It was a beautiful day in Royal Woods, which was a rarity in Autumn. The Sun poured warm beams of light onto the city, and the sky was blue and open with hardly any clouds in sight. On a day like this, there was nothing Stella wanted to do more than just be outside. Unfortunately, all the cafe's outdoor seats were occupied, so what was she supposed to do? Take her drink and notes to go sit at the dirty curb?

Stella sighed. "The coffee isn't even that good. I should've bought a mocha."

Oh well, it wasn't the coffee that mattered; it was the papers in her hands and detailed reports on her computer screen. Stella hunched her back as she leaned into the small writing on one of the pages she had brought with her, as if the killer's name was written somewhere in the fine print and all she had to do was find it.

Oh, right, the killer. Now would be a good time to mention that Stella Ang, aged twenty-four, was a detective.

It wasn't apparent from her clothing – a casual white hoodie, a plan T-shirt with a star embellishing it, and a short black dress – but she wore what she wore because today was supposed to be her day off.

Supposed to be.

Even on her day off, a day she was supposed to spend away from all the grizzly darkness and horror that the city could offer, she was pouring over notes and clues. She might as well have worn a trench-coat, just to complete the image of an over-worked detective in an unhealthy marriage with the job.

Then again, a trench-coat wouldn't attract the eyes she was getting now.

There was a young man sitting at a table nearby who kept swiping glances at her when she wasn't looking – or when he thought she wasn't looking. Stella noticed him every time he cautiously glanced up from his computer to stare at her for a single, blissful moment. One time, she decided to tease him by meeting his eyes just as he took a look at her, and give him a flirty little wink. His face turned redder than a tomato, and he ducked to hide behind his laptop. Stella had to stifle a laugh. Despite the teasing, she did find herself appreciating his affections. Nice to know someone found her pretty.

Her small smile faltered for a moment. She imagined what it would be like if… if she went over there and started talking to him. Would he… accept her? If he knew everything about her, that is. Could they start dating? Was a whole new life waiting for her with that nervous kid? He didn't seem that much younger than her – probably twenty-two, if she had to guess – so it wouldn't be impossible…

Stella bit down on her bottom lip, and shook her head. This wasn't the time to think about things like that. There was a killer on the loose, after all. Besides, she didn't exactly have a good record with dating and relationships in general. Especially her last one…

Her phone buzzed at that moment. Stella grabbed it and checked the name of the caller. "Speak of the devil," she murmured as she swiped the screen and accepted the call. "What's up, Girl Jordan?"

There was a growl on the other side of the call. "I told you to stop calling me that."

Stella giggled. Jordan Taber, known in her school years by the nickname she would come to hate, "Girl Jordan", was both Stella's favorite and least favorite person in the world. She was a lot of things to her: a best friend; a roommate; a partner on the squad; a partner that had broken her heart with those fateful words of "It's just not working out, let's just be friends"… she was a real mixed bag, but a bag Stella didn't want to live without. Still, she needed to bother her sometimes, if only to remind herself that… well, she didn't even know what she was trying to remind herself of.

"Anyway," Jordan continued, "I think I've found a lead in this case of ours. Someone who could really help us out."

"Jordan, it's my day off. No talking about detective stuff."

"Pfft. As if I don't know you. You're probably sitting at a cafe right now, drinking sludge and looking over papers."

Stella craned her head around the cafe. "Are… are you spying on me?"

"No. I just know you well. Well enough to know that, even though you want to be focusing on solving this case, you probably also have Tetris loaded up on your computer."

Stella had to check her tabs in Google Chrome for that one. There was, indeed, a paused game of Tetris on one of them. Probably from last night. Stella sighed loudly as she closed the laptop and stuffed it back into her shiny black briefcase, along with a manila folder and some loose papers. She wasn't getting anything done anyway. "You got me," Stella noted with just a hint of annoyance in her tone. She hated being predictable. Predictable didn't make a good detective. What did she have to do, put on a cheese hat and wave around a stupid wand?

"Of course I did. Now, back on topic, I've found someone who can really help us out with this case."

"Who? FBI?"

"Obviously not. He's a PI. Private Investigator."

"I know what PI means," Stella hissed. "And if you really know me so well, you should also know that I don't want to work with one."

Private investigators annoyed Stella. She thought of them as unprofessional, borderline-vigilantes that often got themselves and their clients in trouble because they didn't realize how mind-numblingly boring their line of work could be. Granted, most of them dealt with inconsequential cases of wives suspecting their husbands of adultery, but when they stepped up to something bigger, things could get bad.

