Ella Dean is a (chanteuse) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-05-25 19:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | daemon, white rabbit |
Who: Toby Fischer and Ella Dean
When: Recently
Where: Coffee place near the hospital
What: A 'date' that isn't and obliviousness.
Warnings: None!
The little shop that Toby had directed Ella to was just two blocks from the hospital, and he was a frequent patron. Good coffee, a decent selection of sandwiches, and a cheesecake that he would never admit to being somewhat addicted to, it was better than what the hospital cafeteria had, and given how often he visited the shop, he only had to lift a hand in greeting before his favourite cup was being brewed. That cup was sitting in front of him as he waited in one of the booths, fingers wound around it, one knee giving a nervous bounce as he glanced towards the door several times in the course of only a couple minutes. He still wasn't entirely sure what had possessed him to ask Ella out for a drink. She was practically a stranger, someone he knew little about beyond her name, a tendency towards the words sugar and honey, and that she had a child. Coffee (or tea, as it were in Ella's case) was something you asked someone out on after running into them at the store or perhaps at some meeting. It wasn't something he normally did after talking to someone on the journals.
But he had. It seemed that he was starting to do more things that weren't usually him as of late. Ever since the fight with January, heated words, the discussion that had followed in his office afterwards, Toby had been feeling strange. Something had changed, something he couldn't quite pinpoint, though he was sure that would make itself known sooner rather than later. For now, his concerns were more immediate. It was nearly three, and she would be here soon.
Ella didn’t give anything about knowing or not knowing past a name, and a job and probably the hospital that was near enough to the address she’d scribbled out of the book and onto a canary-yellow post-it note to carry along with. October - Toby - seemed nice enough, as much as you could know from handwriting in a book or the way he seemed real troubled about getting emotional, but he was company, the kind of company that could converse in words instead of something near to them but not quite. It had been long enough, and the tail-end of an afternoon when Beth had grizzled all morning long, and the minute she’d meant to step out the door and get going slid into the next until she was ten minutes late and waited in the dusty-desert heat for the next bus on over.
She was diminutive blond coming through the glass door, a bulky and clearly out-of-mode stroller in her hands and the awkward juggle between door and stroller and someone leaving as she was coming was an effusive thank you, all smiles. She wore a sundress, softly flowing and much washed cotton, and sandalled bare feet, and the bag slung over her shoulder was bulky, brightly colored canvas; Ella looked around the cafe, and she leaned in at the cashier’s point and she asked and a minute or so later, squeaky wheels and the soft slap of sandals on the floor and Ella herself stood at his shoulder, the smell of sun-warm skin and vanilla and a steaming mug of tea in her hand.
“Has to be Toby,” she remarked, soft voice that sounded like laughter very close by. “I asked if there was anyone who drank the coffee enough to be addicted and they pointed y’all out, so I figure Toby and if I’m wrong, I got to go back and ask again.”
Despite the way that he continued to glance up towards the door every so often, he had been convinced that he would miss her coming in, and as luck would have it, he had. A phone call, a quick message to one of his colleagues at the hospital about a man who had been brought in shortly before his shift was over, and the next thing that he knew, he was tucking his phone away and jumping in surprise at the sound of that soft voice so close to him. How he had missed her coming over, Toby didn't know, what with the stroller she pushed that had to have made noise as she approached. "Toby, yes," he said, rising up to his feet, dressed in charcoal coloured slacks and a white button down, the top few buttons left open and no tie to be seen. "Ella, I assume?" Toby asked, gesturing to the seat across from him, even more awkward in person than he was on the journals. For someone who was so accustomed to speaking with strangers, day in and day out, social situations seemed to be beyond him.
"And yes, I've been coming here since I moved back to the area. I've gotten to know them quite well, and in turn they have gotten to know me and my preferences. I'm wondering now if that's a positive or a negative." But the cashier gave him a friendly wave which Toby returned as he took his seat once more, settling back into the booth. "So. I'm glad that you made it." And he was. Toby had a tendency to stick to himself, to settle into a routine that had little variation. He worked his shifts at the hospital, he went home, he made dinner, he repeated the entire process, and it was easy to get sucked up into it.
