Who: Cate Adler and Finn Campbell What: Taking a break and gabbing When: Wednesday, 6 March 2019 | dinner onward Where: Finn's tiny house on the Reserve Warnings: None
Cate flopped on Finn's couch-bed thing and clutched her stomach. "Oh god, I ate too much. That's the last time I ask Mom to put extra cheese sticks in there. You'd think I'd be sick of this stuff, but I swear I hardly ever have time to eat much of it." She laughed on the backside of a groan. "I'm so glad you were free tonight. If I spent another of my night's off sucked into my app code, I was going to have to publicly admit that I had no life, and what would that do for my rep?"
She laughed and wiggled to get into a more comfortable position. "That, and I don't think I could handle another night of intense discussions. You are kind of a breath of fresh air."
Finn leaned over and poured the rest of the bottle of wine into her glass. At least she was able to buy her wine now. It had been quite the culture shock to come across the pond fresh faced at twenty years old only to be told that she needed to wait a whole year to enjoy a nice Cabernet or Merlot. Yet one more thing she did not get about Americans. Mad, the lot of them.
But a good sort of mad.
"Thanks. For the compliment and for the food." She gestured to the remains of what she had learned was bar food, but not quite the pub food she was used to from home. She learned that she loved buffalo wings, which actually contained no actual buffalo. "Dare I ask about intense discussions? Or would you rather not?"
"Sure thing! Mom makes me fend for myself when it's just me, but she encourages me to take food when I'm seeing a friend, so you're done me a favor." Cate laughed and shook her head at the question. "It's less a matter of 'rather' and more that other people's personal things are mixed up in it. Suffice it to say that the wizards in my life are a loveable-and-yet-frustrating bunch, and they seem to be in competition for who's most enigmatic on a given day."
Monday, she would have given the prize to Thorne, with the way he'd suddenly dropped on her more information than he ever had before about why he'd come back to Snowcap. Right now, though? The pendulum had definitely swung in Kent's direction, and she wasn't even sure if it was him, or her reading into it. "Please tell me that all Scottish wizards are this lovely, comprehensible, sensible bunch? Lie to me, Finn! And then take me back home with you!" Her tone was teasing, and she barely got through it without laughing.
Finn through her head back and gave a throaty laugh. "I'm sorry to say that beyond the kilt Scottish wizards are the same as all blokes everywhere, liable to drive you absolutely batty." She could think of several instances where she had to play sympathetic female ear to the male cousins right around her age. Dougie and Reid were the absolute worst. She knew far more about what went on in healer and auror training than she ever wanted to know. "However, I have no qualms about nipping back home with you in tow."
She reached over and tweaked a lock of Cate's hair. "And a bonnie lass like yourself will have no shortage of lads falling all over themselves over you."
At the mention of lads, Finn couldn't help the dark look that crossed her face. She had told herself the Reserve was large enough that she could effectively avoid Felix. They hadn't ended, not officially, but it was pretty clear that things were done when he buggered off without a forwarding address. But if they did cross paths she could be professional. She hoped.
"Awesome! I'll take that, at least." Cate laughed. She hadn't spent nearly as much time in Scotland as she would have liked when she was overseas, and seeing it with someone who knew it would be even better. She swatted at Finn's hand half-heartedly, still giggling. "Normally I'd say I didn't need anyone falling all over me, but I might make an exception for that accent."
Though, again, her thoughts swung to Kent and the odd things he'd been saying at the bar the night before. Well, more the oddly romantic things he'd been saying, without it actually being romantic at all. She liked him, but sometimes she really, really didn't understand him.
The look that crossed Finn's face was a very effective distraction, though, and Cate imitated the expression as she leaned forward. "That's an awfully serious look for a fun night like this. Penny for your thoughts?"
Finn didn't think the Scot's accent was anything special, except that it sounded like home. If they were talking about accents that were definitely swoon-worthy, she was partial to the Australian one herself. "You of course dinnae need anyone following over you. But it's a nice to have sometimes, yeah?" She nudged Cate with a grin. There was nothing like a bit of romance to make life exciting as long as you didn't let it take over your life.
"That's the small muggle currency, yeah? About yea big?" She held up her fingers less than a quarter inch apart. She understood the muggle currency back home, but American muggles took it to a whole other level. Thankfully, she didn't have to handle it much with the advent of credit cards and the ability to use one interchangeably both in the North American Night Markets and the muggle stores.
She shook her head. "It's nothing, really. Just, have you met the new Herbology Deputy at Brightstar yet?" It felt strange saying this, she hadn't even said anything to her uncle or her cousins yet (it shouldn't be a work issue, but she didn't know how to bring it up any other way), but it had been bothering her since she saw the memo. "He, in a backwards twisty sort of way was the entire reason as to how and why I came to Brightstar in the first place."
"Yeah, that's the small one," Cate said with a chuckle. It was always amusing the little things that could somehow be so different between their countries.
She leaned forward as Finn explained, suddenly very, very curious despite her friend's attempt to downplay it, and especially because it involved a guy. She shook her head at the question. "No, I don't think so. Though I think I remember Dad mentioning that there was a new herbologist. What did he have to do with it? I mean, you can't give me backwards and twisty without details!" she teased.
Finn shook her head, positive that she was building this far up far more than it actually was. "We met back home. The hows and wheres aren't important, but we were going out for awhile, yeah? Anyways he gets a job in New York because he's absolutely brilliant at what he does." She could at least give credit where credit was deserved. "And we've been seeing each other for a year so I decide to follow. Only it takes a bit for me to wrap up my apprenticeship so by the time I get to New York he's gone. No forwarding address." Finn picked up her wine glass and leaned back.
