Re: Diner: 1AM-ish
The mug clattered against Formica tabletop as he set it down a little sloppily, sloshing the contents. “Makes sense,” he said with another loose nod, like he’d expected as much. “I met a couple of Vanderbilts once, I think that’s probably a little closer.” The guy sounded way more thoroughly upper crust than anyone Billy had gone to school with, and he’d been in the private schools with the highest price tags and most prestigious legacies his whole life.
Other than that misguided attempt to acclimatize to public school in freshman year that had lasted all of six weeks and ended with Billy’s arm in a cast, as he told his parents they’d been right after all. Much to their delight. Because there was a difference, apparently, between down-to-earth for the sake of not choking on one’s own silver spoon, and sacrificing the actual privilege afforded to him with the fanciest names on his university applications.
Billy had a feeling that his mom would have had a lot of opinions about the entitlement that oozed out of Shiloh’s pores, and shared exactly none of them with anyone but his father. And then only behind closed doors. She’d always maintained Billy’s right to make his own choices in what he did and who he did it with, even if she’d privately disapproved.
“Sometimes,” he said, lifting one shoulder beneath his jacket in a half-shrug, and the corresponding hand to make a wavering motion in the air like tipping scales. He watched the waitress’s retreat distractedly, wondering if she’d been the one that he’d seen without her shoes. A blink, maybe three, slow and torpid like the drugs had taped silver dollars to his eyelids in preparation to be sent off to the underworld just as soon as his breaths slowed down far enough - and then he dragged his gaze back to consider Shiloh’s inquisitive expression. “Sometimes we’re still ourselves, or close enough. Sometimes not. I was Achilles once. Trust me, three years I’ve been here and I still haven't figured out any rhyme or reason.”
He dragged one fingertip around the rim of his mug. “I think people hook up just like they do at any other party, when inhibitions get checked at the door. All the profound, introspective, self-discovery shit?” The finger turned upward and twirled in the air now, encompassing the idea that a party where people were anyone other than themselves was supposed to be largely about anything other than sex as the idealistic crap he didn’t believe in anymore. “I think those are more the outliers.”