Jade Bradford (dimmingsoul) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2019-07-29 17:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | #december 2017, jade, jade x sophie |
A Little Awkward
Who: Jade and Sophie
Where: Books and Beer
When: Wednesday, December 27th - late afternoon into evening
Status: complete
Christmas had been low-key, as their Christmases usually were these days. It had been surprisingly okay this year. Jade and his brother had been getting along fairly well and it had been a peaceful time, and probably as close to happy as a holiday had been since their father had died. Maybe it was progress, of a sort. Either way, he’d take it.
He’d been here since noon even though there wasn’t a ton of work to be done. It was bitterly cold out, and many people were spending their time at after Christmas sales rather than a place like this one. That was fine with Jade. He loved working here. There was something unique about it and an aura that made him feel at home at the same time. There were enough nooks and crannies that he could even avoid people who came in from time to time, if he wanted to. A while ago he’d caught a glimpse of Sophie Tulloch and he’d gone instantly the other way. It wasn’t that he had anything against her; maybe it was just that he felt weird about that time they’d made out at a party. It had been nearly a year ago now, and he’d been a little drunk and wanting to find out what all the fuss was about.
Well. Turned out the fuss was that he had to be gay, because Sophie had done nothing for him. She was pretty and he’d always liked her just fine… but yeah, confirmation attained. He didn’t think she’d realized, but he didn’t know for sure. They hadn’t done anything too extensive, but he felt awkward around her now.
He huffed out a sigh and glanced out a window as he was straightening a shelf, instantly forgetting everything else. “Damn,” he mumbled, moving closer to the glass. Outdoors was completely white and getting whiter, and not from snow. A thick fog had moved in, obscuring everything. “Because it isn’t bad enough that it’s below freezing and we have a ton of snow,” he said to himself.
Sophie wasn't the kind of person to approach a cashier for help unless she really needed it so she was glad to find the local bookstore rather desolate. She hadn't even seen an employee when she first arrived but there had been an open sign on the door so she wasn't too worried about trespassing. Normally she preferred to read books on her Kindle but her grandmother had given her a gift card for Books and Beer and since she'd read her last ebook purchases, she figured she may as well spend it sooner rather than later.
She'd finally settled on a dystopian young adult and was approaching the counter when she heard somebody speaking. She'd become so used to the silence that it caught her by surprise and as she rounded the end of the aisle, she saw the thick fog covering the windows. "Oh geez," she mumbled then noticed who was with her. If she'd ever known Jade worked there, she'd forgotten it. She gave him a small, nervous smile. "That's going to be fun to ride home in." And extra dangerous too, her bike didn't have lights since her curfew was before dark unless her parents were driving but she doubted her dad would be able to do that in this kind of weather. She'd call him in a moment but for now, held the book she'd selected up to Jade. "First thing first, can I please get this?"
Books and Beer was quiet. Fin was out of town, and Brad had been around some if he needed help, but Jade had learned to open and close on his own. That was good info to have today, because he’d been on his own. He didn’t think there was even anyone here right now except for himself and Sophie. His cheeks colored very slightly, but he powered through it in favor of doing his job.
“Yeah,” he said, moving over behind the register. “Of course.” He went about the business of ringing her up, announcing the total and bagging the book.
He glanced out again and his brow furrowed. “I dunno about going out,” he said of the fog. “Maybe, uh, you should wait a little and see if it clears. I don’t think you could even see out there.” He had also brought his bike, but he already knew he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Worst case, he’d camp out here. The breakroom was stocked with plenty of food and there were cozy places to curl up out here, plus a restroom. His brother wouldn’t mind as long as Jade let him know.
The last things Sophie wanted was to be trapped in the store with a boy who rejected her after they’d spent a party together but as she looked over at the window, she realised that she didn't have much of a choice. "You're probably right," she said but she still planned to call her dad after the transaction anyway. Hopefully by then it would have a little bit but somehow she doubted it would.
As soon as the transaction was finished, she unlocked her phone to text her dad but frowned when the message bounced. She held her phone in the air as if that would help the reception and tried to call him instead. "It disconnected," she said and stared at her phone as if expecting it to suddenly fix itself. She wasn't somebody who needed a phone but she'd grown up with the convenience and had no real idea what to do without it. She hated to ask for help from Jade but the thought of her parents worrying overruled her sense of pride. "Can I try calling my dad on the store's phone, please?"
