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Garland wishes he could say that he lives in a luxurious four-bedroom condo with a large balcony overlooking the ocean, but he's poor, and bad with money, so he has to make do with a pretty crappy studio apartment. Sure, it's decorated pretty nicely (he can't have something so embarrassing he can't bring ladies over!) but if you look closely, sections of the wallpaper have peeled off, the cabinet and bathroom doors don't quite fit their frames, and when flushing the toilet you have to turn on the kitchen sink, otherwise the tank won't refill. Also, don't actually put anything heavy on the wall shelves because they'll fall off, and when Garland folds out his couch into a bed, he has to move his dining table out of the way BUT GENERALLY IT'S OKAY. It's just temporary anyway.

Residents
Garland Smoot

"Yes, I rather gathered it was 'legit serious' when it nearly blew me to Oz," Angela joked, taking the towel as she stepped into the apartment and shut the door. She pulled her hair loose from its messy and sodden bun, and started to carefully dry it off as she she looked around. Garland's place looked, well, like a young bachelor lived there alone, really. But at least it was dry. And not windy. "Thanks," she told him, trying to sop up all the excess water as she stood in the little tile area near the door. "And thank you for letting me take cover here for a while. I hope I'm not imposing too much." She gave him an amused smile as he botched a well known saying, grinning at him from under the edge of the towel draped over her head. The storm had been making her feel a bit cranky but now that she was in the relative safety covered by four walls, a roof and a dry towel (well...not quite dry anymore), she was in a bit of a better mood.

"I'll...try to remember that, um, my house is your house," she told him, amused. As she left off drying her hair, Angela leaned against the door and half bent over to pull off her boots and soaked socks. Her poor little feet had shriveled into mutant foot-prunes and since she didn't think she was leaving for a while (at least not until there was a lull in the storm), she was not going to be walking around Garland's apartment with her feet being all cold and squishy. She dropped the boots to the side of the door, draping the striped socks over them to dry out a bit.

Glancing down at the soaked, well, everything else, she let out a panicked squeak and quickly pulled the towel off her head and wrapped it around her shoulders. She was never leaving the house without an umbrella again. "Ah, as much as I hate to impose further--would you, by any chance, have a place I dry my shirt?" The apartment was pretty small but he might have a dryer stowed away in a closet somewhere or something. People got pretty clever with ways to hide that sort of thing. She glanced outside as a clap of thunder sounded loud enough to compete with the wind for rattling the windows. "Does it always get like this at this time of year?" she asked, peering out into the weather. "It's getting rather intense out there, isn't it?"

Angela watched Garland turn in circles, trying to hold in the laugh. He was a bit of a dolt but...not really in a bad way. She took the hair dryer, though it wasn't really what she'd been hoping for. But beggers couldn't be choosers and she was loitering in his apartment so she wasn't going to be ungrateful--he was trying to help her out, which was pretty nice of him in the first place. "If it does, I hope I'll be better prepared for it than I was this time around. It rains in England but we don't usually get storms like this. It's nice--but only when I'm looking at it from inside somewhere warm"

She looked down at the hair dryer in her hand, then around Garland's place, before looking at him again. "You know, you're really nice for letting me hide out here, and for lending me a towel and lending me a hair dryer. I will definitely return to the favor--maybe buy you a drink sometime? So...um...as much as I hate to impose more, really...do you have a shirt I could possibly borrow while I dry mine out a bit?"

Angela gave him what she hoped was a cute smile. "Maybe? This will definitely be my last request. Promise."

"Your shirt is fine, thank you," Angela said, still amused by Garland's odd behavior. "And, I'll remember that," she told him, shooting him a smile as she headed for a small room she could see just enough of to know it was the bathroom. "I'm going to just...go...change. In here."

