Waffles or Bust || ben + eva
aifbenjamin:
To be honest … he’d been procrastinating.
He had one last paper to finish writing before the fall term was over and he’d promised himself that he wasn’t going to wait until tomorrow to start it. That didn’t mean, of course, that he couldn’t volunteer to close up the shop on his own so his sister could go to the movies with Emma. He was taking his time about it, too, using extra care as he straightened up behind the counter and double (and then triple) checked his math as he wrote out the nightly deposit.
He was just about to do one final check and then lock up when Eva Magnuson literally fell right into his shop.
“Whoa, oh my god, are you okay?” He asked, running to help her up.
She was drunk. She only seemed to show up to see him when she had alcohol in her system. Part of him wondered if he should take offense, while part of him knew that she was grieving. Mostly he found he was just happy to see her at all.
“C’mon on, let me help.” He said, putting one hand gently round her waist as he helped her to feet (something that was harder than he’d thought it would be since both her buzz, her heels, and gravity were all working against him).
Eva safely back on her feet (for the moment, at least), Ben gave her a smile. “So … what’s up?” He asked, “What has you dropping in tonight?” He added, trying to be both witty and cool, but instead he found he was cringing internally at his poor attempt at a pun. “Er … I mean, you up for grabbing waffles?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine, really,” she assured him as he helped her to her feet, grabbing onto his arm to steady herself when she finally managed to stand upright. A more sober Eva might have been embarrassed at falling down in a drunken mess, but an intoxicated Eva was internally congratulating herself on wearing pants instead of a skirt. “I just... hold on,” she continued to hang onto him with one hand, the other reaching to pull off her heels. She teetered but didn’t manage to fall and, moments later, had shrunk a good three inches. “There. Perfect. Better,” she smiled up at him instantly.
Drunk and sober Eva were radically different people. Sober Eva had become much more reserved in recent years, spending most of time listening rather than speaking. She most often had a small smile on her face and prided herself on no one knowing exactly what she was thinking. Drunk Eva was the opposite. She was bubbly, she was talkative, and everything excited her. People who had known the girl for most of her life would have seen the old Eva in this version of the young woman. Perhaps that was part of the reason she was intoxicated more often than not nowadays.
Freed from the confines of her terrible heels, Eva was part skipping, part stumbling, part twirling around the comic shop. She rarely came by sober and, having been spending most nights out with her brother, hadn’t drunkenly come by recently. “You’ve rearranged,” she told him, pointing to a stand near the checkout counter. “That used to be there,” she pointed across the room. It was a pointless remark to make, but she just tended to ramble when she’d been drinking. Barefoot, she continued to wander on a path that probably only made sense in her mind before ending up behind the counter, pushing herself up onto the stool back there, teetering precariously but managing to steady herself.
“Yes!” she exclaimed at his mention of waffles.She couldn’t remember the first time they’d gone to the diner together to eat waffles while she waited to sober up, but it was undoubtedly long before she could legally consume alcohol. It had been waffles from the start and they had never added anything to the menu. It was also a drunken meal she never ate with anyone else, but she’d never told Ben that.
“No where makes waffles as good as the diner. I keep trying and trying and trying...” she leaned back too far as she spoke and nearly tumbled backwards off the stool before catching herself and laughing. “Woo. Okay. Can’t get waffles if I crack my head open, right?” she slid off the stool, catching herself on the counter as she lost her balance momentarily. “Or could we?” she laughed at the comment that really wasn’t at all funny.
“Should I call an Uber? I can’t drive because I’m drunk and also I don’t have a driver’s license,” she informed him, stumbling across the room to where she’d left her purse on the ground after her tumble. “And Xander said he had to save you from the side of the road because your car died,” she continued once she’d reached him, holding onto his hand to steady herself as she slowly leaned down and picked up her bag. As she rose back upright, her head began spinning and she tossed her arms around Ben’s neck to keep herself from falling again.
“Do you own a tux?” she suddenly inquired.
