Patrick Linden (historyman) wrote in xemplifylogs, @ 2008-12-13 05:07:00 |
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Who: Patrick, Paige
NPCs: None
When: Monday, about 8 pm
Where: The kitchen
What: Patrick makes garlic fries and meets Paige.
Rating & Warnings: PG-13; mild mentions of sexual content, language
Patrick was in the kitchen, washing potatoes. Of course, he could be doing this at home, or in the kitchenette in his and his roommate's suite. But he really liked the feel of the students running in and out of this kitchen. It reminded him of the kitchen at home. His momma, daddy, and siblings running through the kitchen. And his nieces and nephews, now that he thought about it. Nice, big family. He loved it. He moved away from the sink and over to the trashcan, picking up his potato peeler as he went. Garlic french fries, one of his favorite foods.
Paige had been looking for a place to sit and sketch that wouldn't be overrun with people. Now, normally, this would not include the kitchen in Xavier's... but today, it was just what she needed. A spot she was comfortable in completely. And aside from her room, that was this place. So, sketchbook in hand, she'd had every intention of making herself a snack before she got started, only to find that there was someone else hard at work in the room in question... someone she hadn't quite met yet. "Oh... hello." She offered the handsome stranger a bright smile, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "How're you?"
"Well hello there, little lady," Patrick said, using his potato peeler to work on the potato he had in hand. He smiled at her and shifted his weight slightly. "I'm doin' fine, and yourself?" She didn't look familiar, but he didn't know everyone, so... he couldn't really use his personal "student" database as reliably as he could have in Williamsburg. In Williamsburg, he knew everybody. "I'm Paddy," he said. "You?"
"Nice ta meet ya, Paddy. Ah'm Paige." She'd have held out her hand, but he looked rather busy at the moment and she didn't want to interrupt him. Some people might not be as cordial as her when it came to normal gestures accompanied with introductions while they were in the middle of cooking. "So... whatcha makin'? Need any help? Ah'm a whiz in tha kitchen."
"Nice to meet you, too, Paige," he said. All smiles, all the time. At least when he was meeting new people. He kept peeling his potato, careful not to nick his fingers. He really, really needed those. "I'm makin' some garlic french fries. I was just gonna use some powder 'cause I don't like to go pokin' in the fridge an' cabinets. So if you know where there are some cloves... that'd be awful helpful."
"Oh sure," she chuckled, setting her sketchbook on the island. "Tha cloves are right... here." She grinned as she opened the cabinet and took out a bag that she'd put there. She'd poked holes in it before she stored it, because she knew cloves were better and lasted longer when they could breathe in room temperature. "Here ya go. Garlic fries, huh? Ah don't think Ah've evah had those."
"Oh, well, you'll have to have some of these, won't you?" Patrick grinned, "They're from Momma's recipe." And if it was from Momma's recipe, it had to be good. Patrick's momma was the best cook in all of Jamestown. If any member of the church got sick, she'd make them all kinds of good, homemade food, and she'd take it and one of the boys to go see them. Patrick could remember visiting hospitals, family homes, and even ferry boats to see people. It had been really fun. Patrick loved it. "Well thanks," he said. "Set it on the counter there by my gloves?" His fingerless gloves were settled carefully beside the refrigerator, folded carefully. "But be careful not to actually touch the gloves, if you could..."
"Don't touch tha gloves. Got it," she replied with a nod. "Recipes from Mama's are always good. Ah remembah mah mama makin' tha best damn cornbread you could evah eat. All ten of us would be waitin' on it almost salivatin'." She chuckled as she recalled the good times. Times when her little brother wasn't trying to commit suicide and her father was still alive. When they were all together as a family.
"Oh, I don't know about that," Patrick laughed. "My momma has good cornbread, too. Maybe a cookoff. Cookoff of the southernmothers!"
