Re: [The Mean Eyed Cat: Jack + Cat]
It wasn't romance. Nor was it the suggestion of recognition in absence of real recognition, what Jack had meant was that it was difficult - when growing up was not just fact but practical reality of day to day - to acquire new people, when those people were so bloody uncertain of where it was you would end up. And while he didn't remember Cat as youth, he remembered the contradiction. The woman was contrary, whether she was beating the shit out of paintings or stood behind a bar and it mattered not at all.
"No gift of the Magi, serendipity couched as fate, darling. I was talking about connections made now. You don't have to forget someone to lose a connection. I think we both know that."
It wasn't about Jen. It hadn't been, and that was the lesson learned from the whole lot of it or rather, the latest. He glanced at her, the clear blue gaze fringed with reddish-blond and a little of the naked curiosity of not having compressed youth into a box and locked it.
"I thought I should have a career. A place of my own. A home. I went a very long time without one, a place to call my own. Personality. I can imagine wherever you live, you've put personality on it. Not the Rex," because he remembered the Rex, "Where home is. And to do something meaningful, or else what's the bloody point? So I rented an apartment, and I bought a lot of clothes and I spent time in the city. People are all very well but you've got to know who the hell you are to connect."
He picked up the martini glass and it had been a very long time in memory and in present tense since he'd drunk a martini. They reminded him of parties, of black tie and rumpled dresses. "This?" and he tipped the glass her way, an elegant salute or something like, "Is very good. A balloon ride takes all the interest out of it and makes it soft. Why were you hiding?"