pine–nation:
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.”
The last few hours dragged without anyone or anything to keep her entertained. The remaining customers that came through the front doors either didn’t buy anything or didn’t buy anything worth her time and energy to even try to talk them out of it. Why bother? They either wouldn’t listen or they’d only complain to the manager that she was being too intense over something as trivial as music. If they cared at all about what they were doing to their eardrums, maybe they’d listen and put in something worth while.
But the only thing that had her going until the end of her shift was the possibility of someone waiting for her when she was done, though most of her didn’t think he’d be there at all. Why would he? No one else paid attention to her, pretending they were listening in reality, they weren’t. She didn’t have the star quality of her sister or the soulful brooding that her brother had so what was there left for someone that constantly lived in the shadow of her older siblings? She had music and it had her, that was it. Yet when she looked out front, pausing as she gathered her things, she saw a familiar shape waiting on the curb for her and Pru didn’t know how to react other than the only way she knew how, to push away.
“And you’re annoying, already. If it bothers you so much you can stay here and we can try this again tomorrow,” she frowned slightly, eyes narrowing at the sight of him before she stepped clear of the doorway and let it shut behind her. “You stay here, I’ll go home, and when I get out from work tomorrow I can try to be more punctual for you.”