Re: Diner: 1AM-ish
"I suppose that's not an incorrect assessment," he said of the Hamptons. "Tutors, though, not schools." Mother hadn't wanted them out of her control, from beneath the solid whorls of her thumb, and so tutors were employed. School would've been a godsend to the Fairchild children, but that was not their lot in life. They were a news story kept hidden behind a forest so thick that it was suited for a fairyland and a witch lurking within. But here he was now, sprawled on cheap plastic and drinking dirt-water coffee across from a man whom Mother would've hated on sight.
Mother, she noticed things. She would've noticed the jitter, the vodka scent, the sniffle, all of it. She would've listened to his voice and captured his accent, made him for pauper or prince, and he'd live in that box for all her eternity. Only Mother's eternity had proved to not be such a very long one.
"I'm glad to know my height meets with your approval," he said, and he did motion the waitress over. "Hashbrowns," he said. Only that. Just potatoes and coffee, and there would be copious ketchup poured on. Enough to make Heath, wherever he was, shudder. "Burn them, if you will," he added, his smile cutting into one cheek and matching perfectly with the scythe grin of the evening previous. "Is that how it works? People meet each other, while not being each other at all? And then, what, they hook up? What happens when the sun rises and the person beneath the tangled sheets with them is some utter stranger?" he asked, curiosity looking back at Gabriel in dark and deep green. "It's all a costume dating app, is it? And here I thought it was meant to be some deep and introspective event."