She looked a little as though she might laugh, stood there with her fingers wrapped tight around her tea as he sprang to his feet like a jack-in-a-box and looked like she’d startled him silly. He was worn-looking, this Toby-October, informal - she’d figured if he was a doctor, he’d might be in a white coat but he wasn’t, no tie and the crumpled look of having maybe started out less rumpled at the beginning of the day than right now. Ella sat, and she smoothed the skirt of the sundress beneath her as she did so, a ladylike little slide of knees beneath the table that looked like it had been learned long enough ago to be habit rather than affectation.
“Bus goes right on up to the hospital,” she said, and she looked over her shoulder at the cashier, and waved herself, a cheerful flit of fingers before she tugged the stroller up close enough that the tables behind wouldn’t have trouble. The baby in it was fast asleep, soft fluff of blond hair and wide-thrown arms beneath a loosely tossed, wide-woven blanket. Ella smiled, tweaked its edge and she turned that smile back across the table, “You kidding me? A city where they know what y’all want or don’t want? Sounds like heaven to me,” she dimpled. Vegas was harder to get to know, New York had a real reputation for coldness, but there had been nothing cold about the neighbors in her building, nothing cold about the doctors or the teachers or the super in the building who’d delayed rent three times. Ella didn’t know anyone in Vegas who knew how she took her tea.
Toby pushed the coffee that was in front of him away, hands folding in front of him instead, an effort to keep himself still instead of fidgeting like the wound up thing he was after too much coffee. He could appreciate her appearance, blonde hair, the comfortable clothing, the easy way she carried herself that showed it was genuine, not an act put on to impress. Too many people were fake, and he had spent enough time in different cities to pick up on the difference between sincerity and fakery. "Probably helps that I grew up here, it all becomes familiar after a little while. Gives something warm to the city, more personal." Vegas had its faults, and Toby would be the first to tick them off on his fingers, but the city was home at its core. He grew up among the neon lights and the hustle and bustle, and it didn't put him on edge like it might some people. That, and the desert. He loved the desert, the dry, the heat, and he'd be a happy thing if he never had to see snow again.
"Have you been in the city long?" he asked, all attention on her, and it was quite clear that he was good at listening, at paying attention.
She watched that coffee cup get pushed and she wondered at it, given his grand love affair with the stuff. Ella raised the mug to her lips and she sipped warm camomile - in the cool processed air, it was real nice to drink hot tea, but it was good, tea rather than hot water served with a bag, and she smiled satisfaction as she set her own mug down, fingers curled around its warmth and her palms tucked flat against its sides. Ella didn’t think much on Vegas; it had been Coop’s town and he had talked of it warmly and like it was a living thing. Ella didn’t see much of it that lived, it was blocky stucco and buildings that looked like they’d crawled up out of the desert dirt, sand colors and the rich red heat of the earth. She liked whiteboard that stood well against sunshine and lush green, she liked the dirty stone of New York.
“Not long,” she said and she set her chin in her hand, leaned her elbow on the table top and looked back on at him. Toby was serious-looking, the kind of serious that was reading things and learning them and maybe not doing them. He looked, she decided, like the kind of man who wouldn’t put calls in to Anna or people like her - a judgment that lacked weight or prejudice; had he been, that made no difference either. “It seems real strange to me. A lot of people from all over, all lights all the time.” Ella softened the sting, her words light enough to skip, “My husband was from here.”
Toby only sat his coffee aside out of nervousness and not wanting to spill the entire thing over the table and possibly both of their laps. He wasn't a clumsy person by nature, but there were times when his nerves could get the best of him, and knowing his luck as of late, today would be one of those times. Better to be safe than sorry, he felt. So he settled with his hands laced together, safe and still. As her gaze settled on him, he returned it, and no matter his social awkwardness, he was anything but shy. She reminded him, a bit, of the way Winnie had been when she was younger, before everything had changed, blond to black and sun to shadows. And then Toby put those thoughts to the side. They didn't belong here.
"It's not a city for everyone, that's for certain," Toby responded, and then she dropped the note about her husband. "Married and a child?" he asked, and there was no judgement in his words, just simple curiosity.
