WHO: Lochan and Eva WHEN: After te Date Auction before the end of the Faire WHERE: Lochan's Apartment SUMMARY: Charity Date and Small talk between distanced old friends. WARNINGS: Some of that awkward Lochan.
Eva felt oddly nervous as she walked the few blocks from the Bellowes Inn to Lochan’s apartment above Wonderlust Bookstore. Despite the bottle of wine she was carrying, this wasn’t really a date. Then again, it wasn’t exactly dinner with an old friend either. More like, dinner with an old friend who you had a falling out with when another friend of yours died, and then nothing was ever the same again and both of you (the live ones, that is) sort of went your separate ways, and you can hardly remember the last time you talked, except for the other week when you brought a famous movie star to his psychic shop.
Which is to say, this night had the potential to get awkward. Hence the wine.
Eva paused as she reached the storefront, unsure if there was some sort of buzzer to let her in or if she should just find the stairs. She looked around for a moment, then pressed what she hoped was an intercom button (if it wasn’t, she was going to feel very silly) and said, “Hey, it’s Eva. I’m here.”
Poking his head out of his door, he looked down the steps at the side of the building. “The intercom is broken. Come on up.” Like many electronics in Lochan’s life, the intercom had died some time previous and he had never gotten around to calling someone to fix it. Of the two electrically adept people he knew in town, getting the social buzzer fixed never came to mind when around them. It was not common for Lochan to have people over who were not his sister, who owned the bookstore anyhow, or his childhood friends that entered the apartment without much notification.
Lochan did not know what to expect from the charity date with Eva. Having her wander into his life even briefly had given him the dumb idea to bid on her, even though he had thought at the time that it was merely as a way to pay her back for bringing Rhett into the shop. All the expectations that had been written on her face to the side, and his distaste for the film and book or talking about the fire, having movie stars come into the shop helped business.
Cleaning up, Lochan shaved down his beard that had started to grow out in the last few days because of the faire, and put on nicer clothes than he would usually wear. Nothing formal or over-the-top merely clean and with sleeves. “Come in,” he said once she reached the door.
“Hey,” Eva said, trying to act casual as she stepped inside. The first thing she noticed was the rich smell that permeated the apartment, bringing with it the promise of an enjoyable meal.
“Dinner smells great! Uh, I brought wine. Hope you like Riesling.” She followed Lochan further into the apartment, setting the bottle down on a counter.
“Riesling is good.” Lochan stepped into the open kitchen and pulled a pan from the oven. “It’s good to eat whenever you are ready.”
Wanting to get to the drinking quick enough, Lochan pulled down two glasses and opened the wine. His dark eyes glanced around at everything in the apartment before ever making contact with hers. A nervous energy rang through his veins, not with any expectations of what a date would link to, but with all the old fears of their childhood.
“All those years watching my mother cook is the only way I figured out any of it, because that woman refuses to give up any of her secrets.” He tried to be relaxed on the exterior.
Eva took a glass of wine when Lochan handed it to her. “I’m ready to eat now!” She figured that things would feel less awkward once food was involved. At least it would give her something to do with her hands. “And I’m impressed you figured it out by watching. My mom actually tried to teach me, but it was mostly hopeless. At least I can make nice breakfasts now, since I had to learn at work.”
Plating the two meals, he brought them out to the small dining table. The only real wall separating the space removed the bedroom and bathroom from the rest of the studio apartment, making it appear bigger than it really was. Several items decorated the otherwise sparse space with geometric symbols that had specific areas they guarded and several soft mats covered the floor near the windows for yoga and meditation.
“Breakfast is not my specialty. Really I only know Indian food and toast, but it’s enough to impress my friends.”
“Enough to impress me too! Well, not the toast really, but this looks amazing.” Eva didn’t typically eat much Indian food, but that was mostly because it was hard to find in Fall City -- outside of Lochan’s kitchen, apparently. She dug her fork into the tender lamb and was unsurprised to find that it tasted just as good as it smelled.
With her first bite, Eva focused solely on the food, but by her second she realized she should probably try to continue the conversation. “How are you enjoying the Spring Faire? Is your booth getting a lot of traffic?”
