Forever And Never

"Ha, look" Raven said from behind me, causing me to turn around to face her, then to instantly start laughing. She had the flour container open and, having dipped her finger in it, drawn a white, flour mustache on her face. We laughed for a few more seconds, then she stuck her finger back in the flour, and moved closer to me to draw a matching mustache on me. I leaned forward a little and tried to conceal my laughter as she drew on my face, but stopped immediately when I heard a phone ring.
Raven stopped too, mid-mustache, and we both looked though the kitchen to the table where Ramsey was fumbling around in his coat searching for the source of the disturbance.
The noise soon stopped and Ramsey said, "Hello?" There was low talking that I couldn't make out, then Ramsey said, "What?" The voice on the other side spoke again for a few seconds.
"I'm on my way right now." Ramsey pressed end quickly on his phone and was up in a flash and at the threshold of the kitchen. He looked at the two of us, and our flour mustaches, and looked regretful to be leaving us alone. He hadn't gone to work in about a week in a half, convinced that Raven would corrupt me to go outside or something.
Finally he sighed and said, "Behave, please." We both nodded, and he smiled weakly and walked out of the apartment. I heard the lock click and the door seal shut, and him walk away quickly down the stairs, then eventually a car start and pull away.
After what felt like a millennium of silence, me and Raven both looked at each other, then both started laughing uncontrollably. "That was really weird," Raven laughed, putting her hand over her mouth, causing her mustache to smear.
"I think I've only heard his phone ring like twice in my life, " I giggled.
"What a loser!" We laughed for a few more minutes, mocking Ramsey and how he'd rushed out so quickly. Then finally I was compelled to to ask, "What was he in such a hurry for?"
"I don't even know," Raven replied, then pulled out her phone from her pocket of her jeans. She pressed a few buttons, making a few beeping sounds here and there, then eventually held the phone up to her right ear and looked at me saying, "Maybe Maribelle knows..."
The dial tone hummed loudly as Raven sang quietly to herself and balanced on her tippy-toes. Finally, there was a click then an answer, a woman's voice came though the phone saying, "Hello?"
"Hi!" Raven all by screamed into the phone, causing the woman, Maribelle I assume, to scream a little her self, then start laughing into the receiver. "Raven!" She scorned, still laughing.
"Love you, Maribelle." Raven answered with complete seriousness in her voice.
"Yea, I can tell," the woman laughed heartedly. "Are you having a good time at Ramsey's?" It was faint, but I could hear a small hint of an accent on her voice, something I couldn't quite place. It was hardly noticeable, and only came out when she was talking fast or a lot.
"Yea, it's pretty fun when Ramsey's not being a homo." I heard the woman on the other line scoff, then laugh at Ravens comment. She said something about treating Ramsey with respect, which Raven simply rolled her eyes at.
"But anyways, do you know what's up with Ramsey? He got a phone call and jumped up and ran out like there was an idiot convention and he was late or something. Do you know anything about it?" I couldn't help but giggle a little at her childish humor, even tough as an older vampire and shouldn't find it funny.
"Uh, I think the blood results for his case came in or something. I was behind Mr. Taylor in line at the front desk getting my files for today, and he got some huge envelope in the mail," Maribelle answered. Her voice was sweet and pure, and she sounded like she was a great person who was kind and generous and easy to love. I wanted to meet her.
"It was probably blood work..." She finished softly. It sounded like she was cutting something up, like vegetables, on a cutting board. I listened to the knife hit the cutting board for a few seconds, then she laughed and said, "I hope it's blood work, so the case can finally be closed. Ramsey hates working with Taylor."
Raven laughed and agreed, but I wasn't paying much attention anymore and was instead thinking of what Maribelle had said. Ramsey had never told me that he hated working with Taylor, and I lived with him. Weren't people so post to tell others about things like that if they lived together, even if it was just causal conversation? People always talked about things like who they didn't like at work, why did Maribelle, who Ramsey hardly saw, know about Ramsey hating Taylor and not me, even though I lived with him?
I felt a little anger, and... no, not jealousy. I was merely disappointed that someone Ramsey only saw occasionally at work knew more about him than I did. Why couldn't I be in the know like that?
Raven laughed loudly, which brought me back to the situation at hand. I looked back at her as she said, "Yea, he would do that." I hadn't caught whatever it was he would do, or even who he was and I felt even more out of place. I understood that I was the new girl, and that everyone was already friends or at least knew each other before I got here, but I almost felt like I was being kept out of things on purpose. Everyone had a secret, or was keeping someone else's, and it seemed like they were keeping me from knowing it. I didn't understand why I couldn't know all of these secrets.
"What?" Raven said, her eyebrows raising. It was hard to hear what Maribelle was saying, but I heard something about a girl. Raven listened to her speak for a moment, then finally said: "Yea, she's right here next to me. Her names Nicolette, she was seventeen when she was turned so shes a little older than me."
