Re: [Diner: Destiny & Patrick]
Patrick had known Dahl nearly all his life. She'd seen him grow out of that pimply stage where he was shorter than every last girl in his class, and she'd seen him outgrow that lanky stage where he looked like an elongated toothpick. These were not his best moments, dude, and he was the last guy that was going to pull out the pictures from thirteen and flash them to the pretty girl with the glittering earrings. He'd grown into that shit, but it had taken some time, man. By the end of high school, he was prime real estate. But at the beginning of that adventure, dude had been exceptionally unimpressive. He'd known Dahl forever, but he didn't know anything about her working at the trailers outside town. As far as he knew, she worked at the stripper joint, and even that confession had only been deemed acceptable for his virgin ears like five minutes ago.
Patrick had never been to a hooker, dude. He'd never considered a hooker. Even his five seconds of wanting to be a cop hadn't touched on sex crimes, since Ye Olde Towne Hall had some arrangement with the girls outside town. He was much better suited to nature and less suited to being a dirty cop, man. All that meant he had no clue about Destiny. He knew she raised her kid bro, and he knew Con loved her, and that was about all of it. Oh, and she was older, which he assumed she felt was a massive reason for her rejection of his person. But, Patrick didn't care about age. Life was much too intensely weird to care about something as mundane as a number. Weird and awesome. But mostly awesome at present, because he was watching her push her hair from her face and behind one ear, and she was smiling. Smiling, Patrick decided, was good things.
Flirting was, indeed, a thing Patrick did. Flirting, talking, charm, it was his way of differentiating himself in a family of complete geniuses. Distraction, dude, that was the ticket to hiding his lack of brain cells. He sucked on his straw, occasionally poking it in and out of his shake, and he grinned at her as he waited for her observations. "There's lights at my lookout, but not many, and dirt in spring is one of my favorite smells. Man, the woods at this time of year, they're dazzling." He nodded, giving her credit where it was due. "I never watched cartoons. Con did, but I wanted to go outside and climb trees with my Lucky Charms on Saturday mornings. She could never keep me inside, dude."
He watched her stir her straw, his own straw forgotten against his lower lip as he listened to her three offerings. He stirred after she finished, and he tried to consider considerations, all while attempting to find some supremely appropriate way to describe the way his stomach churned when she looked at him through her lashes. Whoa, boy, focus, and so he did. Or he tried to. Cut the guy some slack, dudes. "I can see you studying biology." It fit her, he decided, even if it wasn't true. "The English one is too specific, so I'm calling bullshit on that, and assuming there's an older bro or sis somewhere." He sat back to await his fate. "Hit me."
The waitress returned, and he paused from his subsequent offering to order a burger and fries, all the appropriate please and thank yous accompanying the request, and only after Destiny gave the waitress his own order. "All right. One more set. One - I was engaged once. Two - I ran away from home when I was seven. Three - I almost pursued a career in taxidermy."