The lamb bhuna with garlic naan turned out better than he had expected. For all the compliments he got on the cooking he shared in private, Lochan did not think much of his own cooking- always awaiting disaster with every mixture. “More so this year than years previous. Everyone keeps asking about the Marches, even though I made a sign. I think I preferred the less traffic.” He shrugged, moving his own food around on his plate as he turned inward for thought.
“How about you?” Any mention of the Marches around Eva came with a tentative struggle to say the surname. Each time he saw his ex-friend he felt that pain of being a kid without the desire or ability to help her out. The look she had given him when she brought Rhett into the shop had sparked that again. Still, he bid to win the date with her as a way to make that something up to her.
“Yikes,” she said at the mention of the Marches, “that does sound like a poor trade-off.” She took a large sip of wine, trying to keep her reaction in check. Rhett Wyatt asking about Alice’s ghost had brought back a rush of feelings, but already she felt silly for thinking that maybe he could get new answers out of Lochan. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about the March fire. He didn’t owe her anything, then or now.
“I’m having a great time with the faire. Of course, I’m not stuck at a booth for most of it, except when I’m helping out my dad or Megan. So there’s a lot to do.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever gotten to enjoy the faire in the last… ten years? As soon as I opened I had a booth to get customers and then Basma happened. I was told by multiple people that I should sit someone at my tent and take a break, but that sounded like they wanted me to cheat my customers. Maybe next year I’ll skip and go do something else.”
“It seems a shame to miss the faire. Maybe you could close your booth on certain hours or certain days so that you can take a break. Surely Basma would allow that.” She contemplated the statement while chewing another bite of food, then amended it: “Probably.”
Lochan laughed at the added bit. No one in town was beyond the reach of Basma and her involuntary ‘volunteers’. Family had it worse. Lochan did not exactly go out of his way to be a people person, but he had a strong sense of commitment and Basma pulled on that. “So how did you end up being the tour guide for Rhett?”
“Oh, that was --” an indecipherable gesture, a sip of wine. “I don’t fully know, to be honest. I mean, I think I must have offered? Only it was like my mind didn’t know what my mouth was saying, really.” Eva was turning a bit red. “He’s -- I’ve seen all of his movies, you know.” She was babbling now. Best cut it off with more wine.
A deep chuckle echoed from Lochan. It was cute that she had been star struck. Letting her gather herself, Lochan started eating. “I'm not sure I've ever watched any of his movies. But I only really go to the movies when Tony doesn't want to go alone because it's some comic book movie.”
Eva shrugged. “You see a lot of movies when your mom owns the theater, I guess. Plus we have a lot of them on DVD and stuff. You could borrow them if you wanted to watch some Rhett Wyatt movies. But I guess if you’ve gone this long then maybe you don’t need to. And maybe you’d hate them, anyway. Sofia does.”
“I think I'll have to pass this time, E.”
Lochan paused thoughts passing through his mind. “How are you doing- with all of this being trudged forward?” The subject could have been passed over, an easy might to be had between old friends, but Lochan had never been the type of person to skip over dark subjects.
Eva stopped eating for a moment to really consider this question. “I mean, it’s been so busy at work, I mostly just… haven’t really thought about it.” Until some detail -- Moira’s method acting, Rhett’s tour, a reminder that some of these actors were literally portraying her parents -- forced her to. “I guess it’s nice to have a distraction. It’s… all a pretty shitty situation, really. But good for business.” At this, she resumed eating.
It was an unfortunate necessity with Lochan’s chosen career that he felt the disruption of the film crew and their endeavours to pull the past forward strongly. Even if he did not speak with ghosts, he would feel the ghosts of bad memories heavily in his soul. His brows furrowed as he watched Eva eat. Maybe, the memory of their seven-year-old selves on either side of a door, while he pretended not to be home through her tears only haunted him?
“Yeah, the doubling of the town population is at least helping all of the small businesses.” He took a bite of his meal, before pausing once more. “I’m glad you came.” Buried deep in his tone was the sentiment that he missed being around her, even if it was that seven-year-old missing her and not the adults they had become. Their paths were so separated now that it was a wonder any of this happened.
“I’m glad too,” Eva said honestly and easily. “We should do this more often. I mean, not like you have to cook me dinner every time or anything, but just, you know…” oh god, she was rambling. “It’s nice to spend some time together.”
“I don’t mind cooking. All you have to do is ask.”