She could see it now, very clearly in the girl’s eyes, the doubt and maybe even fear at the offer. And she understood - Nish had been worried about embarrassing her, but Sadie was worried about something completely different.
’She thinks you’re propositioning her,’ Loki pointed out, sounding like an observer watching a nature show rather than a participant. Nish winced just a little and cradled her mug against her. “Well,” she said, deciding to be honest in order to put her fears to rest. Make herself seem harmless to her, ignoring Loki’s chuckling in the back of her mind. “I guess I’m lonely,” she admitted with a shrug. Now it was her turn to be uncomfortable. “I’m only stopping here for a short while, on my way home to see my brother and start over. I’ve just very recently lost my fiancee in a car wreck, and...I’m alone. It would be nice to have someone to talk too, even if it’s only for a few days.” She managed a smile then, soft, but warm. Since James died, smiling had been downright painful, but right now it felt good. “So...I guess you could say, you’ll be paying room and board with company,” she added with a bit of a smirk. “That is, if you’re okay with that.”
---
Fastidious was the gaze as Nish spoke. Not that Sadie fancied herself very good at reading people, at least not outside of maybe what kind of music they liked, but she was making a very genuine effort to read the map that was being drawn here. The words and phrases,, things like lonely, and ’only stopping, were things she knew how to place -- even if they sounded...different than how she thought they normally did when people were suggesting things. They spoke to a temporary arrangement and one Sadie assumed all manner of things about relating to her involvement with it. These thoughts at least felt like more of a reflex of things she had to think about rather than something Nish was giving her any direct cause to consider.
While it was ‘a few days’ that seemed to have her the most skeptical, as people just didn’t offer things like that (especially when they were looking for something physical), it was the last bit in particular seemed to confuse her the most. She’d been able to figure out how that last sentence was going to end and she expected some subtext to the word ‘company’ when it arrived. She’d even settled herself on accepting it to some degree, because what was the harm in it really? Sadie knew she’d be safe, and tusslin’ up sheets seemed a plenty fair price to pay for a belly as full as the conversation bad been.
But she didn’t think, quite so much at least, that’s what this was. Certainly she could have been wrong and Sadie knew she had been before. That was backalong though, when she was fresh to all this and not quite as wise to the worries a girl might’ve planned for when sticking her thumb out to get places. She’d learned since then and...no. The woman was sad and talking about a lost love, who she’d keenly caught happened to be a bloke. All she wanted was company...probably...
Yer jus’ bein’ paranoid. ‘Sides, wha’s the worst tha’ could ‘appen? It was a dangerous argument to make with herself, but ultimately it was the one that would win out -- if only because Sadie really didn’t want to be sleeping outside tonight anyway. It was enough for her to clear her throat again, trying to shake off the coloring in her voice when she spoke and she carefully went about picking her words.