A winter workshop at the local museum seemed like the perfect place to hand out some business cards and promote his newly founded company -- especially when it was bound to be filled with fellow creatives. He recognized some faces, perhaps not quite able to claim himself a local anymore -- he still came back often enough not to be completely in the dark on all the people who filled the room. But in the midst of an admittedly dry conversation with some old professor, he spotted a face that he hadn’t been expecting to encounter. Rarely did he have one-night-stands anywhere outside of Los Angeles, how small a community like Catalina was in comparison always leading him to fear that there might be some added expectation to the fling, or some shared friendship that would render it awkward later on. But he could remember her, a brief conversation about art and films a couple of months back leading to a connection over the creative parts of both their industries that had, in spite of his reservations, ended with them in a tangle of limbs.
There’d been the briefest period of time where he’d attempted to try dating once more -- alone in L.A., feeling like his life had been turned upside down and wanting to escape the crippling pain. But the truth, as he’d discover, was that he perhaps wasn’t meant for relationships. Friendships he could keep, even when it took him longer than others to gain enough trust in another to establish one that was concrete and lasting. With time, he’d learned that he preferred to keep his distance from entanglements of the heart, even if he couldn’t completely cut himself off from purely physical connections. Still, it was rare that he didn’t at least ask their names, or establish some line of conversation that would leave the encounter feeling slightly more than merely superficial. He needed that. Just because he wasn’t interested in a relationship didn’t mean that he didn’t, on some level, care about the girls he’d been with. There were some that had even become friends, although most remained as an amalgamation of faces whom he hoped the best for but had kept no further contact. A quizzical expression crossed his features as he made his way over, deciding that it would be rude not to at least address her, especially when he’d found her line of work fascinating. “Amina? It’s good to see you again.”
