Re: [Registration Table to Hunt: Iris & Sam]
Iris was nervous about the egg hunt. Maybe she shouldn't have been, and she hoped that it wouldn't be too terribly obvious, but it was hard for her to not be a little gun-shy, when she felt that so many of her interactions with Sam (in person, over the forums, it didn't seem to matter) tended to go so sideways and lead into such terrible things. She never meant for them to, and in fact, she did everything she could think of to keep them good - honesty, carefulness. She didn't know what else to do anymore.
Manning had asked if she wanted to see Sam at all, but that wasn't really the problem for her. She did - she liked seeing her sister, knowing how things were going. She just didn't like it when things were suddenly awful. Always for Sam, and sometimes for her. She couldn't keep living like that, the guilt eating her up to the point that some days it was nearly overwhelming. It was part of what had kept her from being able to eat much in the days leading up to the egg hunt. She did her best with the things Manning made (easy things, soups and vegetables and juices that were thick with fruit, and it reminded her of those days when she was pregnant, when somehow, in their spans of time together, he was able to at least get a meal into her). But her stomach still made its displeasure known. She did her best.
But even with all of that, she'd made the decision to come, to put on a comfortable outfit from the clothes she had at Manning's house (more and more, it seemed, as she stopped by her own apartment for things on a regular basis - she knew she had to stop, to gather everything up and leave again to her own home... soon). She'd felt cold the second she opened the door, so she'd thrown on a coat and scarf over everything, hoping that she'd be good for whatever the egg hunt entailed. TJ had given the outfit her stamp of approval, but insisted that Iris also take the chocolate-kissed bunny ears along with her. She and Manning had left TJ with a sitter (ignoring the thought of how normal that felt - ignoring other things about TJ that were getting harder to pretend she didn't know, ignoring the warmth of Manning's hand on her back as they walked out the door), making their way toward the registration for the egg hunt. She'd lost track of him as they parted ways, but she could see Sam near the desk and made her way over with a tentative smile, bunny ears held in nervous fingers.