Re: Leah & Hunter: Roadhouse
Leah thought the Thanksgiving ideal flimsy. It could be constructed out of card and paper: the diorama of loving couple, doted-upon child, a feast from an oven instead of a drive-through. She believed that it could be torn apart as easily as a lost job, a bad day, a temper. Reality she had dug claws into, held on lest she forget. Her dependent streak had been exorcised, stripped off in peels.
Leah cultivated distance so she could shut out fear, too. She wasn't scared now, but that had something to do with how far into the glass she had already gotten, and something to do with the gloves. If family came knocking, it didn't take much to peel off a glove.
It meant she could look into his face and note the brow-line that shadowed someone she didn't know if she could look at this calmly, the slope of the jaw. Hunter had been young and soft, the way Leah remembered him. The polish slipped: Leah held it up better when she was pretending to be someone who wasn't her and the illusion was more difficult the more she thought about home.
"You didn't leave?" Question with a question. Her fingers tight on the glass. "I thought you were gone."