"Come on, Stella, this guy knows what he's doing," Jordan insisted. "He's the kind of guy that could be a world-class detective if he signed up for the force. And he told me that he's already gotten some info that we could really use."

"And I have info that we can really use as well. Only I got it the legal way."

"Being a PI isn't illegal."

"Not until they start wiretapping phones and breaking into places. Like that one guy who tried to break into the Mayor's place."

She heard a sigh coming from the receiver. "You really don't want this, huh?"

"I don't. Sorry, Jordan, but I don't."

"Well, I was hoping to keep this a surprise," Jordan said coyly, "but this guy, this PI… he's a familiar face."

"What do you mean?"

There was a pause, followed by the familiar sound of Jordan wetting her lips.

"Remember Lincoln from high school?"

In that one second, Stella felt like someone had just dropped an anvil on her. It felt like Jordan had put her hand into the phone and slapped her across the face. Her grip on her phone tightened to the point of whitening her knuckles, and she whispered, in the soft stammer of a woman clinging to hope, "L-Lincoln?"

"Yeah, Lincoln," said Jordan much more casually. "Lincoln Loud, that scrawny kid with the white hair and freckles? Yeah, it's him."

For a moment, Stella felt like she couldn't breathe. Her eyes widened, her mouth gaped, and her heart stopped beating for a moment. Lincoln Loud? She… she didn't even think he was still alive! Tears began to well in her eyes as she remembered her old close friend. Lincoln, since she moved to Royal Woods back in elementary school, had always been one of her best friends. He had been by her side all the way into high school. He had always had a cute little puppy-dog crush on her, and Stella always politely turned him down…

She regretted every time she turned him away when she found out that he, in their junior year, had run away from home in the middle of the night and disappeared without a trace. She didn't hear anything about him for years, so she always assumed that he...

She tried to say something, but only a choking noise came out. She shot up out of her chair, snatched the cup of coffee and drank the entire thing in one loud slurp. She wiped her mouth messily, and asked the obvious questions:

"How did you find him? Where has he been this whole time? Why did he run away? Did it have anything to do with me? Why's he a PI now? How… how… how's he been all this time?"

Jordan didn't say anything for a moment. Stella heard her partner click her lips, before she decided to say, "I think you should ask him those questions yourself."

As much as Stella hated to admit it, Jordan was right.

Suddenly, she was aware of all the other patrons of the cafe staring at her like she was some kind of alien. Stella blushed, realizing she had caused a scene, so she bowed her head slightly, lowered the shoulders she had tensed up, and gathered her things as she walked out of the cafe. Still griping the phone like it was a lifesaver, she asked, "Okay, what time do you want us to meet up with him?"

"It's still your day off, Stella, so we can save it for tomorrow."

"Can we do this tonight?"

Jordan hesitated for a moment. "Sssssure," she reluctantly said.

A breath of relief escaped Stella's lips. "Awesome. Thank you, Jordan. I'll… I'll see you tonight. Both of you. I love you."

That was a bad Freudian slip. The l-word. Stella hadn't said that word to Jordan since they were officially a thing together all those millennia ago. She cringed when she heard herself accidentally say it, and cringed even harder when she heard Jordan audibly struggle over it. "See you tonight. I… love you too," the Caucasian girl muttered uncomfortably.

The call ended on that awkward note. If she wasn't in public, Stella would've bashed her head into the wall.

Stupid, stupid, stupid…

She was twenty-four years old, for Christ's sake! How, even now, after all these years, was she still acting like a teenage girl that didn't know how to handle her own emotions?! BFS was right – high school never ends…

But that didn't matter. Nothing, not even the serial killer stalking Royal Woods' streets, seemed to matter anymore. All that really mattered to Stella was that Lincoln Loud, her best friend gone into hiding, was finally back. She would see him again after so long. What did he look like now? Did he change much? Was he still into superheroes? Did… did he ever think of her while he was gone?

The more she thought about it, the more she thought about him… the more her heart started racing.

Last year, I wanted to do the NaNoWriMo challenge (1,667 words a day, every day of November) but since I was busy with other stuff, I didn't. But I'm doing it now, baby! So let's see how long I can do this before I trip over my own feet. Remember, you're all welcome to make fun of me if I fail.

Special thanks to everyone I talked to about this, but an extra special thanks to The Siege Perilous. I'd almost argue he deserves more credit for this than I do…but I won't because I deserve all the attention! *waves fists like a petulant child*