Welcome to Gaia! ::

Jane lifts the sleeve of a tissue-thin blouse to her nose. It (the nose, not the sleeve) then wrinkles in distaste.

Holding the top at arm's length, she examines the lace collar, the self-covered buttons with their little mostly-frayed loops, and then, looking distraught, sniffs it again. This time she coughs.

She returns the hanger to its bar with an expression like a person releasing a beautiful bird, nursed by hand, back into the wild. The jingle of the bell on the door and the smoker's croak greeting of the lady behind the counter makes her look up long enough to quickly take in the newcomer, decide he isn't a thread, and return to the hunt.

The sign outside had promised a "vintage" store. In truth she seems to have stumbled into a trove of items with all the provenance of a Salvation Army find but none of the minimal concessions to hygiene. The place smells of cigarettes, moth balls, turpentine, or cat piss, depending on the aisle, and although she has been here less than fifteen minutes she has already scooped up four blouses and then abandoned them to the stinky recesses from whence they came. Maybe this is for the best. The rickety dressing room has a hollow core door sawn off at the tops and bottoms, a door that looks like it's prone to not latching correctly and swinging open as soon as someone walks by, revealing the semi-naked and horrified contents of the room and oh god oh god that is unbearable to consider, abort thought process.

Wrapped in gauzy, ruffled skirts and a long cardigan, Jane looks like a weathered doll, perfectly at home among the smelly old things. Even her pudgy over-pink cheeks and plump, tights-clad knees look like they belong on a toy you'd find in a grandmother's attic. She discreetly puts a hand over her nose.

Maybe the men's clothes will be better. Maybe the ammonia urine smell of the old lady clothes will be swapped for cigar smoke, which at least comes out with repeated washings. She drifts towards a rack of ties (or to judge from the sign, a rack of MANS TIE'S), only to realize too late that on the adjacent side of the rack is the boy who'd just come in. She already has a tie in her hand, absently feeling the silk, so she can't just leave, that will be too obvious. Must be nonchalant. Must be casual. Ignoring the fact that something about the boy tugs at a corner of her memory, dismissing it, she does what she so often does and pretends to be hyper-focused on the merchandise. For a moment she bends over an ugly wool tie with the intensity of an engineer clutching a jeweler's loupe, but her false reverie is interrupted by a spot of color in the corner of her eye. She reaches for a particularly attractive piece that looks like it is probably silk, probably old, and probably designer, for a moment genuinely distracted from her fear of being spoken to by the allure of what looks like it would make a clever doll belt or headband or purse strap.

Her own hand had jerked back like someone had spilled sulfuric acid on it, and she had turned her head back to the ties as if nothing had happened, but now it was too late, too late. Blood runs into her face until it supercedes the too-much blush she is wearing and creeps unattractively towards her hairline. She manages to look at him without looking him in the eye.

She has a vague memory: being at someone's house for some godforsaken reason, maybe even a few times; or maybe a family at school... she can't quite put her finger on it, but the stranger's face is just that: a stranger's, familiar but unplaceable. She plays for time.

"Oh! Hi. I, uhm... long time no... since I saw you." The blush, in defiance of all reason, deepens. "It's a nice tie but you can have it, I was just going to cut it up anyway," she babbles.

"Oh! I knew," she lies, more sadly than defensively. Jane is a bad liar. "You were there when I was making posters," she adds, as thought this somehow lends credibility after-the-fact.

She clears her throat, polite and ahem-y as a little old lady, and there follows the brief awkward silence that usually does follow this type of exchange. But she can't help herself, so she pipes up: "So were you... were you gonna take the tie?" Realizing this sounds greedy, she covers: "It would look great on you. I mean not that--I mean. You should get the tie."

Goddammit. Her face is tired of burning.

"I... I wouldn't wear it." Not in its natural state anyway. That's okay. Jane can fashion a headband out of some other tie. She gestures at it, awkwardly, and again out of natural politeness and, let's face it, natural curiosity on certain topics, she asks: "Touch it up?" She takes a minute to glance at Jude's clothes again, clothes she'd barely noticed. She is clearly looking for bedazzled shirt collars or embroidered patches or something of the sort, but nothing's popping up for her. She eyes his shoes.

Oh. He means tailoring. Booooring. Not that she'd ever say so. Jane feels huge and clumsy as she absently and a bit obsessively adjusts the ties to hang straighter, still avoiding his eyes; her hands feel like bricks and her legs feel like giant flabby hams and she wonders in a panic if for some reason she smells bad. This is how it always feels.

"Oh, um. I'm good. I... just got a day off, you know? So looking around. How's... how're you?" The little hitch before she catches herself. She was clearly about to ask after his brother. Then again, it's his brother she knows--not Jude.

Drat. What does one say. A lack of experience has made Jane miserable at small talk, but she gives it a go: "So you... where do you work?" There. That's polite. And shows willing, too.

The question goes unanswered. "Oh!" says Jane, seizing with a kind of desperate joy on common ground. "I work at a coffee shop! I come in late--sometimes nights, weekends, you know--and I... I do maintenance." She blushes, again. Scrubbing toilets isn't exactly as glorious as "maintenance" but it's not a lie, either. "Are you... do you serve coffee? I don't like coffee much. I mean--"

Barista. Dammit. The word's barista. Oh, dammit. And then go and insult the merchandise. This always happens. There's a sort of wall of relief at being spoken to for more than a few sentences without being made fun of, and once it breaks she goes and makes a royal a** of herself and can't shut up.