Jade had taken his phone out when Sophie picked up hers, planning to text Sabrina and then Luke. He tried the first message three times by the time she spoke again. He looked perplexed and felt that way too as he wondered what was going on. Did fog mess up cell reception? “Uh. Sure,” he said once he processed what she was asking. Picking up the receiver to the landline, he held it to his ear. “Of course it’s out,” he said with a sigh, then handed it in her direction so she could listen for herself in case she didn’t believe him.
Sophie could see Jade was telling the truth but she still took the phone to check, half-hoping it would come back alive in her hand. She reached over the counter to press the button in its cradle and tried again. "It's dead, Jim," she mumbled and put it back properly this time. "Do you think it's the fog?" She looked out the store front windows again. It was spooky out there, like something from that video game with the nurses and zombies that she'd played years ago. Normally these kinds of things happened when she was safely home, perks of being a homebody, and this was the first time she'd been caught in it. "It's okay, it'll lighten up soon. It's probably just still rolling in."
“Might be,” Jade said, really having no idea if that could happen. He could see thick fog messing with cell signals, but a landline? Well, it was possible the business phone was out for some other reason; random outages had happened before, he’d heard.
He moved back around the counter and went to the door, opening it up almost tentatively. “It’s like a solid wall or something,” he said. “You can’t see a thing.” Experimentally he put his fingers out and felt nothing but mild damp. Of course. That was stupid. Because he didn’t feel stupid enough around Sophie, right? Now that he thought about it, alcohol had to be the only excuse for what had happened. Hooking up had never been Jade’s style, not that he’d done much to speak of. To be completely honest, what the two of them had done was the most he’d ever done with another person. So depressing.
Sophie moved closer to the door with Jade to peer out over his shoulder. She wasn't sure what she'd expected when Jade reached outside but regular fog hadn't been at the top of her list. It was both a relief and a disappointment. "Shut the door, it's cold," she said after a moment. That wasn't why she wanted it closed but it seemed too silly to admit she was afraid of the weather. Anything could be out there and they wouldn't know until it was too close to do anything. She shivered involuntarily at that thought and decided saying something was worth any jokes he'd want to make at her expense. "Lock it too."
She stepped away from him and turned to look at the bookstore. She didn't know it that well but presumably there were other exits. Did they need locking? Was she being paranoid? She'd lived in Point Pleasant her whole life, she'd heard the stories. She'd never seen any of them personally but who knew what was real and what was exaggerated. At least she wasn't alone for it. Her parents would have been better but as far as kids from school went, at least Jade wasn't an asshole.
"So I guess we're stuck here for a few hours…" She turned back to Jade and almost made a joke about spending it by making out but it was still too raw. She'd been too drunk to really remember much about it but she was sure she'd done something. Especially since he'd avoided her ever since. "What should we do?"
There was an atavistic sort of dread about staring out into a day that would soon be dark and was filled with fog. Jade felt it even if he had no real reason, and he found himself relieved when she said he should close and lock the door. True, technically the place was still open, but they were the only ones here and he didn’t want to be back behind the counter wondering about what might come in. Quickly, he shut the door and locked it and turned the sign to CLOSED. If Fin wanted to fire him for that, he could, but the guy was cool. If Jade explained it to him, he felt like he’d understand. “There’s a back door to the alley, but it’s always locked,” he said, both to reassure her and himself. The lock caught automatically, so if they were going out there for something, they had to be sure to put a brick (conveniently kept just inside the door) in the jamb to keep it open. He was positive it was closed.
With a soft sigh, he moved away from the door, glancing over his shoulder without being conscious he was doing so. “I dunno,” he said when asked what they should do. “If you’re hungry or thirsty, there’s stuff in the breakroom. I’m gonna turn out the main lights.” The store would still be lit, but light wouldn’t spill from the windows like a beacon, alerting whatever to their presence. “If all else fails I guess we could read books?” With a faint, wry smile he went to the bank of light switches on the wall.
Sophie knew it was just fog, it'd pass in a couple of hours and they'd be able to go home soon but… She'd never seen fog so solid before and reception had never been affected, let alone landlines. She checked her phone again but it was still useless and she quickly shoved it back into her pocket. "Well, the internet is down too. Surprise surprise. At least the power is still on.”
Sophie watched as Jade turned out the overhead lights. The store still had enough visibility to see her way around but it was unnerving. The long aisles felt unwelcoming and she found herself staring down them, almost expecting something to lurch out of the shadows at the far corners of the store. No way out, nowhere to really hide... She pushed the rising claustrophobia away and turned back to Jade with a confident smile she didn't really feel. "Where's your break room? I've got a new book so I'm set for the next few hours."
“How did we live before the internet?” Jade asked rhetorically. He was hoping the power wouldn’t go and he almost wanted to tell her not to jinx them, but he didn’t. Maybe the less said, the better.
