journey had been amazing and it would all be completed as he strolled over and lifted that same degree over head and placed it on the wall. A smile came to his face as he rubbed his stomach. That was the finishing touches as he decided that he should take a break and grab a bite to eat.

Healthy living was the way to be. Armed with a banana and a greek yogurt to fight his hunger demons, he would enter the lounge. The brown paper bag was void of his thirst quenching Poland Spring that he has so inconveniently left in the car. It was now a victim of the leather interior and California sunshine. No one likes a hot water bottle.

”Oh. Hello.”

Waiting in line for the girl to finish at the vending machine, Jimmy hadn’t really met too many other staff members. Though he was eager to meet them. At his last job they had regular staff meetings and he was waiting to receive his schedule hear. In the mean time, he would just talk to who he could. Waiting for her to grab her water, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to introduce himself. Reaching a hand in her direction, he'd give the good ole classic intro.

”My name’s James Best. What’s yours?”

'Southern accent...yet covered in tattoos. Rebel from the bible belt? Perhaps. Great legs. What's that lab coat hiding? Stay focused! Doctor? Long fingers...nice grip...hands on the rougher side. Surgeon. Here? Mortician. Yes...that smell...definitely a mortician. Nice shoes. Lace at work?I bet she's a wild one. Great in bed. Ouch...fake smile. Not interested. I'll fix that.'

James couldn't turn that brain of his off. You weren't supposed to judge a book by its cover, and he didn't. Well not exactly. It wasn't so much that he made his mind up and that was the end of it. It was more that he wanted to see if he was right or wrong. He did however make a game of it. How many squats he did tonight at cross fit depended on it.

"And what were you before that?"

She was quite proud of that title, but he didn't want to get to know the mortician. He wanted to get to know the sexy blonde covered in ink underneath that lab coat. Stepping around her, he would smooth his dollar out on the corner of the machine before putting it in. It was kind of funny that there were so many different buttons, but they were all water. But that was neither here nor there. Motioning toward the table, he hoped that she had a minute or two to spare.

"Would you like to join me for lunch?"

The way her lips wrapped around the bottle didn’t distract him from the words that she had for him. Was that something that she had heard or something that she took pride in. She was a hard woman to read to be honest, but he liked that about her. Outside of his snap judgment based on her appearance, he didn’t really have much to go on, so maybe he should be a little patient. Taking a seat next to her, he would place the bag down and pull out the yogurt. Peeling back the aluminum, he would grab his spoon start to mix the fruit on the bottom into the yogurt that buried it. Glancing over at her, she was checking him out. He could tell.

”Please…call me Jimmy.”

Giving her a little smile, he didn’t really know where to start. His story was long and boring, but he could give her a shorter version. Taking a deep breath, he looked would take a bite of the yogurt and stare inside the cup as though the words were going to swim to the surface and give him a script of what to say. Looking back toward her, his eyes would stare into hers as he would begin to explain what brought him to Caulton.

”My professor at Harvard worked on a study here and put in a good word for me. I’m from Los Angeles so this is kind of close to home. Just made sense.”

Lifting a shoulder he would take a bite of his yogurt, his lips wrapping around the spoon before he would turn it over, then lick the back of it and let out a content sigh before looking back down into the cup.

”What about you? Where are you from? How long have you been here?”

This Emma semed to be a woman of few words. She was kind of cold. Withdrawn. Probably because she hung out with dead people all day. He could imagine when dealing with cadavers that didn’t have much to say that she wouldn’t really talk as much. As someone walked in and would glance over in their direction, they would go to the vending machine and then walk out. It was then that he turned is attention to the baby carrot chiomper in front of him. He didn’t attribute that to anything at all. He just made a mental note.

”New Orleans? And you left that for this?”

Jimmy hadn’t been there long, but Newport Beach was nothing like what he knew about New Orleans. When he was in school, he and a few friends had gone down there to see if Mardi Gras was as big of a deal as people made it out to be. He had a blast! Listening to Jazz music and bar hopping down Bourbon Street was so surreal. He imagined that it would be much different if you actually lived there, but it was still a place that was so full of music, life, energy, and culture. It would seem as though he was a little off in his snap assessment. New Orleans wasn’t exactly in the bible belt.

”I mean I’m warming up to Newport Beach life, but New Orleans just seemed so full of life. And the food there was amazing. I had so much crawfish and gumbo that I almost started speaking Haitian Creole.”

Jimmy didn’t really like to talk about himself, but he did love food. He liked to cook and so naturally he liked to eat. He had been working on perfecting his own gumbo mixing and blending recipe’s that he had found to bring out certain tastes that he liked. It wasn’t easy to cook up a pot of that stuff, but he was doing the best he could to figure it out.

”I wouldn’t mind heading back down there. It was definitely a weekend to remember. I can see why you don’t care for the sun. The night life there must have been amazing.”