The mood in the apartment earlier that day set Alaric's for the rest of his shift. He only smiled at customers when he needed to, to be polite, he barely made chitchat with the other servers, and he didn’t even try to flirt back with some of his “regulars" that day. He was still able to perform his job very well, but the lack of a certain pizzazz made it obvious that he was in a brooding mood. This became more apparent when by the end of his shift, Joshua walked up to him and handed him a set of keys.
“Hey, so Erin told me you’ll be crashing at my place tonight, so here’s the key,” he said, leaning on the wall beside Alaric's locker. “Did you anger the beast? Is that why you got kicked out tonight?” he asked with a scrunch of his nose.
“No,” Alaric sighed, taking out his bag. “She is go
