[The grills: Castor & Pollux]
"I suppose that all depends if I'm the protagonist or not." He delivered it like a joke, but there was at least a shred of truth to the notion that he might not be. Maybe he had been, but these days? These days Will was only at the wheel half the time and it was hard to feel comfortable with the moniker knowing the kind of person she was. "Mysterious though? I got that in spades." He added with another chuckle. "So you just say when that hour's up and I'll get right to it."
"Sal's the protagonist of the Kerouac book, On the road." He explained. "A real free wheeling type, a guy who just tries to see the real good in the world but often ends up a sucker to it. Good book. Hazel's a rabbit in Watership Down. He's the smart one, who's able to lead the rabbits off to the nice warren on the hill. He's probably smarter than me, but I still thought it might be nice, plus it's hard not to want to be a rabbit somedays huh?"
The dialogue was smooth, easy, and he was finding it matched up well with their correspondence quite well. It didn't surprise him that she came to Heathcliff's defense either and at that there was another chuckle.
"There's nothing wrong with feeling, sure, but there's always been a kind of selfishness and lack of personal responsibility about the guy that always rubbed me the wrong way." He wasn't criticizing Hannah or her defense of him. Heathcliff was a character in a book and that meant a matter of personal taste. Will wasn't above judgement, certainly not, but he wasn't about to pass it on over a matter of interpretation. "But it's his depth of feeling that really get you excited about him?" He was trying to fill in the lines of this person and he liked talking about books so this felt like two birds with one stone, Will just had to hope the questions weren't the type to drive someone off.
Sure, it didn't seem like it based on the postcards, but talking and writing were two very different things and Will knew how disclosures could feel differently depending on which venue was being used. Then she went on explained what her friends had called her too trusting, seeming to worry about what he'd expected and that he might say the same. Instead he just shook his head, sipped his beer, and cast a glance over at the coals to make sure they weren't losing too much heat and he'd need to add more.
"I'm not going to say you're too trusting. I'd imagine given what I presume you do to stay fed, you're probably pretty good at reading people. Plus I can say with certainty you've got nothing to worry about there." Not that he expected it be a hundred percent believed, but he felt like it was a thing that should be said.
"As for what I expected? I didn't, not really. About the only things I expected was that the pineapple wouldn't go to waste and that there would probably be some good conversation. So far..." Her let his voice trail as his free hand slid the cooler closer to her. "I'd say I'm about on track. What about you, what'd you expect?" A sip of beer was taken to break up the sentence before another thought struck him. "And it's not stealing, you go on and help yourself. I brought it mostly so I'd know there was something you liked to eat."
He watched her go through the motions of her polite introduction and couldn't help but smile. She was a kind of aloof character, something of whimsical worlds Will had always enjoyed. Once upon a time, perhaps overly influenced by the words of Jack London and Kerouac, he'd had a real taste for that kind of life, but then he'd married, 'settled down' and moved onto something he thought was more practical. He didn't regret it for a moment, even as he stood her on a bench in a park because his whole past had gone up in flames. Instead he just stood up, gave her a mock tip of his invisible hat, and chuckled in unison with her laugh.
"Yes Ma'am, got it in one." He sat back down on the edge of the table after waving a hand over the coals to heat test because he didn't trust his eyes not to lie to him and he really didn't want things to go sideways.