( FLASHBACK : FOUR WEEKS AGO ) THERE'S A REASON THEY CALL A FREQUENTED PLACE A HAUNT. CHERISE RETURNS TO PANHANDLE, WHERE IT ALL STARTED. ╱ feat. JUDGE WATERHOUSE of @scpsis
her elbows collect on the hostess stand, weight leaned all the way into the dark wood pedestal the same way cherise slants all her charm onto the woman behind it. hey, i've got an interview with judge. could you grab him for me? at her nearness the hostess's features pull from unsure to in some way dazed, unbalanced by both the appearance of the type of face that certainly doesn't belong in the cove — beautiful and metropolitan, marked quietly by something larger than life — and the conspiratorial way with which it hovers. she's good at that, cherise already knows, but the reminder is a sweet, steadying force against that teetering creature of her nerves, so she lays it on a little thick, warming herself against the girl's astonishment. a hand brushes her wrist. thanks honey.
behind the partition of the waiting area she sits and pulls one bare thigh over the other, her legs collected and assembled in an angle that would make a mathematician reach for his instruments. how do we replicate this slant? she lights a cigarette from her place on the leather bench, and it's only partially to curb the gnawing sense of wariness: the other part of her simply wants to stain the place he holds dear. when judge comes around the corner, cherise finds he looks the same as remembers: handsome and full of blame.
"well?" she says instead of a greeting, using in place of hello or hey there some unrelated word with little meaning. it resembles in some way how they used to speak, substituting dense phrases for polite ones that could be used in public: you win for this need is making me sick, or come here for there's nobody for me but you. the smoke she exhales comes from the stick of her lit cigarette, but for a moment there's the sensation that it's summoned from somewhere deeper, that she's breathing out the fumes from some ember that crackles and spits at his nearness. her gaze tilts over the rim of her sunglasses, burning hot. she smiles, pointedly unpretentious, scalding. "i didn't get my interview time wrong, did i?"