"His very nice former employers were kind enough to give me a job until I could find something that matched my background. Which is how I came to be here." She gestured around to the caravan she'd put together over the last year and a half. "And it is the last place I thought I'd be seeing Felix again."
Cate's jaw dropped at the explanation, which wasn't exactly an unheard of scenario, but was one she hadn't expected connected with Finn. Given the witch's aptitude for her job, Cate had always assumed that the move to the Snowcap and the job on the Reserve had been intentional. "What an asshole! Who gets a girl to move across the ocean and then disappears on her?" She made a noise of disgust. "Have you talked to him? You don't have to work with him directly or anything, do you? Talk about awkward."
"He disappeared on a very lovely couple as well," Finn pointed out. Because she wasn't the only wronged party in this situation. "But no, I haven't talked to him. Or about him to anyone other than you. It's a personal issue. Not work related." And while she did have to interact with herbology occasionally, she could always interface with one of the other herbologists. It was just Snowcap in general that would prove to be more difficult. There were only so many places in the town.
"And you're right. It is an awkward mess."
"Well, personal or work or whatever, it makes me glad I don't have to try to work with him now, either," Cate said, making a face. He'd probably come into the bar at some point, but it was far easier to make someone a drink and leave them to their own devices than it was to work with them. She supposed that was one advantage of the Reserve being as large as it was. "Well, for what it's worth, I think you're great, I'm sure that couple is great, he's an idiot, and you're probably all better off."
She pulled her feet up under her and shifted until she was comfortable again. "Further evidence of guys being confusing and frustrating if I ever heard it." After a beat, and without real preamble, she added, "Kent Brightstar told me that he loved me. Sort of. I mean, he did, but it was...not normal?" She laughed a little. "Okay, he's rarely normal. Which isn't bad, really, but...." She shrugged. "I'm not really quite sure what to think about it, to be honest."
Finn just nodded and tried to put the entire subject of Felix out of her mind for the time being. She had ended up where she needed to be, with or without him. Besides, other people’s drama was far more entertaining than her own. She turned her whole body so she could face Cate head on. “Kent Brightstar is the grumpy one, yeah?”
She had to admit that the man was quite good looking, but he’d given off an air of being totally unpleasant that Finn hadn’t lingered too much whenever their paths had crossed. “He loves you?” She cocked her head to the side. “What, in Good Godric’s name brought on that declaration?”
"Yeah, that's him." Cate spread her hands wide and shrugged. "I have no idea. I mean, we've been friends for ages. He's...." She struggled with finding the words to describe him to someone who hadn't grown up in Snowcap to know the dynamic. Because Kent was grumpy and many of the things that people said about him, but it didn't make him bad. "Awkward? Not, like, shy-awkward, but sometimes he says things and the subtext is totally different from what most people's would be. Because he's so smart, so he finished school super early and never really spent as much time with people his age, I guess."
It felt weird to talk about this with anyone, almost as if she was betraying some hometown oath, even if she wasn't really saying anything negative. "I mean, he was drinking, so there's that. Not that he was super drunk or anything, but...well, alcohol does have a tendency to make people talk. I thought at first he was just being an affectionate drunk, you know? But then he said—"
Cate paused a moment, looking up at the ceiling and attempting to remember the words. Even then, she paraphrased, because repeating it exactly seemed like another sort of betrayal. I told Tony yesterday, but then I realized I hadn't told you, and that just seemed wrong. "He said that he doesn't love or really like people, but he loves me. That I'm his 'favorite.'" She made a face. "Whatever that means. And then he went home, and I kept working, and that was that."
Finn didn't know Kent the way Cate seemingly did and she hardly felt comfortable passing judgement on the man. Though from the sound of it he did sound a bit similar to one of her cousins, so she could at least empathize with Cate's confusion. "Boys are bloody confusing." She proclaimed, draining the last of her wine. "It's a shame they're so pretty to look at."
Standing, Finn grabbed the empty wine bottle and went down the few steps to put it in the recycling. "Did you want to open a new bottle? If not, I have some lemonade that we could open. Or mineral water."
"Right?" Cate said, and the laugh that bubbled up was sufficient to quell much of the uncertainty for now. It didn't really matter so long as Kent was still her friend, right? "Wine, please. I spend all my days watching other people drink. It's only fair that I get to do it on my day off."
She leaned over to grab her empty glass on the floor and placed it where Finn could retrieve it easily. "Are you coming to karaoke this week? I think it's going to be a good turnout with all the new interns."
That seemed a reasonable request to Finn and considering she didn't have an early shift the next day another bottle of wine sounded like the perfect idea. She retrieved the bottle of merlot and bottle opener from the counter before returning to the sofa. "Ask and ye shall receive, my bonnie lass."
Refilling Cate's glass before her own, Finn settled back down. "Abso-bloody-lutely. Though I think I will let Lennox lay claim on the Proclaimers. I might do my normal take on Spice Girls. Do you think that's too stereotypical?" She didn't want to be too predictable, but the songs were so catchy. "Maybe I should try something new."
"Oh no, stick to the Spice Girls. They're always a big hit, and even better when it's semi-authentic," Cate said, smiling her thanks as she accepted her glass and took a sip. "Something new is always good, too, though. Let me know if you want me to conveniently leave something out of the song list so it's saved for you."