That got Paige laughing, lighting up her whole demeanor in a massive way. "Bah tha end of it, we'd all be so stuffed it wouldn't mattah who won. Not a one of us would have it in us ta name a winnah. That kinda cookin' would probably put us all ta sleep. Ah'd hafta up mah joggin' to two an' a half miles just ta get it off."
[01:36] xsouthernhoney: Patrick snorted. "I'd have to actually work out as much as I swear I do to Momma." He laid the potato down on a cutting board and reached out to pick up the next one from a pile near the sink.
"Mah but ain't we two peas in a pod? How many siblin's ya got?" she asked, glancing at him from the corner of her eye as she moved out of the way.
"Six," Patrick said. "Not counting David, who was stillborn. I'm the oldest, and Ava's the youngest. Luke is the middle. Two sets of twins. All of us have middle names from animals. My daddy was a big hunter." He shrugged. "The hunter and the pastor." Patrick Wolf Linden. Oh yeah, gotta love those pastors and their strange names.
"What's yer middle name?" she asked curiously, blue eyes turning to him fully as she settled at the island with her sketchbook. She wanted to get a good shot of his face before he turned back around.
"Wolf," he said. "Not Wolfgang. But Wolf." He shook his head and shrugged. "It could be worse... Eagle, Bear, Wildcat - my brothers' middle names. Dove, Tigress, and Swan, my sisters'."
"Wolf. Ah like wolf," she replied with a nod. She liked wolves in general... hell... Logan had a tendency to sniff around so much that if she didn't, she'd be shit out of luck. There was nothing special about her name, just what she could do, and only when she could get it to work right. Looking down at her paper, she brought lead down to it and began to sketch lightly what she was seeing in her head. "What can ya do?"
Patrick started to peel his second potato, turning brown eyes on it and concentrating hard. "I can never have normal human contact, ever," he started. "I can't have normal contact with inanimate objects, even. I don't do dogs anymore. We had boxers and even a coon dog when I was little. But now I just have fish. I have a special aquarium for them... 'cause they're all I can have, you know?" He coughed. "Anyway, I'm rambling now... I'm a psycometric mutant. If you know what that means?"
Paige felt bad for him. She didn't know what she'd do without contact. Contact with anything really. But human contact most. She was a very touchy feely person, so now she was glad he'd been holding the potato when she entered. "Its um... where ya see tha past an' future of an object or a person when ya touch it, ain't it?" she questioned. If it was, she'd come across a mutant in the Brotherhood that could do the same.
"Well, I only see the past. Not the future... or at least, not yet. I might have it as a latency, but I don't think so." He shrugged. "I mean, the bit I have is very powerful. I could tell you every scroll and every book that was ever put into the Library of Alexandria. Stuff like that." Patrick grinned, "History stuff. I love history stuff."
"History is cool. Ah've found mah nitch in computahs though. That's where mah talents lie outside of tha mutant ability." Even as she said that, she was sketching him in the center of four wolves.
"I'm a history man, myself," he said. "I've got a Ph.D. in history and education. I love history so much. It's amazing. I have three papers out there. My professors from William and Mary keep asking me to come back and scare their students."
She smiled, adding in random quotes in the background of the sketch, light in shade so they didn't jump out at first. She was tempted to add a little scroll in his hand as well. "So you'd say you were pretty much happy then? Despite bein' different?" Paige liked to know others' opinions on the subject of their species. Whether they considered them a different species altogether like science or whether they were just people who happened to be different. If they liked having their powers or didn't. Paige fell in the former, loving the fact that she was a mutant and that she could help people.
"I love being different," Patrick said, shrugging. "I have this theory that a person's ability is an essential part of their personality. That genetics only decides so much. I mean, you don't see someone who hates animals being able to talk to them, now, do you?" He shrugged. His momma thought that, too. She'd said it to Patrick, Cheyenne, Matthew, Luke, and Liam. They all pretty much believed it too. "I mean, like I said, just a theory."