She nodded, and the blond curls bounced; Ella’s smile lacked any disturbance, it was placid calm. “Mmhm. Married first, then the child.” She looked toward the baby in the stroller, eyes soft, the smile splayed warm, true. The city wasn’t real open and it didn’t make things easy. You were just fine if you wanted to take off clothes and dance and you were just fine if you had money and you wanted to spend it. People didn’t move to Vegas because they thought it was safe. Ella had heard plenty of names Vegas was called and none of them were real nice.
“I like it fine,” she said, because it wasn’t Vegas’s fault, not really. She’d moved because Coop’s family were supposed to live around here but she’d not heard one word, not even from a letter sent when she’d found a place; Ella worried her lower lip, teeth pressing into rolled-in edge and she looked at the table, and at his hands, instead of Toby himself. When she glanced up once more, it was the bright smile firmly fixed in place. “You gotta like it if you’re still here. What do you do, sides from doctoring, Toby?”
He could sense something there that wasn't being said, but he didn't press the issue; if Ella wanted to talk about it, he'd listen, but it was her story to share and she'd share it when and if she felt it was time. But he caught the way she worried at her lower lip, the gaze on the table, the moment taken to collect herself, and he was patient as she did so, waiting until she was ready once more to say anything else. When she finally looked up, his expression was warm and easy, brown eyes gentle behind the thick frames of his glasses. He reached over to take his coffee again, fingers tapping against the mug before he took a long drink, one shoulder shrugging up in a partial answer.
"Not much, to be quite honest with you," he answered, settling the cup back down, this time keeping his hands wound round it. "My brothers are in town, and I attempt to spend time with them. My mother is, obviously, in a hospital here as well, so I spend quite a bit of time with her. Otherwise, it's whatever time the door demands of me, and then my job. Little else." Laying it out like that made him sound sad in a strange way, but he tried not to dwell on it. He was happy enough with his life, and didn't desire more than he had.
“You have brothers?” Ella lit with the question, sunshine-bright and she curled one foot up beneath her on the chair, tucking it beneath her thigh. It was a thoughtless, unquestioning kind of comfort, she leaned in and she sipped at the camomile, and she watched him watch her, the same way she watched clients to see what they wanted. Doctor Toby was maybe good at what he did, but it slipped on out like wearing a tie to a beach. He reminded her of the counselors at the hospital, with the wise, sad eyes and the low way of talking like they were worried about raising voices. It had made Ella want to shout, just because she could.
“How many? I wanted brothers, I wanted all kinds. I got a sister, but I don’t see her all that much.” A tiniest of tiny white lies, ‘see her all that much’ was ‘not at all in four years’ but Toby didn’t want her hauling on out all the baggage that came with families. Family was something you kept on hold of, even if there were all kinds of holes.
Family, well, his brothers, was a topic that Toby was particularly comfortable talking on. A small smile came to his lips, broad by Toby's definition, and he glanced over towards Ella's child sleeping in the stroller by their table, watching her for a long while before he looked back towards Ella. "Two brothers. January is the youngest, and then there's March, who's a bit older. March is my half brother, different mothers, but he lived with us for quite a while when we were younger. They're both in town. Jan never left, but March has been around the states and just came back recently, like myself." Another sip of coffee, thumbs running along the side of the mug, and then he was settling again. "Is there a reason you don't see your sister often? Distance, or something else?"
“January,” Ella’s voice was thoughtful-soft, the idle world-away of sitting quiet and not caught up in the rush of the whirligig rush that was picking back up life after sleeping two weeks straight. The cafe was beginning to clot up with people, the noise rising just a little with the hubbub of people enjoying one another, enjoying the coffee. “I think I’ve seen his name around. Y’all named deliberately after months?’ Her grin peeped out, despite best efforts to quash it, but it faded as she thought on Max.
Max was a name used mostly in the house when her father was home but equally, her momma’s soft-proud voice, the photograph in which Max was military-straight beside Dad, that was taken out and shown to anyone who’d look. She’d figured Max maybe happier, after Seattle, after the cold-awful that was a Christmas cramped up with two people who seemed bound and determined to make each other miserable but there’d been no word on an invite sent to the address she’d had last. Nothing of weddings, nothing of Beth. She shook her head, gaze cloudy. “She’s real busy. Got a kid, cute as anything.”
