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The Perk, Thursday Afternoon

There were nine different colleges and universities in the city of Baltimore, and several more in the surrounding county. Kathy had gone to the Baltimore Public Library that afternoon and gotten brochures for all of them, bringing them back to the island to browse through. She didn't know if she was actually going to go to one of these colleges. She didn't even know if she wanted to go to college at all. But it was--something. A small acknowledgement that she had a future and maybe she should start thinking about what she wanted to do with it. And looking at colleges...going to college...that was a plan for the future that she could make for herself and by herself, instead of hinging it onto something anyone else was doing.

She wasn't in great shape by any stretch of the imagination. But she was better, at least for now. A little calmer, a little more near an equilibrium. She had no idea how long this would last, but right now, drinking an elaborate concoction that only barely had the slightest resemblance to a proper coffee and going over course listings to see if anything leaped out at her (figuratively! for a change), Kathy was more inclined to enjoy the feeling while it lasted, instead of worrying about its inevitable crash.

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Dante came to the Perk not on a quest for coffee, but for something entirely more important: the daily special.

This was so important that he walked into the Perk without even realizing Kathy was there, marching up to the counter with a - "I want a Strawberry White Hot Chocolate."

"What si--"

"Largest you've got." Beat. "Make it two."

He could afford it now, after all.

There was no missing him, however. Kathy looked up at his voice, then quickly back down to her brochures, wishing her damned blush would go away. This was stupid. Everything was stupid. Maybe she could just sit here quietly and he wouldn't notice her...?

Wait, no. That was stupid, too. She wasn't the tiny high school sophomore who tried to hide at every given opportunity. Sitting up straighter, she squared her shoulders and called, "Make it three, actually. Though I'll pay for my own, of course."

... It was a good thing Dante was still facing the barista. Kathy couldn't see his Oh crap face like that.

"Better do what she asks," he said.

To the barista, who was making a 'WTF dude' face of her own. Traitor. (With an awesome pixie cut.)

Wasn't it? Kathy had complimented her one it earlier. Which might have been why her return expression was so eloquent.

Still, Kathy made no move to go join Dante at the counter or initiate more conversation. Ball was in his court now, he could figure out what came next. She had some very important...circling to do. Yes. Of Loyola's sewage management courses apparently.

Dante waited until the barista was done. He picked up his two drinks, then hesitated.

With a sigh, he picked up the third and walked to Kathy's table, where he set it down. Silently.

"Thanks," Kathy said, looking up at him with an inscrutable expression. Neither her real emotions nor her usual fake-smiling mask, just a hint of guardedness and nothing else. "How much do I owe you?"

"It's on me," Dante said. He pulled his hand away from the table and straightened. He looked over to another table...

...and resumed walking. That way.

Several days and he still didn't know what to say to her.

Well, she could tell him that wasn't it.

She blinked at him as he walked away, a dull flush spreading down her neck. This one, though, was angry, not embarrassed. She waited until he sat, then stood up, her walk more of an angry stalk between the tables. With a glance at the board to see how much the drink was, she slapped a bill onto the table next to him. It was a twenty, but that was all she had. "No thank you," she said with a quiet intensity. "If there's no reason to talk to me, there's no reason to buy me drinks."

And then she spun on her heel to stride back over to her table.

Having sat down, Dante found himself staring at the twenty on the table. He stared at it maybe longer than was strictly necessary.

Finally he sighed, grabbing the bill so roughly it crumpled in his hand. He got up, crossing the distance to Kathy's table and put it back down.

"I don't know what to say to you."

She didn't reach for it, letting it lie there between them

"I've had that problem practically since I came back," she said, unaware of the way the front page of the brochure was crinkling beneath her curling fingers. "But I didn't let that stop me."

Dante repressed an audible noise of frustration. Part of him wanted to get angry at her tone, her posture, the position she'd put him in, but it was an anger he couldn't find a shape for.

"You don't really want me to say anything," he said. "'Cause everything I could say comes down to 'I can't be what you want me to be'." A pause. "And that woulda been the same if you'd assumed different about what I was last year."

