The brush on her shoulder pulled her out of the world behind her eyes and Eponine jumped slightly. Between her memories of Marius who never returned her love and Montparnasse whose 'love' she never returned, she was rather glad to be joined by Enjolras. She gave him a soft smile, pleased that he'd come to sit with her. She had not been lying when she said he was an uncommon friend in times like this. She needed that, she knew. Someone kind and non judgmental. Someone who saw more good in her than she assumed she had. She had never pretended to be a good person. She was a thief, a gutter rat. But here she had respect, had a business. And that was down to him. She didn't know if she'd ever told him so, or thanked him. But if she was honest she'd thought he'd have been with Belle today. Now that the Inn was open. Or doing something grand. Learning how the world here worked, being a leader, a politician something worthy of him. Not sitting in the now darkened dining room waiting for it to open for customers the next day
"I can't believe its all gone so smoothly. I keep expecting to open the door to the kitchens and see my father with parts of cats he's decided are edible." he said with the first smile of the day, wry as it might have been at the memory, and the sad fact she was not at all exaggerating.
She looked across to the other man. He really had given her more than she could ever have imagined just by being here for her. "Thank you. You know I mean that don't you. This, all of this, I would not have it if not for you. I would have gotten here and gone back to...to being what I knew how to be. But you saw better in me than that. So thank you. But you should not be here so late, you should go and have some fun, see Belle perhaps. She's a lovely girl..." There it was again, a strange selfish hope that he wouldn't go. That he'd decide to stay with her, so that she would not be on her own. With all she had, all she could do here, she was still so often on her own.
But that said she could not, and would not tie someone so bright down to sit with her on an evening where he could do anything he wished. "I'm sure you have better things to be doing than sitting with me." Once again she could do nothing else but put herself down, assume that there was more he could be doing. Leftovers from her life.