“She probably wouldn’t tell anyone,” Silas replied then amended it with, “well, maybe Brandon. Or Leah.” It seemed like the last few months Kori had been keeping a lot of things internalized, keeping her distance. But that was just his outside perspective, and he didn’t know if he was right or not. He understood Rae’s thought process though; raising a kid on your own couldn’t be easy, but it would have hurt Rae more, he thought, to give up one of her reminders of Elliot. Even if it would have been to her friend. “I’m glad you didn’t, for your sake,” he voiced simply.
Moving on, he considered what she’d said. “Dunno if it’s a splurge for me,” he pointed out. “By now it’s surprising my bloodstream isn’t mostly liquor.” A joke, but she was used to it. He wasn’t so sure about her reasoning with booze being a cold remedy, but hey, they could try. It’d be fun at least. “They’ll just be more for me then,” he reasoned with a shrug.
“So you’ll be using the cafeteria crowd as guinea pigs then?”
It wasn’t a conscious thing, the nickname. It just seemed to tumble out (more often than not). He was relieved that Rae didn’t take issue with it; that she didn’t think it was some mysognistic tendency of his. “Ah hell, I can’t argue that, and you know it,” he responded at her reasoning for the coat and not the fleece. Though, in most cases he’d be in favor of the latter. In all cases he’d be in favor of the latter. “The jeans are nice though,” he tacked on then snapped his mouth shut at her grin and coy words. Now she was just playing dirty. There was no use thinking she was oblivious to how that could’ve been taken.
“Never been a fan of marshmallows, actually,” he replied, once he’d recovered. “Maybe you’ll need to change my mind.” Let her take that however she wanted. He was just enjoying the back and forth without the voice in the back of his head going, ’just friends’.
The skates were organized nicely, Rae had seen to that when they'd brought them in, and she gathered a size six figure skate for her, and an eleven-and-a-half, which was the closest they had to his size in hockey skates. She carried the boxes out under her arms and looked up at him. “Yup,” she nodded when he asked if she was ready. “Well, as soon as we get skates on, anyway,” she chuckled as she set the two boxes down.
He’d forgotten that very important bit. And given the fact that getting his boots on lately had been an exercise in frustration, the skates weren’t going to be a walk in the park either. Why didn’t they make them with fucking plastic clasps, like inline skates? That he could’ve handled better with the cast. It was a relief when Rae offered to help.
“It would be a pain in the ass,” he told her seriously. “So, yeah, help would be good.” He dropped to the bench and bent to loosen the laces on one boot, then the other. It really was a lot harder than he thought to work simple things like shoelaces with his non-dominant hand.
“Shame you're wearing that coat,” he teased, leaving the rest of that thought to Rae’s imagination. She was smart woman, she could put two and two together.