sushi-time: adrian, patrick, lou
Lou was used to being out of place. Didn't bother her, standing out. She was a tall woman, closing in by a couple inches on six foot in bare feet and she was angular, harsh cheekbones and the mutt-heritage was unavoidably plain. She didn't eat sushi all that often. It was like quinoa, and rice-milk: it was the kind of different that Lou had seen across a table and it wasn't that she minded raw. She liked steak bloody, but fish was a whole other kind of raw and she strode in expecting to find a menu that was incomprehensible in a plain cotton tank under sheepskin jacket, over denim that had seen better days. But shit, the menu didn't matter.
The guest-list mattered. Lou hadn't had a lot of family for a while. It wasn't an uncomfortable concept, she'd gotten over that in Chicago. Adrian and his mom - her aunt - was from before, when family had been quicksand to get bogged down in, a tie all the way back to Alice at a truckstop diner Lou could still smell if she thought about it too long. But the kid wasn't Alice, as he rose, although she could see the cheekbones reflected back, like the shimmer on oil.
He looked less serious than the little kid she remembered. Lou didn't bother noting the little cups and the shirt and bare shoulder, she stepped in to hug the kid, brief but hard and sinewy. She let him go, one hand on the (clothed) shoulder, and looked him in the eyes, see if he resembled the little kid she'd left behind. "You can get fat on fish? Kid, how much raw fish do you expect me to eat?" Lou's voice was low and lazy, it had the slow syllables of a small town that never did leave go.