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They hardly see each other, after all's said and done.
Well, Elize has no time to waste anymore for sure, because school is no easy business. (Or at least, that's what Alvin has heard; he can't exactly put in any personal confirmation, so don't expect him to elaborate here, please.) Running a literal business is no easy figurative business either, Alvin has now learned, so free days are precious and few for him too.
Nights like this, though, they come. Once in a blue moon, but they do come. He isn't doing better than any other night succeeding a busy working day, to be honest — accompanied by a glass that's always asking to be refilled, pleading the lazy lights to force his lashes open.
Elize picks at the straw swimming circles in the strawberry soda, in a big-rimmed glass just like his, more fitted for alcohol than syrupy soft drinks. Her legs sway in a charming pendant, struggling to adjust to the tall bar stool. It's seeing her like this — like a fly in milk, he'd say, but then there'd be no suspense over who embodies what in that simile, would there — that makes him passively wonder if there's a good reason they hardly see each other. If maybe it should just stay that way.
“So, you didn't tell me, how's school?” he asks through a mouthful of peanuts. He grimaces as he swallows, because cheap beer has to be accompanied by even cheaper snacks, apparently.
She looks up from her drink a little too abruptly, and he sees her throat bulge with the hurried gulp she takes before speaking up. “All the classes are very interesting… There are so many things about this world that I never knew!”
Now that's a funny thought: seeing the very core of this messed up world with your eyes, feeling it with your hands, and still marveling at the most basic things out of a textbook for schoolchildren. So innocent. So cute. Something scratches at him — pity and jealousy and all things petty and unpretty.
“Though, it's not as fun when I have to learn it by heart,” Elize adds low, too low, like she realized mid-sentence that it's not the answer Alvin had in mind when he posed her that vague question.
And she's right; it's not. “What about the other kids? Made any friends?”
Her face shows no change. But Alvin won't be fooled. He can see it all, the flexure of her neck, the little twitch of her shoulders. He smirks, almost.
Misery loves company a little too much, it seems.
“Everyone has been helpful so far… And there are these girls, we get along really well! But…”
Elize looks down. Alvin blinks, and her hair's broken out of the newfound preppy pigtails, free to wave in unkempt locks. All hunched inside her shell, fractured as it is, with fingers digging into pink plush, a castaway holding onto the raft for dear life.
He blinks again, and they are swinging on children's games. She keeps looking down, but he wants her to look at him, so he hops from his seat, violating the net of decorum and the safety of their skins, and kisses her cheek.
He blinks one last time, and memory and reality return to their appointed seats.
“I see. Any boyfriends, then?”
“W-What!? No!”
“Idiots. They don't know what they're missing.”
“S-Stop it, Alvin! Oh, you haven't changed at all…”
A toothless jab that barely exits her little lips; there's sourness pooling under his tongue. She is wrong, she's being unfair. He has changed, hasn't he? Yes, that's what he's been working for all this time, to change. If he hasn't, if all this time has been pointless, then-
It's okay. Even if he hasn't changed, he's trying. That's all that matters, isn't that what she'd say? That he's trying. He's trying so hard, dammit-
“What about you, Alvin?”
“What about me? Oh, if I have any boyfriends? Nah, keeping track of all the girlfriends is hard enough as it is, the boyfriends will have to wait—”
“Have you made any friends?”
The million-dollar question.
And it has an answer too somewhere in there, but it's been a long day, and the beer's not doing him any favors. He hopes Elize doesn't hold it against him much if he takes the easy way out, at least this once. Once? He doesn't know who he's trying to convince here. Put his whole damn life on a map, you'd find nothing but shortcuts and easy ways out.
(It's been a while since anyone expected enough to hold anything against him. It's a nice thought.)
“I… don't know.”
“I understand,” like fuck you do, nobody ever truly does-
“I understand how hard it is to take the first step. But when you take it, Jude and Milla, and all the others… they'll be there to accept it.”
He knows; he knows they'll be waiting, even with his gun against their back and his bullet lodged in their chest.
He knows; he just wishes Elize would tell him how he should feel about it.
“And I-I’ll be waiting too.” A gulp puffs out her throat again, but the air bubbles pop alone in the forgotten fuchsia sugar bomb. “I swear!”
Platitudes. An empty promise. A malevolent lie. A million possibilities.
Elize's face makes him want to believe in a million and one.
“Well,” he mutters between salt and foam, “maybe I'll hold you to that, kid.”