“Hey now, I only turn green on boats,” Joseph countered with a self-deprecating chuckle, the corners of his eyes crinkling to show his genuine amusement at her joke, even as he let his glance fall down to the menu for a moment. Not that he’d really needed to look over the menu again; he’d had his heart set on a meatloaf sandwich and a cup of coffee since he’d set foot inside. It was more of a habit, a way to avoid some of the awkward tension between them, even though it already felt like it was melting away.
He chuckled again as Emma ran off her list of reasons that qualified their lunch as actual grown up time. It occurred to him that most of his conversations with her really did revolve around the kids; coordinating pick-ups and drop-offs, school events, figuring what the hell to make for the bake sale. He was so used to only talking about himself and his work that it was slightly shocking to realize he’d managed to start a relationship without any of that rotting away the foundation.
“I mean, it’s not anything… I don’t know, it’s not Hemingway,” he started, leaning back in his chair. “I figured I’d take advantage of the whole global warming, climate change fiasco and write about the end of the world. No zombies, though. I’m so over zombies.”
He gave a little shrug. “I figure, things feel like they’re just getting crazier and crazier every year, right? Weather’s weirder, politics are going to hell, people are growing more and more divided. And I thought, well shit, what if that’s actually how the Apocalypse happens? I mean, you watch all of these end of the world movies and it always feels like it comes out of nowhere. And then I thought about how hard people will work to ignore what’s happening around them. It’s like Douglas Adams wrote about, the uh… Somebody Else’s Problem field. You look at something with that field on, and it tells your problem, ‘Don’t worry about this, it’s somebody else’s problem’. And people can’t be fucking bothered to deal with somebody else’s shit, so they just walk away.”
He paused for a moment, struck by the memory of what it felt like to be somebody else’s problem. At the height of his addiction, he had clearly looked it; unkempt hair, visible track marks, thin skin that barely seemed to cover his bones. It was plain as day that he was suffering, and yet nobody ever stopped and offered to get him help. People would pass him on the street and try their best not to make eye contact - or any other contact. They’d hurry along, probably assuming he’d be dead of an overdose before too long. And were it not for some kind of grace, he probably would have been.
“Sorry, that came out way more cynical than I wanted it to,” he apologized. “Shit gets dark pretty fast once I stop talking about Frozen.”