Raven was smiling as she talked, which made me feel better, and then she looked up at me. "No, she's great. I think she'll be fine once she gets out of Ramsey's grip." She paused for a second, then laughed at whatever Maribelle said.
"Yea, I think so. She's strong, though. She can take it." Ravens eyes met mine, and she smiled and focused on whatever was being said on the other end of the phone.
I scrunched up my nose in confusion as I tried to figure out what they had been discussing which involved me. I'm sure Ramsey had told Maribelle about me, or at least I hoped he had. But why was Raven assuring her that I was fine?
The phone call ended shortly after, and as Raven slipped the phone back into the pocket of her jeans, she said: "She's not really sure what was going on. But she said it was probably them getting the results for the blood test, so they may have gone to catch who ever was a match or whatever." She straightened up and smiled at me happily.
"Let's make cookies..." she said after a second, and I was distracted from my thoughts of secrets and mistrust.

Ramsey came home as the sun was setting and the light a barely pouring through the blinds that covered the balcony doors. The lock clicked and the door opened, revealing an exhausted looking Ramsey holding a small, shallow box under his arm. He shut the door behind him, and set his things down on the table and then sat himself.
By then, I 'd popped up from my position in front of the TV, and had sat down in the seat quickly next to Ramsey. Raven trailed behind and sat in the seat to my left, uninterested in Ramsey's day. She looked at me skeptically as I leaned forward a little and looked at Ramsey.
He glanced at me, saying a weak hello, before opening the small box. It was only about two and half inches deep, and the top slipped off to reveal two or three manila folders of various colors. As he pulled out the blue one, I finally broke down and spoke: "So, how was your day?"
"It was okay." Was all he said in reply as he opened the folder and splayed it's contents all over the table space before him. I was a little caught off guard, seeing as how he'd rushed out of the apartment this morning like it was on fire, and was gone all day.
I blinked and replied, "What?"
He looked at me oddly, then said, "It was an okay day."
"Really?" I asked, getting angry at the fact that he was looking at me like I was stupid. "Just an okay day? No racing out of the apartment in the morning and not telling us where you were going or anything like that? Just a normal day, huh?"
He looked at me silently for a second, then replied: "Yep. Just a plain, normal day." He turned back to the papers on the the table, and ignored my intense glaring at him. The papers looked normal enough, just the usual forms that he was always filling out. I wasn't close enough to read the filled in writing, so I honestly had no idea if it was about the case, or something entirely different.
I was almost about to let the words 'I bet you told Maribelle all about your day' escape from my mouth, but right as I was about to say it Raven yawned loudly and said, "This is really boring."
I turned to see her stand up from her chair, "I'm going to go sleep. I'm pretty tired." She grinned at me, walked behind my chair, and said goodnight before disappearing into the shady, darkness of the hallway. I heard the bedroom door close, and I felt like it was an omen not to bring up Maribelle and how I disliked her slightly.
I focused my attention back on Ramsey, determined to make him tell me what had went on today. He pretended not to notice me looking at him, and continued to fill out his paperwork for a few minutes of painful silence. But then, he pushed his chair back and stood up after a few moments of successfully ignoring me, and I panicked thinking that he was going to lock himself away in the blood room, and I'd never convince him to talk to me.
"What happened today?" I blurted out, as he was about to walk away down the hallway. He stopped, not expecting me to talk so suddenly, and stood there quietly for a few minutes. He edged closer to the hallway, like he was about to continue walking any second, so I stood up and joined him at the front of the hallway, waiting for an answer. He looked at me with an uncertain look, then continued walking towards the Blood Room, me following behind.
Once inside, Ramsey looked quickly through the stack of papers on the counter and with his back to me said, "We finally caught the guy. You know, the whole reason for the case. The blood work came back, and we had a match so we arrested him and I did a mountain of paperwork and I'm still not done." He turned and leaned on the counter, looking at me as I sat on the chair a few feet away.
"Who was it?" I asked, almost half expecting him not to tell me. I was shocked that he'd even told me what had happened in the first place.
"Charles something, I can't remember." He laughed a little, "I don't know how, I've been signing his name all day on countless forms." He turned back to the stack of papers, and sorted through them a little, pulling out the ones he needed and placing them in a separate stack.
"So what is he getting? Do you know whether its death or what?"
"Oh, I don't think he'll be put to death," He said as he grabbed the new stack of papers and walked towards me. "It's his first offense, I'm sure they'll just do an evaluation, then put him in more training." He shrugged and looked down at the papers in his hands.
"So that means the case is over, huh?" I asked, leaning forward and smiling with the though that things might be a little normal now, whatever normal was in this life. Ramsey looked up and nodded with a smile, then looked back down at the papers.
"Well, that's good." I said, "At least you won't have to work with Taylor anymore. I know how you hate working with him." He looked up at me again, a little surprised at what I'd said but I couldn't image why. Finally he said, "Yea, that true," and nodded, looked confused. I simply grinned at him sweetly.