"Yeah, January and March are both around on the journals, actually. All three of us got lucky enough to get one, if you can consider it luck. And yes, named after months. My parents were- are a bit on the strange side. Good people, but strange." He chuckled softly, because that wasn't even the tip of the iceberg when it came from them. They had been good people, yes, but those days were long gone.
Toby watched as her expression shifted at the mention of her sister, and without even thinking, he reached across the table to her, fingers just brushing against her hand. There was no demand in the touch, nothing more than a moment of connection, and he sought out her gaze once more. "Your child is adorable too, I must say," he commented, drawing the conversation back to something that was hopefully easier. "Not that I have a lot of children in my life to compare her to, but, she's beautiful."
He reached on over and Ella startled, just a little - the catch of fingertips on the back of her hand, the warmth of someone else’s hand, but the half-second’s hesitation slid into relaxed, and her hand went slack once again, fingers loose on the table-top. It was generous, of this doctor-man who didn’t like emotions, something real sweet - even if he and his brothers were named like someone was inclined to forget a real important date. Her eyes slid sideways to the stroller, to Beth all baby-fat legs that had kicked off blanket and heavy sleep and the smile for that was genuine, love-light and true.
“I wasn’t that familiar, with babies before but I happen to think she’s the sweetest one in the world,” Ella said and it was laughing, the sly self-mockery of mother-adoration, as Beth slept on through her admirers, sound asleep in the cool and the clatter of the cafe. “Thank you.” She grinned over at him, companionable enough; “What is it that your brothers do?”
He pulled his fingers back, letting his hands slide back around the safety of his coffee cup, and instead of watching the baby, his gaze slid towards her, the smile on her face, and there was no doubting the love she felt for the baby girl. It made him think back to his mother, if she had ever behaved like that around him, around Jan. He couldn't remember that clearly, memories so tainted by everything that had happened, the way the world had fallen apart. "You are quite welcome," Toby said after a moment, returning the smile though his could hardly be classified as a grin. "As for my brothers..." Toby let out a soft sigh, reaching up to rub his forehead with the fingers of one hand.
"It's going to sound strange, but March is also a doctor. General medicine, I believe. And January..." It was here that Toby trailed off, his smile growing the tiniest bit goofier. "He's an Elvis impersonator. I wish I was joking." He couldn't help the laugh that erupted from him, shaking his head at the thought. "He's good, but it still sounds strange saying as such."
There was a whole lot of admiring Beth that went on; if you missed hearing people talk, you went to the grocery store with an infant who wouldn’t quit smiling and you got all the talk you wanted. Ella never tired of hearing it, and she thought Toby sweet, the harmless kind. She watched the shift of temperament, the flitter of something over his face that wasn’t anything at all to do with Beth, and Ella let her eyes drop sideways, looked fixedly instead at the coffee mug, because if she wasn’t looking she couldn’t see what was none of her business.
“Elvis?” That didn’t sound like a career and the disbelief, amused rang clear in the word. This town was full of crazy, from the jobs down to the men who sang like it was the sixties and blue suede shoes were back in fashion. “He likes it?” Seemed like that was the only reason real enough to keep a job like that, and it made her think of January as someone particular to Vegas, glitter and neon and Elvis claimed for her own. “Was your father a doctor or something?”
"Elvis," Toby repeated in agreement, giving a nod of his head to emphasize his answer. "Pompadour, blue suede, even sequined jumpsuits. And yes. He does like it. Love it. I think he loves it." It didn't matter if he had just fought with the other man, the love was still there, a fondness that would never be absent. "And he's good. If you're into that sort of thing, he works at a bar on the strip. We could go sometime. He's quite popular, too." Another grin as Toby shook his head, admiring the differences between himself and his youngest sibling. "And no, dad wasn't a doctor. He was a poet, of all things. He had a couple books published before he passed away. And mom was an artist. It seems like their creativity completely skipped over me and went directly to Jan, not that I particularly mind. I've never been fond of sequins." He finished off the rest of his coffee, pushing the mug towards the end of the table. "Do you like cheesecake?" There was a certain glint to his eyes when he said that, a brightening of the brown.
