Re: [restaurant; ren & hannah]
"You should go to this book party. It might be an interesting experience, and you might be inspired. Muses are hiding everywhere, and even in plain sight, and I bet that made me sound just like a writer." She was teasing. Hannah knew nothing about writing, though she was becoming a voracious reader of novels. She didn't like poems, but she could lose herself so easily in the chapters of a story. "I think it would be a challenge, like your theater would be, to write again." She didn't know why he'd stopped, and she didn't know how he'd ended up making coffee in a tiny town of terrors, but she knew there was a story there. Maybe it was one he needed to write, even if it was covered in gilt and unrecognizable.
She nodded, agreeing, acquiescing, and "yes, I tried. I wanted to do it really badly, to plant that tree, but now I'm glad that I didn't. It was the first time I realized that something I want today might not be the same thing I want tomorrow." Which was a non-sequitur, but she wasn't always a girl made for logical paths or statements that followed each other like soldiers in a row. And she knew the topic of grandfather was one he was staying away from, and she just didn't know if it was loss or anger or fear that kept him silent. She didn't have family, not really, not that was hers, and she had a hard time figuring out other family relationships most of the time.
"Okay." It was easy agreement, no pressure and just her acknowledgement that he didn't usually talk about his grandfather. "If you want to, I'm here. If you need to, I'm here. And even if you don't want to at all, I'm here." The offer was made open and genuinely, and, hopefully, without pressure. She reached across the table, done with her food now and the plate pushed aside a little, and she squeezed his fingers if she could manage it. "I just want you to know you're not alone. Okay?"