He showed Sophie to the break room and then spent a short while compulsively checking the back door, the back corners of the store, the front door again and staring out the windows to see if anything revealed itself. Time dragged along as outside it got darker and darker. No matter how he might try, he couldn’t get his phone to send so much as a single message. Luke might be trying to reach him too, but nothing was getting through. As much as he’d like to see his brother right now, Jade hoped he wouldn’t come looking for him. It seemed dangerous to be outside, and he knew if Sophie tried to leave, he’d do his best to stop her.
Finally he wandered into the bar area and snagged a beer, making a mental note not to leave the bottle lying around for Fin to find, because he felt sure that would be a firing offense. Sliding into a booth, he rested his back against the wall and stretched his legs out in the seat. He could have brought a book over but his mind felt too unfocused to try to read.
The weather was terrible and Sophie knew that the most sensible thing to do was to stay put so she spent the next couple of hours reading in the break room, or trying to anyway. It was hard to concentrate with everything that was going on and she found herself rereading the same passages over and over again or checking her phone or trying hard not to think about Jade wandering around nearby and how he never spoke to her since. The whole thing was awkward and scary and just plain exhausting but at first, she thought it would just blow over within a couple of hours so she could handle it.
By the time she realised that it probably wasn't going to ease up quickly and they’d be stuck there for the night, the claustrophobia and anxiety she’d been trying to ignore for hours quickly came back. She could almost handle being trapped if she could just see what was out there. It was her imagination that was making it worse, so she told herself and got up to hunt for a better distraction than the book she wasn’t reading.
It was creepy to be in the main part of the store. The dulled lights were creepy enough without the entire windows blocked by that thick fog. She paused to stare out into them but it was too dark to see anything so she quickly turned to spot Jade stretched out with a beer in hand. "Are we allowed to drink here?" she asked then immediately regretted how dumb it sounded. Nobody was there to stop them and it might even help her anxieties let go. "Don't answer that." She headed behind the bar and found an opened bottle of vodka and mixed it with a glass of coke. It felt rebellious to be drinking so brazenly in a public place, even if they were alone, but she still dropped a couple of dollars beside the register before she slid into the seat across from Jade. "Is your phone working yet? Mine isn't."
Jade smirked at her question but he obeyed and didn’t answer it. Nope, the drinking age was still 21, sadly enough, but he wasn’t sure he knew anybody who stuck to that. He didn’t drink that often, but if the opportunity presented itself, he took it. “Nah,” he said, shaking his head slightly. “I’ve been trying forever and I can’t get anything. When it starts working again, my brother and my best friend are gonna have 500 texts apiece from all the ones I’ve tried to send.” This wasn’t so bad. Maybe he’d gotten used to the idea of Sophie being here and some of the initial awkwardness had faded. Something like that. Whatever it was, he’d take it. It felt safer seated here, well away from the windows.
Sophie wasn't as comfortable in this part of the store as she had been in the breakroom so she kept turning to check the windows. Seeing the fog still there and just as thick as before wasn't exactly a relief but it was a better option than anything her imagination could prepare her for instead. "My phone probably won't last much longer unless you've got a charger here." She held up her Android phone. Chargers were standard for them but who knew, maybe he had an Apple instead. Constantly searching for reception had drained the battery a lot faster than usual. She felt bad for her parents. They'd be worried sick but she hoped they'd have enough sense to stay put too. Her mother would, she wasn't as sure about her dad. "What would you be doing now if you weren't stuck here with me instead?"
“Yeah, I have a charger,” Jade said, picking his Samsung phone up from its resting place on his thigh and checking how much battery was left. “Not like the phones are doing us much good.” Despite the fact they couldn’t send or receive messages, it would feel too weird not to have a working phone. The modern world was great, wasn’t it? He huffed out a slow sigh, took another long pull from his bottle and thought about her question for a few seconds. “Uh… well, I’d still be here, doing the closing stuff,” he said after glancing at the clock on the wall. “Then I might go down to Moxie’s, or home. What would you be doing?”
"I'd be home by now. This was going to be my last stop for the day," Sophie said after another quick check of her phone. She'd have been an idiot not to understand why her parents insisted on a strict curfew and she was grateful they cared but it still put a damper on her already limited social life. "That's why I want to keep my phone ready for when this passes, my parents will be freaking out." She took a sip of her drink and studied the windows again. Of course, it could just be the weather but she doubted it. She'd lived there long enough to sense when things were going to turn weird and she had a feeling there'd be more to it before they could go home. "I really hate this town sometimes. I swear I'm only applying to colleges where it's always warm and sunny and normal."
