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Turtle & Canary; Monday [08/17].

Summer was actually a little worried she might have trouble getting through her usual day at Turtle & Canary that Monday--for absolutely no reason or anything, god!--but Apu was really coming through for her to keep her mind off of any building or mounting panic or internal flailing about tomorrow and the fact that she still didn't know what she wanted to do for her date with Barry.

He wasn't doing it intentionally, of course, but it was a good distraction all the same.

She'd listened to his detailed proposal, stared at him for a long moment, tried to process a few things, and then finally, just closed her eyes as if giving reality a moment to figure out if this was really a thing she was doing right now.

"Apu," she said, slowly and patiently as she opened her eyes again, "I don't care, and believe me when I say this is not something I say often at all, but I don't care if it seems to be really popular and what everyone else is doing, we are not doing curb-side pickup on an island without even any cars. We barely have curbs, and, besides, we already do delivery, that's way more convenient, and hardly anyone even uses that. So, what, do you want to handle all the complaints we get because someone's rickshaw hit a bump or the stairs a little too hard and all their milk and eggs spilled? Because you know that's exactly what's going to happen."

Apu was not convinced, which meant he was going to be sulky for the rest of the day, while also trying to sneak out a "ASK US ABOUT OUR CURBSIDE PICK-UP!" sandwich board for the front of the store, which Summer ketp removing, only to have it put back out, so she just gave up moving it and simply added a "PLEASE DON'T" sign to the top of it.

Today's Sqishy Flavors
Vanilla Custard
#2 Pencil
Red

Turtle & Canary is open!

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Rey actually had some things to pick up, but she might have specifically come in today just to see how things were going with things.

Of course there was also the matter of the sign. "You know I want to ask about curbside pickup now, right?"

What things could there possibly be going on? There were obviously no things!

Although Summer was now realizing that this whole thing with the sign might be a great way of distracting from conversations about other things that weren't things that she was trying her very best not to flail about.

"That's fair," she allowed, "especially if the thing you want to ask is 'why would you do curbside pickup?' because I think Apu really needs to hear it from as many people as possible right now."

"I know I at least don't need curbside pickup," Rey agreed, helpfully.

"Hear that, Apu?" Summer shouted off into whichever aisle he'd disappeared into for the time being, because that was helpful, thank you, Rey. "There's another one!"

Her attention shifted back to Rey, shaking her head. "No one needs curbside pickup," she emphasized. "We barely even have curbs!"

"So this is your day today, I'm guessing," Rey said.

To that, Summer could only respond with the overly sacchrine smile and batting eyelids expression that went along with showing just how hard you were working to keep yourself from throttling one of your employees, a look that was almost second nature to anyone who'd spent more than a few years working in any sort of customer service job, much less a few different ones in various different dimenisons and galaxies.

"This is my day today," she confirmed, although she would give it this. It was an effective distraction. Both from things and the fact that one of the Squishy flavors was freakin' pencil today. And, eager to step away from all of that for a hot minute, she asked, "How is your day today?"

"Fine so far," she said, because that wasn't why she was here but it was a nice try. "How was your weekend?"

"....Eventful," said Summer, after taking a moment to consider the best way to answer that without putting an immediate crack in the dam against all the feelings she'd been doing such a good job of keeping in the reservoir of cool, cool, everything is totally cool. And then she considered it again, because there was a crack now, but she could probably keep it to a nice trickle instead of, you know, a whole damn flood.

"Well," she amended, "not yesterday. Because I had a sangria night with Tisarwat on Saturday." And, having experienced a sangria night with Summer before, Rey could probably put those two together. "Also? My ship is solar powered now, so that's cool. I'm taking her out tomorrow for a test run...and a daaaate?"

The fact that Summer was not attacking you right now with squeals, Rey, was, like, a totally big deal, even if the look on her face made it clear that she was likely to blow at literally any minute.

Summer, you were adorable.

"So Friday went well, then," Rey said casually, but she was smiling.

Summer had to bite her lip, her nose wrinkling a little and her shoulders shrugging to hold it back, but the tiniest little squeak seemed to escape.

"I think so?"

But even that little worm of self-doubt squirming in her stomach couldn't let her really deny it.

"I mean," she added, because the dam was breaking, there was no stopping it now, "he hooked me up with with renewable power source for my ship that also somehow makes it way more efficient and better for distances, allegedly, trash talked my grampa, said he could make a portal gun like his but, you know, better so I can rub it in his face, is getting me ion cannons to replace the ones I had to get rid of when I was using the ship for, quote unquote, business, and he asked me...kinda. Those are all...pretty good signs.

"...right?"

LOOK, her track record with this kind of thing was not great, okay?

"That all sounds positive to me," Rey said, and sure she had limited experience, but she'd take it as a sign.

"And there's a second date."

And Summer was going to take a breath and let it out with a pleased, happy sigh, and just enjoy that for a moment. "Yeah....

"Real talk, though," she then said, before that nice little moment of basking got a chance to turn a less-than-pleasant turn toward self-doubt and nerves. "Planet hopping. Too much?"

