Tessa loved these conversations with Ace, learning more about who he was as a person outside of the public perception. Flirting was one thing, it was fun and probably the closest thing to a high she could get anymore, but she was more interested in connection. "You like getting your photo taken, huh?" she smirked, letting him continue with his story. There seemed to be a lot of similarities between the Claymores and the Lisbons in the way they'd only really had each other at the end of the day. "Nova used to be like that, would be crying like the world was ending one second, then pure sunshine the next. And that was when she was fifteen." She couldn't even imagine how hard it must have been for him to miss his brother. She'd almost lost Cecily, and hell, her sisters had almost lost her more than once and they still carried the trauma of that to this day. "I, uh, I guess one that sticks in my mind is my last birthday before I started at St Agnes. Mine's in July, so... My parents always did the same thing for us; we got to choose what we had for dinner, and they'd pick up a cake. I mean, that wasn't the good part, that was just going through the motions. The good part was when they'd gone to bed and we snuck out, only went to the park down the street because we were too scared to go any further. We watched the stars, talked about the future, about how everything was going to be better because I was the first step to getting us out. More that the others talked about their grand plans... I was so scared. But I loved them so much it made me brave."
While it was fine enough for Ace to divulge certain memories and things about himself. he would wager he wasn't nearly as used to doing so with people outside of Storm and the Lost Boys so Ace felt something that wasn't embarrassment, but closer to bashfulness It helped that Tessa seemed very receptive to listening, getting some sort of insight to him, "I'm handsome as fuck you know, so I don't mind it. Little me woulda charmed the fuck outta little you. You woulda been wearin' my ring pop at recess and shit." He continued on telling the rest of the story and listened intently to her own. He only got the story of what the fuck went on in her childhood in bits and pieces but it was enough that it painted a good enough picture to know it as fucked up in ways that were far more creative than just parents knocking their kids around. "Me, Storm and the guys would do the same thing down at the tracks. I like how you love your sisters, says a lot about you and I like what it says. I didn't know your birthday passed though. Guess I owe you somethin', I don't bake though."