Thinking about it, Paige smiled. She'd never thought about it that way. But she didn't know if that was a positive or a negative theory about what her powers said about her, which caused that smile to fade as she thought about it further. She retreated for a moment in her head, as she sometimes had a tendency to do, halting in her sketch a she tried to figure it out.
Patrick finished out his potatoes as she retreated into herself. He laid them all out on the cutting board and went to get a knife, slicing them up into fry shapes. "So, Paige, what do you do?"
Hearing her name called, she blinked and looked up at him. "Ah'm sorry. Ah spaced fer a moment. What did you ask?" she questioned, making eye contact for a brief moment as she waited for him to ask again.
Patrick smiled. "You're worse than my freshmen." And his freshmen? Were really very bad at that. He'd busted every damned one of them for spacing out on him. "I asked what you do. Ability-wise, life-wise. You name it, I wanna hear it."
"Well, at tha time ya called mah name, Ah was wonderin' just what mah ability said about me... an' tryin' ta figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing," she answered, smiling softly. "Ah husk. Ah can husk mah outah layah of skin off ta reveal somethin' else undahneath. Silk, steel, watah... an' with each new husk comes attributes Ah didn't have before. Like, with rubbah, Ah'm fastah than a speedin' bullet. Proven fact. Um... steel, Ah'm a lot strongah... an' a lot heaviah. If Ah husk a certain kinda crystal, Ah'm virtually invisible ta those not really knowin' what they're lookin' fer." She thought for a moment after that. "Life-wise, well... Ah'm a student at the local university an' Ah like ta sketch, cook an' take care of the kids around here."
"It says you want to fit in. You husk into something to be like it. To match it. You're trying to fit in with the world around you and your husking is giving you that ability. You can reveal a part of you that fits in with everything and everyone else. If that makes sense?" Patrick shrugged. He was no psychologist but that's what it seemed like to him. "Anybody else's power you want to know my opinion on?"
She smiled, running a hand through her hair hair. "Nah. You should be a shrink," she replied, that smile lingering. "You really cain't touch anyone though? Not even fer a second?"
"Momma always said I could have psychoanalyzed anybody." He grinned and shrugged. He sliced one more bit of potato and looked up at her. "I can touch people, but I prefer not to. I pick up what they're thinking, feeling, whatever. Memories. If I'm holding on long enough and I 'download' enough, it can make me visibly twitch. It's all kinds of fun."
She smiled, holding out her hand for a moment. She'd think of something nice for him. Closing her eyes, she pictured her farm on a summer day. All nice with the stream not too far away and the smell of Mama's cornbread. Yeah, on the underside of all that, she thought he was damn good looking, but she was hoping she was shoving that far enough down that he wouldn't see it if he did happen to shrug and touch her hand.
He really didn't want to go touching her. He didn't like touching others. It always felt like an invasion of privacy to Patrick. But she seemed to be offering, so he reached out. His fingers only danced over her palm for about a quarter of a second, and then he was back near the sink again. "Home. Summer. Cornbread." He had also sucked up the good looking deal, but he figured it was good to be discrete and pretend he hadn't heard that one.
She smiled. "Ah tried ta make it nice fer ya. Wanted ta get a look at how it worked, what all you could pick up," she explained. "Ah mean, me, Ahm basically an open book." Everyone had her secrets, including her, but that was life. "Give me good food, good people an' a nice temp... an' Ah'm in perfect harmony with whatevah."
"'In Perfect Harmony' - that's a song. A good one, too. Her voice is so pretty..." Patrick shrugged it off. He could listen to that after his fries. "It can be hard, with my power, to remember who I am. It's... it's a challenge."
