Eve stares about the Consoneâthe building's communal area, that isâand feels her joints wince at the sight alone, of disbanded chairs and forsaken wrappers and littered surfaces. Despite it, she's fully repressed by a sense of pride at the by-products of her successful day. The sun had come and gone, as had a near hundred welcomed visitors to The Link, with budding curiosity and quilted excitement. That enthused murmur among the surges, the bright-eyed intrigue she'd noted upon them the deeper into her cause she'd dove, Eve made sure to take it all to heart. She felt as though she was doing something right.
All day, she'd conferred with adults and nattered with the youth, urged participation in the event's sweep of activities and engaged with the less casual sightseersâpotential investors, social workers and two members of the council penned in their angled suits. A few coaxing words and a paper pocket of Morgan's crowd-pleasing sugar cookies eased the lot of them well out of their rigour, and then even they found themselves stood before dozens as they rivalled a tense game of cup pong.
By half seven, only a few stragglers remained, who Morgan and Sullivan had selflessly offered to drop to their respective homes before they would return and assist Eve with her cleanup. In the meantime, she braves the chaos disinclined. Bin bagged hand and litter-picker at the ready, she begins her tour about the open space. It's not until she finally finds herself in the swing of things that she hears the entryway's automatic doors peel apart, still she has half a gratified mind to send her friends on their way.
Upon the prolonged silence, she leans upright and turns. Then, she unfists her bin bag, and runs her clamming hand up and down the rough fabric of her jeans. To her tummy-turning surprise, she stares at Jahseh and he stares right back at her, in a black, collared tracksuit and a chain that paints its glint about the room like a disco ball.
"Oh, hi."
Jahseh's pocketed hands remain so, even as he makes a slow venture deeper into the space and toes about the mounds of swept dirt along the floor. Not a sliver of skin is spared from the flustered heat quick to ornament her. Eve fights against her anxious smile and the sudden alp in her energy, when a mere thirty seconds ago she'd caught herself half asleep where she stood.
Jahseh hovers a table's distance from her, "You alright?"
"Uh, yeah. You came," Eve says. Candidly as she tries for, her happiness at the fact is blatant.
"You asked me to," he reminds her. Eve allows her smile to unfold, she steps up to the table, glancing thoughtlessly about the unpeopled room. She had asked him to, but even then she'd surprised herself with her manful nerve. To meet Jahseh's apathy with an invitation, and then to have him actually accept itâEve can admit she hadn't bothered to prepare for the possibility.
Yet here he is.
"Everyone's gone, but Morgan and Sullivan'll be back soon."
Jahseh nods. He's slow to survey the sty of a place, but still pushes past its state to imagine its daily face, or rather imagine Eve shepherding droves of misshapen kids through its doorsâor whatever it is she does. "You work here?" He gestures, and then shoves his hand back into his pocket.
"I do," Eve nods. "You want me to show you around?"
"Alright."
Even as she guides him throughout the entire building, gliding from one room to another with careful verses on their each and every purpose, to which she's met with Jahseh's hummed ad-libs and guarded stares, Eve still finds herself caught up in his presence. He really is a mystery to her, as closed a book as ever, yet she's bent on the pages between the covers, the chronicles beyond the blurb.
The two now waver in the Cavea, along polished floors and an audience of low-stacked chairs that enwreathe the grand piano in the middle of the room. Quiet and yet noticeable, a cynical scoff roughs from Jahseh's throat, before Eve can begin her next bout of rehearsed jargon. "Must get hectic in here."
"What makes you say that?" Eve's head tilts.
"What type 'a kids are you recruiting? Good yutes?" The gap between the two stretches as he invites himself further into the room. "Youth outreach in the ends. You think you're pulling pianists?"
"That's part of the point," Eve shrugs. "Giving young people something to do other thanâ"
"Kill each other?"
"Something like that," she doubles down. His vague disapproval beside his enrapt attention leave her dizzy and stifled, for a moment. "My doors are open to everyone. There's too many people I have the means to help for me to start pigeonholing who's troubled enough to be here. They all deserve somewhere."
His brows shift upwards, "Somewhere? Like here?"
"What's wrong with here?"
Jahseh glances about the room, there's something at first glance blandly derisive about it, yet through Eve's rose-tinted glasses she only sees intrigue, hopeful intrigue. "You're alright, Eve."
"So you've said," she chuckles. She finds herself tuning his trivial words to something much more lyrical, they feel like a pat on the back. "Thanks for coming, I didn't think you'd show."
She can almost see him battle his internal urge to remain quiet, before he pushes out a prying, "Why?"
"I wasn't sure it'd be your scene. All the kids and stuff."
"It isn't."
Eve blinks, the hem of her dress swings about her ankles as she skews slightly from side to side. "So why'd you come?"
"Why'd you ask me to?" He rebuttals. She purses her lips and he nods curtly to himself, like he'd come to know her better off that alone. "Where you from?"
Eve breaks out in an unfortunate grin, "Ah, is this a g-check?" She can't describe the flush of embarrassment that tides over her as every corner of his face folds in on itself in confusion.
"A what?" He asks and thenâto her shell shocked delightâhe all but bursts into a fit of laughter. She blinks, watching his lowered head bob as he directs his hysterics towards the floor, meanwhile she's torn between her humiliation and reeling awe at the sound of his laughter. He looks back towards her, and every bit of his dying smile sets her alight well within. "Bro, what you talking about? Who are you? For real."
"Who are you?"
He shrugs, "Jahseh, innit."
"Well..." She shrugs, unable to compose herself at his sudden openness, even from her seat at the butt of the joke. "I'm Eve, innit."
His lips thin but the phantom of that beautiful smile lingers with the curl of his mouth. Eve stands carefully still, as if the littlest of movements will knock him back into his chary mould. "Hm. Nice to meet you, Eve."
Oh, how she melts. The silken lows and rugged edges of his voice, the honeyed ease he utters with her nameâEve feels beyond strung out, beyond weak in the knees.
Their moment is cut short by her ringing phone, almost entirely muted out by the deafening stillness of their eye contact, until Jahseh glances towards its glowing screen. She reads Morgs with a foggy dismay, "They must be outside."
Jahseh nods, surveys the room once more, then takes his sweetened time to file out. Eve stares after him like the awestruck groupie she's come to be. Even at this realisation, she takes hastened steps after him just as his slow to meet hers.
Etiquette, or the dawning hidden threads of their fatal attraction.
Bruv, ten chapters deep and still nothing, I need to get a move on. I don't know what to dooooo, only the plot twists and the bits that are gonna spin people.
Again, no idea what to say... Tell me what you think. They're a little bit cute.
See ya whenever, at this point.