ʀᴇᴄʟᴜsᴇ! homesick

CH 15: Two Sides

There are times I find solace in sound.

This was not one of those times, as Jason was sitting across from me, stirring his coffee, neither of us knowing what to say.

His glances avoid me, and instead are intrigued with everywhere else in the small café. I'm not much better, as I've been twisting the same piece of hair for the last couple of minutes while sipping on my drink.

Let me back this up. Jason had asked me on a coffee date a week or so ago, and I said yes.

Problem.

I don't drink coffee.

Why?

Well, seeing Tim drinks by the gallon with an unfathomable addiction to it, I hadn't touched the substance since.

So I got a lemonade. At a coffeehouse.

Not only that, but I had been five minutes late, and Jason was about to leave when I had stormed in.

So here we were, awkwardly sharing a table in a loud coffeehouse right during rush hour.

We talked a little bit about the book, but the conversation instantly fizzled out. I don't know why we got so well along in the library, and here we didn't.

I think it's because we're both stressed at the fact it was a date.

I know that I'm a bit too broken to ever be good, and we both wanted to show the best part of ourselves.

Maybe it was enough to just be ourselves.

We didn't need to pretend to be perfect when we obviously weren't.

"Jason." I say, slightly louder because I'm afraid he won't be able to hear me over the chattering of the café.

His eyes meet my green ones.

"Yeah?" He asks, his voice still slightly scratchy.

"This is going to sound so stupid, but I was so nervous for today." My anxiety had tripled since this morning, as I waited for his answer in anticipation.

He breathes out in relief. "I'm glad I'm not the only one."

"Okay let's just start over. How was your week?"

He opens his mouth, and then closes it, like I just asked him a really hard question. He opens it again, and answers , "... I was busy with work."

"What do you do for work?" I ask politely.

"I help the city put bad guys away." He says.

"You're not a police officer, so are you like an informant or something?" I asked him.

"Yeah kinda. How was your week?" He asks me, slowly enough that it seems like he's not trying to direct the question away from his work. I brush it off. If he was sketchy or a bad guy, my spider sense would have gone off the day I met him in the library.

I let go of my hair to shrug, and immediately stirred my drink with my straw. "Busy, I went on a field trip to Central City. Well, not even, I got pulled off of it halfway through."

"Why?" Jason asks, although I'm pretty sure it was plastered in the gossip columns of the newspapers.

"I got in trouble with Bruce." I leave it at that, because there's nothing else I can add.

"What did you do that was so bad?" He says, and takes another sip of his coffee.

"I found out something I shouldn't have." I've always been a bad liar, I'm so lucky I got away with it Caroline.