"If it makes ya feel any bettah, you have mah permission whenevah ta touch me." She blinked, thinking about what she'd just said. "An' oh mah God, that came out so wrong." There was now a furious blush rising in her cheeks as she shook her head. "Seriously, Ah hope ya know what Ah mean. Ah mean, like, with tha invasion of privacy thing. Ah don't have much Ah keep private as it is." And she rarely thought about the pills unless she was about to take them. "So Ah mean, ya don't hafta worry about invadin' mah privacy an' we seem ta be a lot alike... maybe ya won't lose yerself."
"Mm," Patrick said. He cut some more of his potatoes and moved to drop them into an orange plastic bowl. "It always confused the new people I met in Italy, Spain, whatever. I would never shake their hands. Or if I did, I'd be very particular about how I touched them. My best friend, Julio, told them about how I was a huge germophobe. Apparently I was also Buddhist in Italy." Patrick snorted. Sometimes the people he knew... were so odd. "People are weird. Sometimes I'm glad I don't have to touch some of them."
"Ah'll be tha first ta admit Ah'm weird. Hell, Ah'm a dork ta boot. But Ah make due. An' mah family is here now so Ah can help take care of them. Sam may be tha oldest, but Ah'll be damned if he ain't scattahbrained enough ta not need a little help. Tha othah night Ah got a text with a blurry picture of some girl's butt. Ah'd bet anythang he was tryin' ta send it to his buddies instead of me."
"...Maybe someone needs to teach him how to actually refrain from drinking." He snickered. "My brother sent Dad an embarrassing poem once, and I think he got grounded for three years." He remembered the poem. It had circulated school three times before Matthew had accidentally sent it to their dad. And, of course, Matthew had gotten busted. So had Patrick... but he'd only been grounded for a week.
"Bah embarrassin' ya mean?" she questioned. It could mean several different things. Especially in their line of... well... life. "An' yeah, me tell mah oldah brothah ta stop drinkin'? Ah'm tha one who caused tha most damage with alcohol," she replied with a sigh. In all honesty, as far as she knew, none of her siblings had ever caused an entire half of a building to be blown to smithereens just from alcohol and a kiss.
Patrick snorted. "By embarrassing I mean it would have made a sailor blush with shame." He reached for the cloves of garlic, then brought his hand back without having even touched them. "Are they organic or....?"
"They're organic," she promised, nodding. "Ah was cookin' with them yestahday. Professah Xaviah likes that kinda stuff." Looking back down at her sketch, she began to define shadows as she went.
"Good," Patrick said. He reached out and picked one of them up, then dropped it onto the cutting board. Sun. Warmth. Darkness. Cold. Water. Sun. Dark. Men talking. Women chattering. Being cut. He blinked several times, very fast, and then reached out to take it again. "The chemicals they put on your food... ew, you wouldn't believe it."
Irish: Paige couldn't help but chuckle. "You see everything, don't ya?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. She sincerely hoped not, because she didn't think she could go the rest of the conversation not embarrassed if he'd read that thought about him being hot.
"Uhm, yeah. Most of the time. In inanimate objects and plants, I suck it all up. In humans and animals, I'm limited only by your memory." He shrugged. "Although I had a seizure after I touched the wall of the Pantheon. It was not pretty." He started working on preparing the garlic to use in his fries, and then wrinkled his nose. "I picked up SO much from that place, it was creepy. I had a personality crisis for, like, a month."
"You poor thing," she sighed. "So... if ya cain't really touch someone fer very long... an' this could totally be an intrusion on yer privacy, so if it is it, just say so an' Ah won't be offended..." Hell, she didn't want to offend him. "Are you still... ya know... a virgin?"
After she asked that question, Patrick looked at his garlic for half a second, then started busting up laughing. He laughed harder than he'd laughed in about three years, and he had to flatten his hands over the cutting board. When he finally calmed down enough to answer, he had a distinct southern twinge to his voice. "Ah..haha.. I... I have never... haha... never had anybody... hahaha, ask me that..."