Of course, Summer was not unaware of the fact that the friends she was asking about this were ones with plenty of interplanetary bias, but, hello, that's part of why they made good friends, they got it.

"Not too much, but which planets?"

While Rey was usually happy to go anywhere, she wasn't sure about Barry, and some places might be too much.

"See, that's what I'm having trouble with," Summer admitted, sighing as she leaned forward a little on the counter. "Obviously, there's some places on my usual repertoire that are definitely way more of, like, fifth or sixth date material, but I don't want it to be, like, boring, either. And then it's like, some of them I've taken other dates to, and that's just tacky. I'm honestly thinking, like, maybe Bird World? Because it's just really nice and they seriously make some of the best scrambled eggs in my entire universe, but the rest of their diet is based around worms, which, you know, pass. So I thought about this good vegetarian place I know but the planet itself is kind of a hole, so maybe, like, picnic it up on Venzenulon 9, or something, because it's gorgeous, but is that too boring? Maybe a movie or something after? I don't know, I was a total idiot and was all," here, she dropped into a mocking tone that didn't really sound like herself much at all, but that was just the Mocking Voice, "'I know a place,' ugh! What an asshole. So now I really have to follow through."

Edited 2020-08-17 16:18 (UTC)

"You're overthinking it," Rey told her. "Tell him you know several places and need his help in narrowing it down. Then you don't have to worry about overdoing it or underdoing it, and you're doing something he'd probably like."

"Overthinking?" said Summer, with a so offended little gasp and her hand to her clearly broken heart, followed by a snort. "Me? How dare you."

She did used to be way better at hiding it, though. Or maybe she just didn't have as many reasons to hide it anymore.

But she dropped it quickly, along with her hand. "That's good, though," she admitted. "I like that.

"It's all fine," Rey assured her. "He seems to like you. That's the important part."

You just had to go and say it like that, didn't you, Rey, and make Summer go right back into that warm, little bubbly spot that all too easily could topple over into spazzing and panicking...or, worse, determined apathy, but she was having a hard time getting to that one with this one.

But she was going to bask in it for a moment anyway with a faint little shrug and a smile.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess so."

And she was glad she basked, because it was very quickly followed up with a nice we'll see how long that last in her head, but she was trying to ignore that.

Rey smiled. "Would it make you happier to talk about something else?"

This was a benefit to being an empath.

"It would make me feel like way less of a spaz and not like I'm fucking sixteen again," Summer offered, because talking about it did make her pretty happy, but it also made her a bunch of other things, too, because she was a very complex and complicated person, thank you very much.

"So...your training? That still good?"

She figured it would only work to shift the focus to Rey, because anything else about herself she could talk about would probably just circle right on back to where they started.

"Actually... yeah." It was still weird to feel more or less confident in it. "The obstacle course is going to get changed up soon."

Because she'd gotten too good at it and now ran it backwards.

"I really need to stop in and see you work one of these days," Summer said with a note of determination. "Although I have to warn you, if you're doing any of those super-jumps like Kanan used to do, I cannot be held responsible for laughing at least a little bit."

Rey doing it would probably still not be as funny or ridiculous to her as BDG, but still. Still. It did look kind of goofy.

"Sometimes? Only when I need to, really," Rey said. "If I think about it then I usually can't do it."

When she thought about it, that was also when it looked goofy.

"Does that go for all of your Jedi stuff?" Summer wondered. "Or just the jumping things? Because that's pretty interesting in and of itself. That you just have to sort of feel it, you can't overthink it."

Which, in a way, was her circling back around even when she was distinctly trying not to. Damn.

"Some things. It's not really consistent."

It killed her. Killed her.</i "Doing things from instinct is easier every time. Maybe it all gets more natural the more I do it."

And, really, that did seem to check with Summer's understanding, as piecemeal and scattered as it was, of the Force, and she nodded a little. "The more you do it," she said, "the less you have to think about it, and the less you think about it, the easier it is. I mean, that can kind of go for a lot of things, if you get right down to it."

"Exactly. I'm trying to get to the point where I can react correctly, if that makes sense," Rey said.

She was totally there already.

"It does," Summer confirmed. "It totally does, and now I really want to see this in action. I mean, from everything I've seen so far, you're already pretty good, and you've been working so hard that you've got to be way up there now."

"I don't know that I'm that good," Rey said quickly.

Lower your expectations!

Sometime during the afternoon Summer got a text:

Can we still get to that café with the cats and the hot waiters?

Okay, now this was a good distraction, and Summer checked her phone with a snort.

please. it's like one of my top 5 portalocity destination. y? u wanna?

You owe me pancakes.

Hadn't she promised that?

so that's a yes

Seriously, did that word just, like, not exist in Radchaai, or whatever?

u busy this weekend?

No plans. Let's go for pancakes.

And cats. And hot waiters.

Friday after my radio? That won't even cut into any of your DN lingering

sounds good Seivarden texted back.

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Turtle & Canary; Monday [08/17].

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