"When did I give you the idea that I expected anything else from you?" Kathy snorted. "I said I was jealous, not stupid. I don't even know if we're on firm enough footing to be called friends yet, and you think I'm doodling your name in my notebook? If I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of anything happening, I would have tried for it last year, not now."

This was why she'd kept walking on Saturday, to try to avoid the 'I'm just not that into you' speech she really hadn't needed.

"You didn't," Dante snapped. "Which is why I didn't know what to fucking say. I don't wanna say it, you don't wanna hear it, but the only way not to is to pretend like it never happened and that's not fair either."

"Why not?" Kathy demanded. "We both know where we stand! Nothing needs to be said! Fuck, the only reason I brought it up was because I'd rather deal with a little embarrassment than have you believe I barely cared about you!"

She snatched at her hot chocolate and gulped it down, searing her mouth and not even caring.

"Will it help?" she asked when she set it down. "Will saying that to me get if off your chest or whatever? Cause, fine. If it'll stop us from being this fucking stupid, then fine. Say what you need to."

She hadn't come this far just to lose out to that.

"I didn't know," Dante said irritably, and her antics made him realize his own hot chocolates were cooling down on the table behind him. "I didn't think you didn't care, before! I just figured you weren't into me like that and that was good, I wouldn't have slept with you otherwise, I don't wanna be anybody's fucking boyfriend!"

"And I never asked," Kathy said. "I wouldn't have asked! I told you that! Anytime I started thinking that way, I shut it down just so I wouldn't hope for it or ruin what we had! I said it would have been easy to let that happen--but I didn't let it."

She glared down at the table and made herself draw in several long, deep breaths. And when she let the last one out, she was able to talk more evenly again.

"I realized early on that I was happy with what we had, a lot more than I'd ever be if I tried to push for something more. The value of your friendship was enough for me that as great as it might have been to get more, it wasn't ever something I looked for. And I haven't changed my mind yet."

Edited 2017-04-13 20:29 (UTC)

"You're saying that now, but fuck, Kathy, you're you," Dante said, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "Doesn't matter what it's about. Doesn't matter how bad you feel about it. Doesn't matter if you torture yourself 'cause you think that's the right thing to do. You always want more."

"If that's true, then why are you only finding out about this now?" she asked. "I had to tell you; you didn't ferret it out with your amazing super-detective skills."

"Because I didn't want to know!"

Dante dropped his hand.

"So what you're saying is that the real issue is that I won't let you be willfully blind anymore?" Kathy asked, gathering up her brochures. There went all of her peace of mind from earlier. "I mean, that and I'm selfish and never satisfied. Glad we're both clear on shit now."

The chair made a screeching sound as she shoved it back, ready to storm past him and just go, the hot chocolate and twenty both still on the table.

It was by sheer force of years of muscle memory of the 'don't show your squishier emotions' type that Dante wasn't yanking on his own hair right now.

He bit back a plaintative Kathy, too - both because that hadn't worked last week and because he didn't know if he was feeling all that plaintative right now. Actually, he had no freaking clue what he was feeling whatsoever.

It was kind of a jumble.

"Look, I don't-- I can't," he said, his words about as much of a jumble. "--I didn't want to hurt you but the more you wanted-- want from me the more I was-- am gonna."

Edited 2017-04-13 22:27 (UTC)

She bit back the snide comment that first came to mind, only because Dante sounded confused, not angry. "I know that," she said. "That's why I didn't let it happen. I wanted to protect myself. Protect what we had. Protect you. Before there was you, there was Ezra. You think I didn't learn to throw walls around my heart from pretty boys who didn't want it?"

"... I don't know a lot of people like you who work that way," Dante said. (He felt proud of making a whole coherent sentence there.)

"Yeah, well, I learned young how to compartmentalize my feelings," Kathy muttered, hugging her paperwork to her chest and glaring up at him.

"How the hell was I supposed to know?" Dante said, rubbing at his arm. "Wouldn't be the first time your brain ran five steps ahead of what I thought was happening."

After a moment of hesitation, he added, "Every time I think I figured out how to be your friend again, something like this trips me up, okay?"

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