There was something about Vegas, beyond the pretty lights and the clatter of the slot machines, something that went deeper. It was like Monroe’s Hollywood pout, like Grace Kelly sliding out of cars, like Sinatra’s soft croon. Something old, something deep that attached itself to Americana and wouldn’t leave go. Elvis, sequined jumpsuits or not, sounded like artist creativity and it sounded like fun to Ella, even if the man sat on across from her didn’t sound like he knew much about fun until he talked about cheesecake the same way someone else might talk about an adventure. Toby looked like those brothers of his were loved, like family was something that beat below your breastbone and stayed there, fight or no fight (oh, she’d read it, that little piece of family melodrama conducted in pen and ink, right up until she’d realized she shouldn’t). It made Ella feel uncomfortable, a little bit - like the draft from the air con was right overhead, and she curled her hands around the warm mug and let it bleed on a little up against her palms.
“I like cheesecake fine,” and her smile wasn’t hesitant but amused; the good doctor sat in his chair with his collar loose and his brothers and his family had some vice, maybe, even if it was as harmless as cheesecake. “You got a look there that says you like it too. Is it good here?” Cheesecake was fiddly stuff to make and it wasn’t something there was a pile of family recipes for. It was the kind of thing you bought by the slice and cost more than maybe you wanted to pay. But none of that showed on Ella’s face. “Go get yourself some, if you’re wanting some.”
"It's really good here," Toby clarified before he slid out of the booth, fingers touching to the stroller for half a second, and then he disappeared towards the front of the building. He was gone for only a few moments, and in those handful of moments, Toby realised he was having a more enjoyable time than he had had in a long while. The tension had drained from his shoulders, he stood a little taller, and maybe everyone was right; doing something other than work might actually be good for him. The thoughts had that same small smile on his face as before when he returned to the table, two slices of cheesecake in hand, forks balanced carefully on each of the plates. Sliding back into his seat, he sat one in front of her and the other in front of him, indicating the cheesecake with the tines of his fork. "Best in town. Guaranteed," he promised, before spearing a chunk with his fork and indulging.
His gaze slid towards the baby again, asleep and happy in her stroller, and he nodded his head in her direction. "Can I ask what her name is?"
She hadn’t gone asking for cheesecake, and Ella thought for a minute about the bills in her wallet, the exact number of them and how much the plate would be. A couple of dollars? Maybe. The tea hadn’t been expensive, but it wasn’t drinking it at the kitchen counter either - the careful consideration darted across her face, clouded the blue eyes - Ella took a breath, smiled, accepted the plate as it slid across the table-top with a pottery clatter. The bills could be stretched. They were already going to be so it didn’t matter much, maybe.
“You can,” and Ella’s grin was sly-sharp, she sat primly at the table, and she cut herself a piece with enough delay for the joke to slide on out and show itself; he’d asked, hadn’t he? He hadn’t asked for an answer. The cheesecake was good. Real good, after cereal for a couple days and she half-closed eyes and she let it spread itself across her tongue, creamy-rich. “It’s good. You got any other vices you feel like sharing?” She said vices simply, old-fashioned word sounding easy, as though the language of sins and pulpits was familiar as breathing - a beat, and then, relenting. “Beth. Her name’s Beth.” A fond look toward the baby.
Money never something Toby had worried much about, at least not since he had gotten himself a steady job, paid off the remainder of his student loans, and lived a life that was frugal by most definitions. But he also had in him a long streak of being a gentleman, and he had had every intention of footing the bill for this little meeting. He had asked Ella here, after all, and it was only proper, he felt, to pick up the tab at the end of the day. So the cloudiness in her eyes, brief before it slid away, left him a little worried, the smallest knit of his brows together before he, too, relaxed, and when she took the bite of the cheesecake and her enjoyment clearly showed, Toby couldn't help but grin a little in response.
