TOMAS.
Jess may say that it’s okay, but everything else tells Tomas it’s not. The tone, the pain, his hypersensitive intuition, his mind. It was safer to avoid it altogether, no point diving into it if all it does was cause pain to Jess. “I’m glad.. that there were still good times to hold on to,” Tomas left it at that with a sad smile, maybe those are the things worth remembering. Maybe down the line in another hundred years, this would be something fond for him to remember too. “Impressed or just overwhelmed with ice cream?” Tomas chuckled, what may seem to be the most normal scene to him may look like a mad man’s lab to another. “Ice cream’s not too hard, the churner does most of the work, if you ever want to learn just give me a call,” Tomas shrugged more than happy to extend the knowledge of food with others. “Absolutely, with nothing to do but wait for ice cream anyways, might as well have brunch,” Tomas turned towards the counter stove, it’s mostly just a counter for playing and theatrics for the guests, but always keeping a stove out front was handy, like making eggs while talking with Jess. He narrowed his gaze observing Jess playfully before nodding and turning a flame on, “you seem like a sunny side up kinda guy, with runny yolk maybe?” Multitasking was easy enough in the kitchen, flowing between three things at a time, “nine huh? Big contender.” Tomas agreed taking a spoonful for himself the cheesy saltiness light but still packs a little bit at the back of the ride. “Oh I think she’ll be okay, she’ll swing by later today and we’ll get her inducted. Are you not our usual clientele?” He chuckled, he valued the strange, diverse range of customers that step into their shop, he couldn’t really define usual most times.
“I guess it’s cliche to say there always are good times, even if you have to look back on them to find them.” Or even if those good times were distorted, corroded by hindsight -- the memory of happiness still remained, a sweet aftertaste Jess was still chasing after. The last thing he wanted to do, though, was dump his woes on Tomas; he shrugged the off, bringing himself back to the present moment. “Hmm -- I think I’ll have to say both.” The counter around him was strewn with tubs and spoons, evidence of not just their mission to create the perfect ice cream flavor, but of the playful camaraderie in the kitchen. “That is a tempting offer, I’ll have to admit.” His cooking skills barely went beyond making a decent pasta sauce; muses didn’t need to eat, so food was often forgotten in favour of painting. A laugh burst from him at Tomas’ assessment -- sunny side up, even if it was just how he liked his eggs, wasn’t a word he’d ever thought he’d be associated with. “Close to a ten -- I wonder whether the --” Jess trailed off, trying to remember the name. “The one from near Verdun. I wonder how that would taste in ice cream.” In an odd way, it seemed fitting to take something from his past, a memory of a breathless, mud-stained afternoon, and turn it into something as fun as ice cream. His ghosts would’ve laughed. “That depends on whether you have stray artists wandering in off the street at every hour of the day.” In this district, they probably did -- Jess realised as an afterthought that the theatre was nearby. Kingston had mentioned something about some of their actors coming to the bakery. “Do you ever get anyone from the theatre?”