Re: [Outside Secondhand Books & Cafe: Misha & Sadie]
"I can say the same 'bout leaving room for you on my stage, 'less you get stage fright." He was teasing. Sure, it was plenty different to look out at a bunch of folk past lights, but performers were performers, and he reckoned she'd feel just as home on something raised as she did on a street corner. For him, it didn't matter where music was happening, long as it was happening. Street corners, cafes, stages, it was all the damn same, and all the boy wanted was an audience. "Monday it is."
She insisted thanking was required, and he just ducked head and mussed hair some, accepting that thanks when she pushed at it. "You're welcome then, and it's real sad what you say 'bout folks and quarters." He couldn't insist it wasn't true, on account of a whole lot of folks were stingy and didn't think on the needs of others. "I reckon a whole lot of folks walk through their days thinking on only their own cares. Them folks, I don't reckon they're stingy on account of being unkind or cruel. They just don't notice folks 'round them. They're always looking inward at their own needs. Reckon maybe we just got to get them looking outward." Them words came with firm softness and a kind bent. Misha, he liked thinking the best of folks. He believed, and real sure, that there was good in every single living folk. Sometimes, the good wasn't real obvious 'neath the bad, but folks didn't start out rotten. "And your grandma, she sounds like real smart folk."
It was real cold out. They weren't even at the coldest bit of the year yet, and the cottage was filled with spaceheaters trying to keep the space from going cold. Misha reckoned the apartment in the Capital was likely a better place to be just now, but that wasn't here nor there, and he shook her hand when she shook his. He leaned back in his chair then, not moving to rise 'til she did. "I'm real fond of paying it forward, so I reckon you might be sorry you made that offer," he said, and he was real earnest. Pale blue eyes were real thoughtful as he looked on her, and he ultimately just shook his head some little bit. "You just do something kind for someone else, and do it however you please, and I reckon that'll do." Putting good back into the world, it was always a real satisfying thing.
Misha, he hadn't expected to come out of this walk feeling better 'bout what he was doing in this town, but he did. It wasn't that Repose wasn't kind, on account of sometimes it was plenty kind, but it was the kind of place tended to wallow in its own sorrowing. And when folks took to drowning on in their hurting it was real hard to budge them out. It made him think on Jason, who he hadn't heard any of since Christmas.
He blinked the thinking away, and he nodded toward her drink. "You want 'nother one of those? A snack to go 'long with it? Anything, you just say."