@reticencetm // s.c.
"JESUS CHRIST." It's dark already. Jake hadn't noticed, too engrossed in the relief carving he’s been carefully etching into the back of a loveseat all day. He gets lost in his work all too often, spending countless hours bent over the worktable in his shop, only to pay the price in the morning with a wicked backache. He's getting older. Every fucking day, he's getting older.
It's easy to forget about the spry young man who'd do nothing but drink and smoke for days at a time and still wake up in perfect physical health. Losing the memories of his old self doesn't feel as comforting as Jake had originally thought. He feels almost desperate to hold onto the kid he once was; the kid with the too-big hoodies and carefully matching t-shirts; the misdirected, skinny burnout who liked to draw. The late, infamous Jesse Pinkman.
Jesse Pinkman had died a long time ago -- in that god forsaken hole in the ground at the compound with Mr. White. The man that exists in his place now is haggard and old. Prone to aches and pains and bouts of arthritis on especially cold mornings.
Jake rises from his stool with a groan. Now is as good a time as any to take a break. It's always beneficial to take a step back from his work and come back to it; he always ends up seeing another side of it that he hadn't previously noticed.
He takes a few minutes to tidy up his mess: sweeps the wood curls from his carving into a neat pile in the corner and sets his tools gently back into his tool belt and setting it on the stool by his worktable. His breath is visible when he opens the door and turns to lock it behind him, and he’s almost too busy pretending to be a dragon to notice her.
He stops short as soon as he takes a step outside the shop. He’s seen her twice today: once when he left the shop to get a coffee at the cafe next door and once when he left to buy a new pack of cigarettes at the gas station down the street. She’s been there for hours, parked in her car -- and now she’s standing outside of it, leaning against the rear passenger door. She looks expectant. She looks... unfamiliar. A stranger. And there are no strangers in this town -- not to Jacob McKinley, the man who seems to know everyone on a first-name basis.
Dread makes itself at home in the pit of Jake’s stomach. He keeps his eyes down as he makes his way to his bike -- and he hopes to God that this stranger isn’t here for him.
