Re: [The Cat: Nishka & Cat & Jack]
Jack was an Englishman. Technically. Boarding school so far north it could probably be classed as Scotland - was that worse or better? Colder, inevitably which probably meant more stifled than otherwise, but the English were not known for immediate and involved intimacy. And Jack thought there was a world of difference between unburdening at the bar and an interview where the intimacy was carefully coaxed. Nishka didn't appear to need coaxing. This was unspooling, like a bobbin rolling over and over or a ribbon uncurling. And Jack? All of it made him excessively awkward, even if he did feel for her. The need to unburden must be excessively weighty.
He swallowed against the smooth burn of the whiskey and tried composure. "Repose is a very particular sort of place. People sort of," a vague gesture toward the bar, toward the drinkers clustered in the corner down by the pool table, to Cat herself, "End up here. It's that sort of place." A half-smile, more sympathetic than anything.
"I could predict half a dozen broken hearts, one or two scandals, some money problems, something extremely odd and almost unbelievable and god knows how many people who just came because they drifted. If you're feeling like flotsam, there's half a dozen people like that in town." He shrugged, and watched her drink.
"You could probably find them, if you looked hard enough." It wasn't precisely sympathy, that. It wasn't acknowledgment of loss in so many words, or an expression of empathetic pain. But it had undercurrents.