Jade drank down the last of his beer and thought about going to get another. He might when he felt like getting up again; for some reason the padded booth felt like the most comfortable place he’d sat in a while. It could just be that he didn’t want to go out into the main store again and see God only knew what out the window. “Florida maybe?” he said when she talked about sunny, normal places to apply to college. “There’s got to be a bunch of them.” He’d thought about college, of course, especially once Luke had told him he had a college fund tucked away, but he still hadn’t decided on anything for sure.
"I was thinking more like California. Florida has Florida Man and alligators but California means I might have a chance to get discovered." She flipped her hair over her shoulder and laughed softly. She didn't have any desire to chase fame and doubted she had the talents required but it was a fun fantasy all the same. She hadn't thought seriously about college yet but she knew she'd have options when she did. She had good grades and most likely get the full savings her parents had put away for both daughters. "Anywhere weird stuff like this doesn't happen has got to be better though. What about you, any plans to escape far, far away?"
“Florida Man?” Jade said, snickering faintly. “Very random.” Somehow this had become a nice break from what they were dealing with… even as he had no real idea what they were dealing with beyond more Point Pleasant weirdness. “California might be nice.” He’d never been that far from home before, and as strange as it could be, Point Pleasant was home. He thought about her question for a few moments before answering. “Uh, not really. I guess I’m still working on my escape plan.” What he didn’t say was that the things he most wanted to escape he never could. How did you escape from yourself?
Sophie smiled at the way Jade phrased it but 'escape plan' wasn't too far from the truth. Sometimes she felt so trapped that she wondered if it was possible to suffocate on nothing or if she'd feel that way somewhere else. There was a lot of history here and it weighed on her. "Yeah, I'm not even sure if I will yet. My parents aren't exactly keen about me being too far away and I can't really blame them…" She trailed off and paused to check the windows again. She couldn't shake the feeling that anything could be out there. Seeing nothing, she turned back to Jade. "So I hate to say this but I have a feeling we're here for the night. What are the chances you've got any blankets or something tucked away behind the register for when it's a slow day?"
Jade wished he knew for sure what he wanted to do, but it seemed easier just hanging in limbo. Stressful sometimes, but easy. He sighed when Sophie said they were probably here for the night. “Yeah. Definitely not a good idea to go out in that.” He thought for a few seconds. “There’s some moving pads in the stock room. They’re clean, at least. Not sure about blankets. We could look.” There was no telling what Fin might have stored in an out of the way corner, honestly.
"Do you have lockers or anything? Maybe somebody left some jackets." Sophie wasn't sure how many people worked there since she rarely visited but she hoped they'd be able to find something. The heater was sufficient for now but who knew how long they'd be stuck or how long the electricity would stay on. She didn't have any urge to move though; doing so would mean it was no longer just a hypothetical scenario and she was enjoying sitting with Jade. She'd barely ever spoken to him before and maybe only once or twice without anybody else around.
"Just in case we need them. Otherwise we'll probably have to sleep together for warmth." She quickly realised what she said and visibly cringed. "I don't mean it like that. We'd be clothed. Obviously. I haven't… Well. I mean… I'm not…" She took a large gulp of her drink to shut herself up and couldn't meet his eye anymore. "Sorry. You know what I mean."
“There’s three or four back there, I think.” Jade squinted, trying to remember. Maybe he needed another beer… not that it would help his memory any. He muffled a snort at her visible discomfort about what she’d said. Damn, that was the kind of thing he’d do. Maybe the two of them had more in common than he’d thought. “I know,” he said, spinning his phone around on the tabletop. “I didn’t think you meant anything.”
Again, he felt a little bit bad about what had happened between them. She probably thought she’d done something to put him off, but the only real issue was that she was female. Sophie was cool. In a weird sort of way, he felt like if he had to be stuck here with someone, she wasn’t so bad. “I’m getting another drink or two. You want anything?” he asked.
"God yes," Sophie practically blurted out. She was a lightweight and well aware she probably needed to pace herself but she was relieved for the distraction. She risked getting too drunk and making a fool of herself. "I'll go look for those mats. Hopefully the power stays on but I'd rather be prepared early."
Sophie expected that they would be free by the next morning. That didn't happen. It wasn't hard to pass the time in a bookstore. As the time passed the awkwardness with Jade started to fade away and she found that she enjoyed his company. Of all the people she could have been trapped with he certainly wasn't the worst. She was still relieved when the fog cleared but that was more to do with the monsters in it in the company she kept during the tense time.