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Why is she here?!

Chiz! Tori swore in her head. That theater must be in a dead zone!

Nora turned back toward Tori, the latter quickly shoving her phone back into her purse. The mother smiled sweetly as she clicked the key fob to the onyx black coupe parked in front of them. "How do you like the company car? Of course, I think your SUV is much more practical. I'd have chosen function over flair, but you know Mason, right?" Tori didn't answer as she ducked her head into the passenger's seat and hugged her purse against her seat belt.

As Nora drove them out of the parking lot and onto the main streets, Tori tried to distract herself from her nerves by looking back and forth between her text to Jade trying to send and the lively streets outside. Eventually, neither was helping, so she turned to Nora, who was looking straight ahead with that smile still painted on her face. It was reminding Tori of an eerily similar situation.

"Um..." Tori gulped before lifting the silence, "I like your car."

"I'm so glad..." Nora replied in an almost sultry tone, eyes not breaking from the road.

"So...do you like driving here in Miami?" Tori attempted a smile. What was on her face would not be considered a smile.

"Well, barring work needs, I actually prefer to drive at night, but I can make an exception sometimes," Nora glanced in Tori's direction with a cool, icy gaze, "Anything for my daughter's friend~"

Now this conversation was getting way too familiar. Tori looked back down at her phone, quietly pounding the send button with her thumb, only to keep getting the same error sound and message.

Nora's ears perked at the error sound, to which she said, "Oh, are you texting someone?"

"Um...trying to! Just seems to be a reception issue!"

"Well, I hope they're not in the block by Glenanne Road. There isn't much signal around there...not much of anything around there."

Tori's eyes shot wide open, the sense of déjà vu being much too strong now. She didn't want to wait for Nora to start creepily singing nursery rhymes. Once they stopped at a red light, Tori quickly undid her seatbelt and yanked her door handle...only the door wouldn't open. She stared at the handle, trying to pull it again and again, but nothing happened. She then turned to see Nora looking at her rather dumbfounded.

"Tori, what are you doing? We're still ten minutes away from the restaurant!" Nora quickly put the car in the parking gear, unbuckled herself, and reached over to grab the passenger-side seatbelt. Tori suddenly leaned back into her seat, face turning red as Nora was barely an inch over her, dragging the seat belt over her and back into the buckle. After settling back into their respective seats, Tori felt like a child again, being silently disciplined by her mother for playing in the car. She was afraid to look at Nora, fearing she was upset by that display, but her face showed quite the contrary as Nora was quietly chuckling, "Good thing for automatic safety locks, right? What is it with you kids these days? It's like you leap before you even look..."

If there was some implicit shade or hidden meaning in what Nora had just said, it flew over Tori's head as she hopelessly sighed and sat back, staring at the road ahead until they had arrived at a plaza highlighted with a big restaurant on the corner.

Stepping inside the restaurant was almost like stepping into a whole other dimension, as the walls were dark grey and blue and the lights shone like spotlights over a stage. Tables and booths lined the walls, with 4 long bar stands forming a square around a staging area similar to a theater-in-the-round. At that center were two wooden stools and mic stands over tiny monitors on the floor.