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 Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 8:28 pm
Delilah waited beside the fountain in the dead center of the mall, sitting beneath one of the skylights. She tilted her face upwards to catch some of the sunlight and she dropped her hands back to brace herself against the bench as she stretched out her knee-sock-clad legs for better balance and daintily crossed her ankles. She felt her hair fall heavy down her back, the sides barely pinned back with tiny flower clips and her usual vibrant flower. She smiled a bit. Carlisle might have been late but, for once, she didn't mind. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a pair of teenage boys give her a once-over and she bit back a smile before stretching a bit more and closing her eyes to better enjoy the attention and the sunlight.
No, she did not mind at all if Carlisle was late.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 8:47 pm
Carlisle finally shook off the well-meaning family members and fled for his life to the doors of the mall. Who knew that birthdays were this important to his aunts and uncles? It seemed like too much trouble, he thought as he slowed his pace enough that he could see the book titles. He was working on a mystery novel of some kind; it was old, and his aunt laughed whenever she saw him looking at it. Tracey something, maybe, he thought. The book was wedged between two thin DVD-sized packages. Unopened cards rested between the pages- he picked them out and put them back inside the bag.
Hitting the large open space in the center of the mall, he slowed down and tried to straighten his hair enough to not look like he'd just run from a ravening pack of hyenas. It didn't quite work, and he was still trying to part his bangs from the rest of his hair when he sat down next to Delilah. "Sorry I'm late," he said, breathless and still trying to get longer locks back where they went, "There was family everywhere. You look pretty today," in just one of those mindless Carlisle compliments that he would give to anyone.
The name of the book was Trixie Belden. Right! "Um, how are you," he tried, but the teenage boys had caught his eye, too, and he looked at them warily.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 9:20 pm
"Mm, I'm fine." His arrival barely shifted her and it was a moment before she lifted her head and turned to smile at him. She neatly ignored the boys in favor of the new arrival. She regarded his struggles with his hair and then pushed herself further upright. "And thank you," she added. "I'm trying a new look." The new look was apparently "school girl chic." Suddenly, she raised slim fingers and began helping him set his hair to rights. It was a remarkably neutral gesture, simply a polite sort of friendly thing to do. "How are you?"
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 9:52 pm
She seemed okay with them staring and so he decided he was, too, making a conscious effort to ignore them. "It looks nice," he said, attempting to help her keep the locks straight but dropping his hands when it became evident he was only in the way. Girls seemed to do much better at hair-related things than he did, or than most boys did even. He regarded that as slightly unfair, and would have said something, only it seemed rude.
"Uh, I'm doing okay." It was only slightly a lie, since he was sort of doing better than okay while also doing worse than okay, which actually did maybe add up to being okay. He wasn't too good with words, but he knew how to be polite and well-behaved and he also knew his history. "How are you?" Carlisle really was curious, it was just a thing! You had to be nice to ladies, and Delilah was one of the nicest of the ladies he knew.
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Posted: Sun May 17, 2009 10:16 pm
Delilah finished rearranging his hair and then slipped her palms down the sides to better smooth it. She sat back with a smile, still ignoring the boys who were now lingering by the ice cream stand to the right. "Much better," she announced. Then she planted one hand behind her, straight-armed, and leaned back a bit to study him. "I'm fine. Much better now that we have sunshine again." She sighed heavily. "The winter just went on and on, don't you think?"
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Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 9:12 pm
"Thank you," said Carlisle, who thought winter had gone by far too quickly, and since she asked, he said uncertainly, "Actually, I wish it had taken longer. My birthday is in spring and it's never much fun." He didn't have to mention that today was his birthday, since it sounded really greedy to him and he didn't like to really think about his birthday anyway.
He did have a ton of gift cards though. Maybe he could put them to good use.
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Posted: Sat May 23, 2009 3:06 pm
Delilah looked at him and her head tilted. She frowned a bit as if confused. "Your birthday is in the spring?" she asked. "That would be the best time for a birthday. It's kind of like the birthday of everything, you see. Flowers and trees and all of that." She pushed herself up a bit so she was leaning towards him now, teal eyes intent, mouth smiling a bit. "Happy birthday, by the way."
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Posted: Mon May 25, 2009 6:28 pm
"Not really," he said glumly, "Most of my relatives are really far away all winter. Come spring, they're all here." She leaned forward and he reflexively leaned away, almost overbalancing but not really.
He was silent for a minute, trying to decide if he'd decided wrong about his springtime birthday, but just as he decided he hadn't she spoke. "Er, thanks," said Carlisle, "How did you know it was today?"
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Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 8:01 pm
She laughed and returned to an upright position, returning his personal space to him once more. "I didn't but you just told me," she answered lightly. She reached up to twirl a bit of hair around a manicured finger. "So thank you. It was a good guess on my part from listening to you talk." Abruptly, she unwound the hair and gave a little nod to indicate the mall around them. "So what were you interested in doing?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 7:36 pm
"Er," said Carlisle, thereby proving his intelligence. He didn't really know what he wanted to do, except maybe pretend it wasn't his birthday (or that his relatives, kind as they were, did not exist). "I dunno, what do you want to do?" Not the most mature answer, either, but he wasn't particularly concerned with that. "I dunno that I really want to study," he said apologetically, "'cause that's really what I was doing all day today and I didn't anti- errr, think that would happen."
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Posted: Thu Jun 04, 2009 9:04 pm
"Alright, then. That's fair enough." Delilah's mouth twitched as if there was laughter just behind her smile but her eyes remained gentle and warm on him. She reached up to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear and allowed her gaze to wander upwards. She considered the skylights far above them for a moment. Then she abruptly dropped her chin and refocused on Carlisle again. "Should we just pass on studying altogether then?" she asked. "You can tell me a little about how you've been doing in school and if you want me to work on anything else with you. Later. Not today." She smiled sweetly. "And then we'll just shop."
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