July 7th

I'm writing this around noon, on my laptop, at the counter at Mateo's.

Winter and her family are fairly well known around Last Light. Their business dealings have drawn quite a lot of attention to them, long before Winter herself came of age.

Naturally, with their notoriety, there are a lot of rumors about Winter's family. Rumors of shady dealings, mob connections, racketeering and intimidation, all of the usual stuff. If you believe this version of reality, then a rivalry between Winter and a competing mogul, Karlen, becomes a very tense, dramatic, and dangerous conflict. An epic street war where getting too close could cost you your life.

Of course, if you believe the reality where Karlen and Winter are both trustfund babies with teams of accountants and MBAs jerking each other off under the table to make sure everyone is making as much money as possible, suddenly their little feud becomes so much less exciting. Tragically, this is the reality I believe in. We all love Winter, but there's no denying her nepo baby status.

Unsurprisingly, Tara's rich ex has been on my mind a bit. In a weird way, I kind of want to believe that they're some scummy, potentially evil prick. It would make it easier to villify them in my head. Unfortunately, I keep picturing someone almost identical to Winter.

Maybe I need to mee this person. It may help clear things up in my mind a bit... or maybe I should just let it go. Tara seems to like me, any relationships she had before are immaterial. I'm pretty sure she's poly anyway, so I wouldn't even really be competing with Karlen even if they came back.... right?

I look around the bar, and none of the people I would talk to about this are here. In fact, it's mostly just me and Winter. I don't really know if I would be comfortable talking about this kind of thing with her though.

While I was typing this, Winter noticed me glancing repeatedly and decided to engage. "Something wrong?" She asked.

"Um... can you tell me about Karlen?"

"Miserable prick" She said, with no change in her demeanor. Winter's name was very fitting since her demeanor was consistently icy cold. "Why do you ask?"

"I think... I might be courting their ex."

"Tara?"

"Yeah."

Winter grabbed a pot of fresh coffee, topping off my cup. I always felt just a little weird when she served me here, all things considered. "If you're afraid Karlen's going to whack you off or something, I wouldn't. Speaking frankly, that breakup was way harder on Tara than it was on Karlen."

"Oh?"

Winter sighed, scanning the diner searching for other customers. I got the feeling she didn't want anyone else to see or hear this part, but I wasn't sure why. "Karlen didn't appreciate what they had with Tara. She... well, she deserved better."

"I didn't think you liked Tara that much."

"I don't like drama. Tara tends to bring drama, so she irritates me sometimes. That doesn't mean I don't like her. I wouldn't rent to her if I didn't like her."

"You only rent to people you like?"

"In this part of town, yes. I give very low rent to people I like having around, or people I think are good for the local community. Or, really, people I feel sorry for. We make enough off of the East Side renters that we don't really need this neighborhood to be that profitable."

"Not the shrewdest business decision there I feel."

"Thank you." I chuckled, and Winter continued. "Listen, be careful. I don't know how much more heartbreak Tara can take. Just... make sure you know what you're doing, okay?"

I nodded. "I'm being careful. Taking things slow, all that."

"From what I hear you could definitely do to take things a little less slow, honestly."

I groaned, and Winter started to saunter off. "Wait" I said, and she stopped. "A few minutes ago... did you say Karlen was going to "Whack me off"?"

"You should be so lucky. I specifically said Karlen wasn't going to whack you off." I did not know how to respond to this, so Winter exited stage right.