Paige couldn't help but smile brightly at the laughter. "What?" she asked, beginning to chuckle herself. "Its a logical question. Ah mean... if ya say ya don't like ta touch someone fer long." At least, to her it was logical. And it wasn't like she wasn't a virgin herself. She was at least glad that she hadn't offended him.
"Well, I am." He held his hand up, pointing to the ring on his left ring finger. "Promise ring. Dad made all seven of us promise. I haven't even had a real girlfriend." He shuddered. "Except for Carlotta. And that was... wow."
Propping her chin up on her fist, she wondered what he was like in a relationship. "She was special huh?" Paige herself had only really dated one person, seeing as how Jono couldn't be counted as a real boyfriend. After all, Jono had always pushed her away. And Tristan hadn't lasted because, technically, he blackmailed her into dating him. "Maybe if ya find someone like you, you'll cancel each othah out?"
"I doubt it," Patrick said, shrugging. "Carlotta was my girlfriend in Rome. She was also my buddy Andrea's girlfriend, and the one and only time I got kissed? Yeah, I found that out. Andrea didn't know and I didn't know. He called her his 'fiore italiano.' I called her Lottie. So we didn't really... connect it."
"Ahh... tha cheatin' kind. Ah cain't stand cheatahs. Ah mean, what's tha point if ya cain't be loyal to a person? It drives me insane. An' tha same fer like, people who tell ya no because of problems they're havin' but then days or weeks latah end up datin' someone else. It just makes ya wondah if yer good enough fer anybody an'-" She stopped, blushing again. "Sorry. Ah didn't mean ta ramble. Ignore everything Ah just said."
"Aw, no. Ramble away. Rambling is fine." Patrick went to get the frypan, and set it on the burner on the stove. "I ramble to my classes. They pretty much hate it, but I figure, what the hell. They're freshmen and sophomores, they aren't the people giving me my license." He winked at her. "Just kidding. I do care about my kids." At least. Most of the time.
She blushed again when he winked. Seriously, what was her problem. Sometimes Paige wondered if she should just shut herself away for a few years. Despite her intelligence and her college state, people still treated her like a child or worse, like a friend. Clearing her throat, she nodded. "Carin' about people is a good thing. SOme would see it as a weakness, Ah like ta view it as a strength." She turned her attention back to the sketch, working diligently now.
"Mmm, it depends," he said. He poured some olive oil into the pan and then turned the burner on, shuddering briefly at the feeling of repeatedly being turned. Oh for the love of... He shook his head and stepped back to drop the garlic in over the potatoes and shake the bowl up. "Sometimes you couldn't do anything more dangerous. Sometimes you couldn't do anything safer."
"Ah guess we just kinda, view things differently," she noted, shrugging. "Ah mean, it ain't easy ta just turn it off once ya care about a person, no mattah when ya feel tha need to or not. At least, not fer me. With some people Ah'd swear, all ya hafta do is flip a frikken switch." She was a little bitter at times, due to what happened in the past, but she was mostly over that. Or so she thought. Donning that smile again, she tucked her hair behind her ear and brought the pencil to paper again, glancing up at him.
"Mm." Patrick wrinkled his noise and slipped off into silence. He thought about the people at home, the people he knew. The people he cared about. Oh! That reminded him! He needed fish food! "Fish food," he said, unaware that he'd said it out loud.
Looking up, Paige rose an eyebrow. "Huh?" They were definitely not on the same page apparently if he was thinking about fish food. Sometimes people around here were strange, but Paige never faulted them for it.
"Oh, you... you heard that?" He blushed. "I'm out of fish food. I have random thought processes." Patrick shrugged. He was odd. He had odd thought processes. He was not and never claimed to be normal.
"Oh. Well, Ah'm supposed ta be goin' inta town latah on. Ah can pick some up if ya want me to," she offered, looking back down at her sketch. She was putting some hard work into this one. Wanted it to be perfect. And she didn't mind offering her services if they were needed. She liked being helpful.
"Nah. I'm headed into town early tomorrow morning. I have to go grab a package out of my apartment before I can teach my Indian mythology class."