She grinned slightly as she stepped inside the bathroom and shut the door. Except that it didn't seem to quite shut properly. She did her best to sort of wedge it as close to shut as she could, before retreating across the room. She set her towel, and the hair dryer down so she could pull her soaked shirt over her head. For the time being, she just dropped it in the sink so she could wrap the towel around her clammy skin. Wringing out the shirt as much as she could, Angela draped it over the side of the sink and let the towel drop to the floor so she could pull Garland's shirt over her head. She wriggled her way into it and, for a moment, contemplated doffing her trousers too--but she dismissed the idea immediately. If she'd been at home, yes. But she supposed she should keep her clothes on while at a stranger's apartment. He might get the wrong idea, otherwise.

Once she was decent again, Angela scooped the towel off the floor and stepped out of the bathroom. She'd let some of the water drain out of the shirt, then go at it with the hair dryer later. It would probably be more efficient that way. "So, Garland, if you've not seen a storm like this before, does it mean you haven't lived here long?"

"You must have arrived around a few months before we did, then" Angela said. "My father and I, I mean. We arrived this summer. Well, it was supposed to be just me but he apparently tagged along after me without my knowing until I disembarked and turned around for one last look at the boat and...there he was. But I try to pretend he doesn't exist."

"Difficult to do since he bloody well bought the place where I work," she added under her breath. She gave him a slightly perplexed look at his remark about the Atlantic storm because, well, he'd just said something rather odd and she actually wasn't sure what it was meant to be. Some sort of weird American thing maybe? (At least, she thought he was American). Teebeeich. Definitely American slang for something.

"I'm not the one with the accent," she teased, taking a peek outside, before going to sit on his sofa. "It's you and everyone else that talks funny. Oh--do you mind if I sit?" She didn't think he would because, really, he was being quite obliging about, well, everything. So she sort of didn't wait for him to answer before she pulled her knees up to her chest, curling her feet over the edge of the sofa so she could try to massage the cold out of them. "We used to get bloody awful storms back home but not all that often. So I've always really loved them. Anyway, where you from then? You already know more about me than I know about you so come on, time to cough up some information." She patted the sofa next to her. It was kind of silly to do it since it was his apartment anyway, and he could sit wherever he wanted. But she sort of got the feeling he probably wouldn't have sat there without her invitation, even though there really wasn't really another place to sit unless he wanted to pull up a chair from the kitchen table.

Garland automatically tensed up at the word 'father'. Oh no, was he gonna get beaten up by some dad because he lent Angela a shirt? That's what happened on TV, right? The dad on the sitcom got mad at the guy who felt up his daughter -- not that he'd felt up Angela, he wouldn't dare, but it was essentially the same thing. ...right? "Haha, weird," he managed to choke out, glancing nervously at the tiny kitchen window as if to find Angela's dad watching them disapprovingly. Of course, there was anyone there, it wasn't like her father was some sort of magical being or something.

Tearing his eyes away from the window, he looked at her dumbly as she continued on about accents. He'd never really thought about it before, the fact that his accent could be considered 'funny'. Whoa, she was kind of blowing his mind right now. "Oh, yeah, totally, sit, yeah, sit," he stumbled, wrapping his towel around his neck and rubbing the end of it against his nose. He stood awkwardly as she continued. He wasn't really sure how someone could love weather like this, but... Well, she seemed to be having the easier time of it, so maybe that was why.

She asked where he was from, and his stomach lurched. "It's not as cool as England... I'm from Iowa," he said almost bashfully, turning pink. What a dumb state to be from, he wouldn't be surprised if she wanted nothing to do with some kid from Iowa. "There's really not a whole bunch to talk... about... uhh..." He noticed she was patting on the sofa. Gesturing for him to sit down? Next to her? On the sofa? That was also technically his bed? "Uhh..." He forgot was he was saying. All of a sudden, a large gust of wind hit the window, rattling the glass so hard it sounded as if it was on the verge of shattering. The loud noise startled Garland so much that he jumped nearly a foot in the air, and let out a distinctly girlish scream. "I'm sorry!" he cried, though to whom he did not know. Angela's magical dad? Angela? Ahh, he didn't know, he just knew he was embarrassed. "Right, your shirt," he said hurriedly as his pulse returned to a normal speed, "I'll go dry your shirt," he mumbled before disappearing into the bathroom.