“If you need anything, just holler.” from nadia(:
.meme_response{ source: the-mist;status: accepting; }
elliot likes nadia. it’s the kind of thought he doesn’t have often. it’s not that he doesn’t like people, at all, ever. it’s just that liking them is hard when you know more about people than they tell you, know their scars before they’ve healed enough to show. he knows more about her than she’d be happy for him to know. maybe it doesn’t matter that he knows what her discover weekly on spotify looks like right now. all the same, he shouldn’t know. he scratched the itch and now he misses it. she has facebook but doesn’t post there, but she scrolls like everyone else. i know this and there are other people who know it too. people complain, sometimes, they make statements, but at the root of it nobody cares, not enough to change anything. the success of any protest is dependent on how long you can stomach before you have to start tweeting about it.
— but i like nadia. she has a presence. it’s not hostile, not in the way that some people can be hostile. elliot wants to talk to her, and he couldn’t – wouldn’t – say that about everyone.
“i will.” the tail end of fall is maybe not the best time to visit coney island – it’s brisk and chilly and the wind is whippet-sharp, cutting like flint, like glass – but elliot doesn’t mind. is that a smile? maybe. he digs his hands deeper into the pocket of his hoodie. “thanks, nadia.” there’s a space on the bench between them. he makes it smaller. (she posts art on her instagram. i could have read her text messages, but i didn’t.) “do you want these?” on the boardwalk he’d been accosted by someone from a candy store and had a small paper bag of fudge stamped with the store’s name pressed into his reluctant grip. he’s been fidgeting with it in his hoodie pocket ever since; he offers it to her now, slightly more crumpled than it had been when it went in there. “don’t really have - uh, a sweet tooth.” if i was a different person, maybe i’d say, you look like you do. or maybe i wouldn’t. is it flattering to be told you look like you like candy? is it flirting? presumptuous? rude?
the bag crinkles.