"I told you," he said with a point of his fork, his smile almost easy as he took another bite, rich and heavenly as he savoured it. "And no, no other vices. Well. Books. I've got an embarrassing number of them at home, but that's not really all that interesting, is it?" The use of the word 'vice' was interesting in and of itself, something that one would think of hearing more often considering the city they both called home, but it was an old word, not whispered much around here. "Yourself? Any guilty pleasures you're hiding away?" Another bite, another moment to savour as he all but licked his fork clean, and he glanced towards the little girl in the stroller, repeating her name quietly. "It fits her," he decided, as though that really made any difference. "Cute, just like she is."
A doctor didn’t have to worry over money and he didn’t have to count bills like there was a finite number of where they were coming from. Ella ate her cheesecake slow, like it counted for indulgence’s sake and she had every damn intention of counting out those bills at the end, laying them out at the side of the plate. She hadn’t let a person buy her anything in a good long while and even if Toby was nice enough, nice like families that stayed knit tight and close, she wasn’t going to start. “Books, that’s not a vice.” Vices were bought and paid for, the kind you got guilty over when you were done indulging in them. Ella knew plenty about vices, and she looked on over the cheesecake at the man polishing off his own like he didn’t know anything about the meaner sort, and thought maybe he really didn’t.
“No guilty pleasures.” It wasn’t pleasure, so it didn’t count and the peaceful look to Ella said she didn’t think one bit about declaring it out like that. She took the compliment for what it was and she smiled sunshine back at him, all open pleasure in the admiration for what was, in Ella’s opinion, the best baby there was in the world. “Thank you. I love her to pieces. Your brothers got kids yet?” Maybe they were one of those families, tied so tight together there was no chance they were going to bob free. Ella hadn’t seen Amanda since she was bitty, since Seattle rain and Christmas cold.
"Books are a vice when you have as many of them as I do," Toby explained, chuckling quietly, a little sound beneath his breath. "Or when you drop an embarrassing amount on a first edition copy, even though you have three other copies, it's definitely a vice." There were a few of those books in his collection, not many, treasured tomes that related mostly to his childhood than any of his adult interests. "And none at all?" he asked after a moment, one brow arching in surprise. "I thought everyone had at least one. Maybe I was wrong in that assessment."
Another bite, a refill on his coffee, and Toby was shifting into that comfortable state brought on by good food and good conversation. "And no, neither of them have children, and I don't foresee that happening in the future," he admitted. "And there are none in my immediate future either, so I'll content myself with admiring the adorable children that some of my friends have." He said friends gently, meeting her gaze for a moment before he pressed against the back of the booth, fork on the plate, the cheesecake not entirely eaten.
Ella hadn’t enough books to fill the bookshelves in the apartment. What there were were music theory books, scores to things she’d sung back when singing was something that wasn’t just glitter-dreams and spilled pools of beer on a bar-top, distant-close - right up close to baby books, development counted off in weeks and months. She looked bewildered by ‘copies’, wasn’t one book enough for reading? But maybe there was something doctors liked, about books. Ella attributed it to far-off training, white coats and antiseptic, this fondness for words and books and things.
“Don’t doctors wind up married off real quick?” The tease was prompt, all quick-snap and a smile that soared on up to eyes, “You’ll have kids sooner than you know it, honey. You look like you like ‘em,” she was certain rounded sounds and she was absorbed with her own cheesecake, “Me and Coop, we didn’t want them right off but when it happened, it happened.”
That prompted a laugh from Toby, full and warm. "Doctors who aren't me wind up married quickly," he corrected, a warmth to the brown eyes. "I've never been good at relationships, honestly, and I work entirely too much to really foster one, I think." It wasn't anything that Toby regretted, and if someone came along that he clicked with, then he wouldn't argue against it. There had been Theresa, and there had been Winnie, but he hadn't heard from Winnie in weeks. That was the problem with getting close with someone; the smallest thing could drive a wedge between you. "But maybe someday. And maybe someday kids. I wouldn't mind one of my own, that's for certain. Do you and him plan on having more?" Because it didn't occur to Toby that maybe he wasn't in the picture, that there was anything but a happy marriage for the girl in front of him.
