WHEN LOVE ARRIVES [KEANU REEVES]

twenty-five ⋆ how do you live a life?

❝i love the exploration of someone who has such a different background from you. that exploration runs to compassion and to cracking yourself open and creating more understanding of how weird and amazing life is.❞
―rachel mcadams

Skeeter had never been more nervous in her entire life.

She could open someone's abdomen using a scalpel without breaking a sweat or win a surgical award yet facing a seventy-something year old woman caused her knees to bounce and the palm of her hands to sweat. It wasn't just any seventy-something woman ─ it was Keanu's mom. It was ─ very much in fact ─ a big deal. Over the four-person dinner table, Skeeter had managed to suppress her laughter into a small smile, her eyes meeting Keanu's as his mother went on with her story about her then young boy who thought that a floating jacket was a ghost.

Sandra instantly took a liking to Skeeter and the doctor caught the wiggling eyebrows the actress shot at her best friend when they walked through the door. After dinner, Sandra and Keanu were the ones to clean the table while their guest of honor and his mom have drinks in the patio in the cool Los Angeles air.

Sandra leaned against the counter as she watched her best friend dry the dishes with a towel. "Skeeter doesn't look like she's freaking out over meeting your mom." She told him. "I don't know what you were so worried about."

"Oh, she's freaking out." Keanu replied in a matter-of-factly manner. "You just don't see it but Skeeter has a tell."

"Aren't you freaking out?"

He finished the dishes and faced her, crossing his arms. "A little. I'm terrified my mom's going to scare her away."

"I think Patricia likes her." Sandra smiled when she noticed how his shoulders relaxed at the statement. "She's impressed about the whole doctor thing. I bet your mom's going to talk to Skeeter about your smoking to convince her to tell you to cut it down."

Keanu scratched the back of his neck. "I barely smoke a pack now!"

"Would you listen though?" She pressed on. "Would you listen if Skeeter told you to stop smoking?"

He was silent for a minute, pondering on his scant stubborn streak about his smoking (but it didn't end there; he was also very adamant about riding his motorcycles for the rest of his life). Humming, he replied. ". . .Maybe."

Sandra smirked and coughed. "Whipped." She teased in-between her coughing fit.

"Shut up." Keanu failed to hide the smile on his lips and threw the towel at her which she had clumsily dodged.

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ────── ⊰

A squeal echoed throughout the car as they settled in. Keanu jumped in his seat at the high-pitched sound and looked over to see Skeeter's face buried in her hands (though it didn't muffle the sound any less).