Exercise February

Okay, so here's another assignment for my writer's group.
Flesh out this character - Juliana Reade, age 52; she is an extrovert, but gets easily depressed.

And here's my solution:

Jewels stationed herself on the green leather and chrome stool closest to the door. It was her stool, her favorite place. Jackson, the bartender, made her Long Island Ice Tea before coming over to say, “hi,” and then retreated to the darker end of the bar to talk with another regular. Jewels didn’t understand why Jackson didn’t want to talk anymore. She had been his favorite. She liked talking to people.

“Juliana Reade,” her momma would say. “Stop talking and get your ass in this house.”

Her momma was long dead now, smoked herself into an early grave when Jewels was only 38. She raised her glass, “Fourteen years, momma, and I haven’t smoked another one since we buried you.”

Someone came in the bar behind her and Jewels automatically said, “Hiya, sit a spell.” She had become the unofficial greeter of the bar. The shadow that had come in mumbled something back and headed for one of the booths on the other wall. The bar was only a small one, they hadn’t gone far away, but Jewels felt adrift at the end of the bar, cast away by the regulars and the newcomers. She had always felt welcome before, but just like the other familiar places, welcome eventual wears thin. Her positive attitude veneer melted away and her shoulder pads slumped. She felt enormously tired at having to find another place as her home other than home.

Show, don't tell.