fandomtownies | Graduation Brunch: The Park, Sunday, mid-morning to mid-afternoon

A banner, the letters wrapped with fresh spring flowers, hung from the trees, spelling out CONGRATULATIONS, CLASS OF 2009! No missing letters or anything.

Spread out across the park were plenty of tables and chairs, some under the shade of picnic shelters, some out on the grass in the sunshine. For those who felt like getting back to nature, there were even red and white checked blankets spread out in a few areas for old-fashioned picnic-y goodness. Lack of ants not guaranteed.

The long table that ran along next to the picnic shelters was laden with a vast ~~moddable~~ array of traditional brillig-y food, including fruit, veggie snacks, breakfast pastries, sandwiches for the especially hungry or those who arrived more toward the unch end of brunch, and a wide variety of J,GoB-catered desserts. Drinks included coffee, tea, juices and soft drinks, and while there were plates provided, there were also wee picnic-basket-shaped trays for carrying things back to your seat, wherever that might be.

A space had been cleared for dancing, if people cared to do more than just listen to the light music being played through the speakers, and there was also an area set aside for outdoor games of croquet, horseshoes, or frisbee.

Everybody's welcome. Come celebrate with the Class of '09!

[OOC: ~~Wait for the OCD. Don't make Eliza Doolittle have to cut a bitch.~~ OPEN! And no one had to get cut! It's a good day!]

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"...because it's usually true," Turtle mumbled; she didn't care that she'd been frowning at the table the whole time. She was going to keep doing it, for a moment longer, before chancing a glance upward and across it, toward Jeff. "...I'm sorry."

"That's funny, too," Jeff said, fiddling with his hands. "The word 'sorry'. It never really means sorry, does it? I mean, in general. Not just with you."

"How can you say that?" asked Turtle, swallowing down the growing lump in her throat and staring across the table not with incredulousness, but with injury. "You honestly think that I don't mean it?"

Edited 2009-05-03 17:17 (UTC)

"It's not you, it's the word," he said. He felt another tide of words coming on, not quite the usual blither, but something that was real, somehow. "People keep using it all the time, but most of the time what they're saying isn't sorry, it's sorry but, and a sorry with a but isn't a sorry, 'cos you're not sorry. If you were, you wouldn't still be doing it, there wouldn't be a but. And I'm leaving, Turtle, except I'm not, it's the lot of you who's leaving me because there's a but in every corner."

"There isn't a but," said Turtle. "I'm sorry. I really am, and that's all there is to it. I'm sorry. I'm not leaving you behind, either, Jeff. I love you. I wouldn't have spent nearly two years being with you if I didn't."

"But you are leaving me," he said. Whatever shades of combative there might have been a few seconds before had melted away with the wind again. "That's--" A but.

He just twiddled with his fingers again. They looked fascinating.

"Only as your girlfriend, Jeff," Turtle muttered. "I'm still going to be there as your friend and that's more important, anyway. You don't need me there as your girlfriend when you've got better things to do and focus on. And, who knows, maybe I am wrong, and, in a few years, when we've grown up a little more and embarked on our own separate ventures, we'll realize it. Or, maybe, it'll be better like this. It's a tricky business, just like stocks, but without risk and loss, you don't gain anything."

"I'm still not a shop," he said, still staring at his twiddling thumbs.

Then: "Okay."

It's not like she'd leave him a choice, anyway. She was a woman.

"No," Turtle agreed. "You're not. And I guess I shouldn't expect you to understand right now, but when you come across your first woman after this and your head doesn't explode from the stress of encountering her, maybe then you will..."

Jeff really wanted to say something about people leaving again, but that just led him to thinking about other people who left, about Andrew and Jack and what have you.

He was also grabbed by the strange instinct to find Steve and glue himself to the man's hip for the forseeable future before he left, too. "Right," he just said.

And Turtle sat across from him, looking at him in utter misery, because she knew there was no real agreement in his words. He'd just given up entirely. Which she figured probably made it a little easier for him, but it made it so much harder for her, especially since it just seemed to solidify her resolve and conviction that much more.

"Jeff..."

"I'll see you at the room tonight," he said, finally. "I mean. I've got to-- go. You know." He was halfway to getting up when he clarified, "...Bathrooms, I mean."

"...Right. Bathrooms..."

"Sometimes," Jeff said, helplessly, "You have to go in them. So I'm going to go do that."

And then probably come back to try and drown himself in th etable.

Graduation Brunch: The Park, Sunday, mid-morning to mid-afternoon

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