7pm, but the summer sky wasn’t yet dark; the sun hovering in that space it occupied right before sunsets, elongating shadows and casting a yellow sort of haze over the town. Pine used to love the sun like this, the way it’d filter through the trees, making their edges glow. It made him nostalgic, melancholic sad, but peaceful. He hated it when they were travelling away from Boden. The glaring sun in his eyes while he drove made him irritable, prone to snap at Willow’s nervous energy as she sat curled up in the passenger seat. Now, he couldn’t exactly say how he felt about this time of day.
That’s what he was thinking about, sitting on the curb outside the record store, looking exactly as unwashed as was when he saw Prudence just a few hours ago. A bag of Florida’s finest oranges sat beside him on the the curb, a piping hot coffee clutched in his left hand. A part of him had wanted to come without the coffee and somehow convince her to go to café with him so they could actually sit down together, but he felt like he’d been testy enough with her today.
There was just some foreign, inexplicable want in him to talk with her. And when she suggested she hated her family because they were liars Pine wasn’t a confrontational person, but he wanted to know about that. Not because he was nosy or in the need for a good earful of drama, but because it was Prudence saying this. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to; Pine had never cared for anyone outside his family. It made him uncomfortable and elated all at once, at the same time nervous he’d lose it all.
The sound of the door opening pulled him from his the story pulled him from this thoughts. He turned to look at her, squinting through the sunlight. “It’s past seven o’clock. You’re late.”