She nodded. "Offah stands when ya need it. Ah go inta town fer mah classes anyway." Taking classes at the local university was definitely a nice change. She loved the mansion, but when you were cooped up in it all day everyday, it got monotonous.
He smiled at her. "Thanks, but I really prefer to run errands by myself. Nice, kid-free trips. Besides, I haven't seen a whole lot of the town yet. I think I need to."
She blinked, looking up at him slightly offended. She said nothing though, choosing to keep her mouth shut. In this place you had to pick your battles, and arguing with one of the professors, no matter how much one wanted to, about your status in a place like this, was a losing one at the moment. Looking back down, she continued to sketch. She hadn't been a kid in a very long time, as far as some people were concerned.
It wasn't that he didn't trust her or want her to run errands for him or something. It was just... he liked doing it by himself. He loved to do things for himself. He always had. Patrick moved the french fries into the pan, and reached for a spatula to start cooking them. "You gonna try some of these when they're done?"
"Sure. Ah'm always up fer tryin' new things," she answered, concentrating on her sketch now. She was almost finished, and maybe if she could finish it, she could eat the fries, thank him, and be on her way. Paige was finding more and more that she didn't like feeling inadequate. And she was feeling that way more now than she used to. But instead of letting herself wallow for the moment, she glanced up and flashed him a quick smile, then shifted back to her sketch.
"Mmm, good, you'll like them," he said. He worked on frying them, stirring them just slightly too much. It seemed like it was taking forever, and Patrick's patience was about starting to get over with. He was hungry, damnit.
While Patrick worked on his fries, Paige worked on her sketch. She perfected shadows, fixed the furr on some of the wolves' edges, smudged some of it out to soften it. Once she was finished, she looked up at him and cocked her head, trying to figure out what to title it. To her, a sketch wasn't finished unless it had a name.
He was oblivious to her looking at him, as he was still firmly fixed on cooking. The fries wouldn't be pretty when they came out. They never did. Not when Momma made 'em. Not when Dad made 'em. Not even when Cheyenne made them, and she was a gourmet chef. It was just something about them. They looked ugly and tasted amazing. Weird, wasn't it?
Thinking, she touched her pencil to her paper again and wrote in her neat scrawl. Touch. She didn't know why she named it that, other than the fact that he couldn't. And it was a little sad to her. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she ripped the page out.
Patrick heard the rip and turned his head back to look at her, and then tossed his head back to watching his potatoes. Finally he finished and turned the burner off, then moved to get a bowl and scoop some of the potatoes into it. "Do you want ketchup?"
"Are they any good with ketchup? Ah mean, normal fries are, but garlic fries could be completely-" She stopped, rolling her eyes at herself and offering him a smile. "Yes please." Flipping the sketch, she signed the back in the bottom corner.
He snorted. "They're actually best with ranch. Not like you buy off of the salad dressing aisle, but the kind you get from a restaurant. They're not bad with ketchup but if I don't have ranch, I usually eat them dry."
"Alright then. Dry it is. Hit me." She straightened up, sliding the sketch to him. "An' you can have this. If ya want it, Ah mean." She was anxious to try the fries and to see his reaction to the sketch.
He slid the bowl onto the table beside her and reached out to pull the drawing towards him. He glanced down at it, watching it with brown eyes. Him and wolves, with 'Touch' scrawled across the page. He frowned and then picked it up. "Me?" he asked.
Paige shrugged. "Ta be honest, yer nice ta look at. An' Ah like yer name. Yer not rude or mean an', while a little... miguided in some thoughts... ya generally seem like a decent person. So, Ah thought ya'd make a great subject. If Ah crossed a line, Ah apologize." Paige had learned the hard way that not everyne liked to be sketched without their permission.
"A little misguided?" he echoed, crossing his arms. He didn't mind if he'd been sketched. It was sort of a compliment, but the misguided thing confused him. Really confused him. What was he misguided about?