Ella blinked wide blue over the table at him, her hands set against the sides of the mug. “Oh, no. Coop died when she was real little,” as if real little were a quantifiable measure and Beth grown so old that it was a far off thing rather than a handful of months. Her smile didn’t waver and it wasn’t his fault, that doctor who worked too much for people, but neither did the smile warm up beyond her mouth. “We planned on it some but,” a little shrug, her fingers played on the handle of the mug and her eyes slid off to the stroller and the baby as if it were very important to be looking there now.
“If there’s things you want, you take time out to take ‘em, honey,” she had leaned forward, nudged the edge of the blanket bundled up in the stroller and her voice was very soft. “People who work too hard, they get lonely.” It could have been the man across the table, it could have been a myriad clients.
The distance that Ella put between now and when her husband had passed away was a strange thing, especially since it was when Beth was 'real little', and the little girl was still quite young, but Toby wasn't here to analyze the woman sitting across the table from him. So he tucked those thoughts away somewhere else, perhaps to revisit, perhaps to simply keep to himself. "I'm sorry to hear that, but at least you've your daughter still." Toby wasn't sure that was the 'right' thing to say, but it was already out and he could hardly do anything about it.
So he went quiet, watching as she fussed with the blanket, all soft words and soft touches, and it led him to thinking. "If it was that easy," he said with a small shrug of his shoulder. He was still relatively young, not quite forty, and there was still time. If it happened, it happened, but relationships were picky things, and one of those was needed before a child came along.
The cheesecake was an empty plate and a dirty fork presently; Ella was neat fingers and a paper napkin and a fastidiousness about it that was careful, the flick of crumbs back onto the plate from the table and the vague-minded dusting hands off. It was service-industry in soft cotton sundress, and it was quiet care and she flinched - not a great deal but a little, the shoulders tight and she sat a little lower in the chair, as if her shoulder blades had pulled taut, wire snapped straight.
“I’d rather have both,” she said and she looked at him, very calm and very blue. The smile was a try at it; it was clear, when she looked at him straight across the table, that perhaps the leaning over the baby had been something to do with the clear liquidity to her gaze but she did not appear ashamed. “You always want both. It’s plenty easy, honey. It’s just wanting things.” A beat, “I should go.”
"And I wish you did still have both," Toby said quietly, and he knew he had said something wrong, but he didn't make an effort to try and backpedal, instead simply nodding his head at her words that she should go. "As should I, actually. I ought to get back to the hospital. My work there is never done, it seems. But I hope we might do this again. If you'd like." Toby slid out from the booth, an awkward thing with awkward words as he pulled his wallet out from his pocket and peeled off a single bill, enough to cover both of their drinks and slices of dessert. "It was good talking to you. Here and on the journals. I enjoyed it." The wallet was closed and slipped back home, hands sliding into his pockets once more.
Her purse was something woven, the kind of thing you bought at stalls on the side of the street for five bucks, colorful and cheap. She’d strung it on the back of the stroller, along with the diaper bag and now she fished in it, pulled out a wallet that was thin enough that there were few enough bills in it at best. Ten dollars, and that covered her plenty, and she tucked it in at the side of her plate, a twist of green that made it very clear she wasn’t picking it up again. The wallet got tossed back into the woven purse, and Ella’s extraction of herself was both at once careful and quick, the simultaneous weighting down of bags and the twist of the stroller itself.
“You go on back to work, honey,” Ella said, calm as if he were anything but awkward, as if he hadn’t brought Coop on back into the place with the both of them, “I think you just need to talk more with folks. Have some of those vices that ain’t books once in a while.” She smiled. It was a soft, careful kind of thing, and then there was a sound of protest from below, sleepy but determined. “I best get home before she wakes up for real.”
He recognized the action for what it was, and didn't press upon her to take the bills back nor remove his own. A tip for hard working individuals, though he would have preferred if she had let him pay. "I'll do my best," Toby said in response, but there was no promise in the words. He knew better than to promise things he couldn't deliver, things he wasn't even sure on himself, like finding other people to talk to, something other than books and work. So he just nodded his head. "Take care of yourself, and her," Toby said, and as he passed by on his way towards the door, fingertips landed on the back of her hand for just a moment, a brief point of contact before the doctor saw himself out and into the Vegas warmth.