Re: [The Mean Eyed Cat: Jack + Cat]
He'd missed it. It was an abrupt thought, apropos of nothing and it lingered like a ghost of a memory instead of the memory itself. Not satisfaction, god no. If he'd missed it, it would have meant it had happened. But circumnavigation of a conversation with Catalone, that took in half a dozen stops on route to its conclusion. "And you seem like a woman for whom contentment would be a high bar. I'm not a man who becomes bored with being content, I've never been content to know." And he knew its truth, he'd lived it what felt like minutes and had been years.
He would have given her the truth about decades. Age was, for the most part, experience and Cat didn't look like a girl with her first bar job for the holidays, ideals and imagination and future laid out like a carpet in front of her. Cat would make her own, and he laughed as she scoffed, the sound (temporarily) carefree and alcohol-rich. "It was, but you make it beautifully for me so very often," amused.
He dug into the pocket of his jeans and slung out a wallet. No, she hadn't settled up and asked him for the total, but god knew what a customer would have made of the conversation. There was no one else left and even if he was drinking on her dime, he folded the approximate cost - and extra - under the edge of the mat, and left it there.
"Settling in. I thought Eddie had chosen Second City over this one and settled already. He's roaming back, is that settling, or pulling up stakes and moving onto another option, if the old one's burned? I plan on going back," but of course Jack did, and Cat probably knew it before he did. "Holidays can unite or divide, but don't let's argue," he smiled at her, relaxed. "We've managed an entire conversation."
But he looked at her as she spilled derision over the bar. "Oh, I know you do. Until you don't. It takes time to talk to you about you, and that's why, Catalone, you're not easy. Or simple. Or direct." He looked around the emptied out bar. "You're not single-minded but you're not careless. This, all this," and it wasn't the bar or the pool table or even the Cash, "It's not meaningless. But you know me better by far than I know you. And I don't think that changes much, even in the next few years. How am I doing?" He was flushed, with the liquor and with the heat of the bar, dressed for the outside.