closed for: @imogenarnold
where: by the food trucks
So far, it's been a good day.
That's how it felt at least. He thinks he's getting better at taking the bad with the good and not focusing so hard on just the bad. Making his daughter laugh made him feel like if he could see his passed his chest and get a birds eye view of his own heart, he would see some sort of glow emanating around the muscle from the sound alone, and that was enough to make her aunt's barbs feel less like a body blow.
Good. Bad. It balanced itself out.
The flask with vodka sloshing around inside it that was sitting in the front pocket of his jeans hadn't been touched yet, even as he joined the queue to procur whatever flower themed beverage was being peddled as a must-try. He was fourth in line, but the first and second patrons were of little interest to him. It was the one directly in front of him that gave him pause.
He doesn't need to see her face to know who it was stood before him, the definitiveness about it inexplicable even to him. It was just a feeling. He'd know her at any hokey festival, in any town, in any corner of the world.
Her presence in a place that had been once so exclusively his didn't leave him as shellshocked the second time, in it's stead was more of a duller ache, the kind that comes with missing someone you were always meant to lose.
With his hands clasped loosely behind his back, he leans forward so when he spoke he could get her attention, that in itself a roll of the dice given everything.
"And to think, you thought I was making this town tradition up."
Reminiscing had become a whole thing itself on a dreary day staring out the window of their London flat when he had mentioned it in passing, to her rightful disbelief. It had culminated in his flat palm pressed to a well loved Carolyn Brown novel swearing up and down he wasn't exaggerating about the flowers or the lights or how both could galvanize his hometown in a shock of camaraderie.
Though he didn't care much for the author's works itself, Imogen did and was as good as Bible to him.
"Hey."