"Yeah," she chuckled. "Ah'm not a kid." Despite what he may think. She was a young woman who knew where she stood more often than not. And she'd stopped being a child when she had to take the reigns at home. "But othah than that, tha conversation was nice. Thank you fer it. An' fer tha fries." Reaching out, she snagged one and bit in, grinning. "These are really good."
"I didn't call you a kid," he said. He'd never called her a kid. At least not that he knew of. He hadn't called her a kid. If he'd referred to kids, he'd referred to the ones that he taught. And she was the same age, but that didn't mean she was a kid as far as he was concerned. She was just more like his college students...
"Ah took it as such when ya mentioned that ya liked ta go on yer errands kid-free. If that's not what ya meant, whethah wholly or partially, then Ah'm sorry Ah mistook it. That'd be mah fault. But nobody's perfect." She smiled, slipping another fry into her mouth. They really were good. "Yer gonna hafta teach me how ta make these fer when Ah go home ta mah family. They'd kill fer these."
"I meant student-free," he laughed. "My students currently." Of course, Paige was still "student material" for Patrick. She pretty much always would be. He was fourteen years older, and had his Ph.D. And he had a tendency to be stuck up about it...
Paige wouldn't turn down the chance to knock him off the high horse of a Ph.D. should the need ever arise. She would also hope it never did. "Ah see. Well then, Ah feel kinda embarrassed." Age was never a huge factor to Paige, but then again, when there was the chance that a person was never as old as they looked, that was something that Paige had just settled into here. For someone like Paige, all that mattered was feelings and where life took a person. Though for someone like Patrick, she could understand dwelling on the numbers.
Patrick was, first and foremost, a teacher. Everything, even history, took a back seat to teaching. And it was a teacher's instinct not to get involved with any person who may, at any time, appear as though they were a student. That included girls who had just graduated. Besides, he already had issues touching people. They wouldn't get on well... since she liked touching, apparently. And Patrick... well, Patrick didn't.
Taking another fry from the plate, she slipped it into her mouth, finding the silence a little uncomfortable. "So... would ya like ta keep it? If not Ah could just take it an' put it with tha rest of mah sketches." She was wondering if he liked it, really. He hadn't said anything about it since she handed it to him.
"Mm, I would. I like art." At least, some of it. Honestly, he could never get over those creepy Halloween sketches of his brother's. And then there was that mural he'd seen in downtown Barcelona. Yeah, that was special, too. He nodded and picked it up. "It's nice."
A tiny smile spread across her features as she nodded. "Alright then. Ah should get goin'. Ah've started a computah program Ah wanna finish before tha week is out. If ya leave tha dishes Ah can get them latah. Thank you... fer tha fries. They really were delicious. It was nice ta meet ya, Paddy."
Patrick grinned. "Momma's recipe, I swear. Never fails." He stretched a little, shirt riding up to show about a half an inch of skin before relaxing again. "I can get the dishes. I figure I ought to... I made them, right?"
A bloody tease, she thought, channeling Jono for a moment. That's what he was. But instead of letting her eyes linger where they wanted, she shook her head. "Its perfectly fine. Ah don't mind gettin' them. Ah usually do it when tha youngah ones leave them so Ah'm used to it."
"You sure?" Patrick asked, raising an eyebrow as he went to get his own bowl of fries. Half cold, but that didn't matter. Food all the same. "I can get them, I swear."
"Ah'm sure. Ah'll see ya around, Paddy. If ya need anything, don't hesitate ta knock on mah door. Ah'm always around an' always willin' ta help."
Patrick smiled. "Well... alright." He picked up his frypan and moved it into the sink, and the cutting board, knife, and potato peeler followed. "It was nice to meet you, Paige."
She nodded, smiling a little brighter. "See ya." Scooping up her sketchbook, she turned and exited the kitchen.