Location: Crawford Residence (Scarsdale, NY)
With: Rowan Lister, @okiewrites
After meeting while Rowan had been fleeing a boring date, Theo and Rowan had become fast friends and then some. However, Theo’s reluctance to ever even think of dating again after what his sister had done to terrorize his ex-girlfriend had plagued him since she had literally moved out of the entire state. Rowan, on the other hand, was a different story. They both shared the life of being part of families that were more focused on the look rather than the love that could be given. So he felt as if the holidays happened to almost be the perfect time to invite her up to the house to kind of mingle with everyone who mattered (to him, at least). They had hung out plenty of times before and of course evading their families had been a pretty big theme of their get togethers. This change of pace was a bit different. Theo, of course, had lightly disguised his invite to her as an excuse for her to avoid her family while he had to be with his but she’d make it less of a nightmare.
Theo had invited Rowan over pre-party time in order to quell his anxiety about the entire thing, hoping that maybe Rowan meeting his family beforehand would make it better. So while he waited for her arrival he found himself rummaging around in various boxes to pull out family photos. Rarely was there a photo of them all together at any stage of life around the house - even when his mother still lived there - so the holidays were an exception. However, now that the divorce had been final for years it had become Theo’s job to set out photos. He hadn’t necessarily been told to do this... but he did anyway as it made things feel normal even though it was deeply abnormal.
When the doorbell rung he scrambled up from off the floor and was nearly knocked over by an excited Great Dane who rushed to stare through the door at the visitor. He took a moment to breathe before opening the door with one hand and grabbing Summer’s collar with the other, pulling her back from trampling Rowan at the door. “Hey,” he said with a grin, “You ready to get into some bullshit tonight?”
