#imogenarnold

where: by the food trucks

So far, it's been a good day.

That's how it felt at least. He thinks he's getting better at taking the bad with the good and not focusing so hard on just the bad. Making his daughter laugh made him feel like if he could see his passed his chest and get a birds eye view of his own heart, he would see some sort of glow emanating around the muscle from the sound alone, and that was enough to make her aunt's barbs feel less like a body blow.

Good. Bad. It balanced itself out.

The flask with vodka sloshing around inside it that was sitting in the front pocket of his jeans hadn't been touched yet, even as he joined the queue to procur whatever flower themed beverage was being peddled as a must-try. He was fourth in line, but the first and second patrons were of little interest to him. It was the one directly in front of him that gave him pause.

He doesn't need to see her face to know who it was stood before him, the definitiveness about it inexplicable even to him. It was just a feeling. He'd know her at any hokey festival, in any town, in any corner of the world.

Her presence in a place that had been once so exclusively his didn't leave him as shellshocked the second time, in it's stead was more of a duller ache, the kind that comes with missing someone you were always meant to lose.

With his hands clasped loosely behind his back, he leans forward so when he spoke he could get her attention, that in itself a roll of the dice given everything.

"And to think, you thought I was making this town tradition up."

Reminiscing had become a whole thing itself on a dreary day staring out the window of their London flat when he had mentioned it in passing, to her rightful disbelief. It had culminated in his flat palm pressed to a well loved Carolyn Brown novel swearing up and down he wasn't exaggerating about the flowers or the lights or how both could galvanize his hometown in a shock of camaraderie.

Though he didn't care much for the author's works itself, Imogen did and was as good as Bible to him.

where: a liqour store

With a bottle in each hand, Lucky was living out his very own Ketchup-Catsup dilemma while he was rooted in an aisle trying to decide if his day had warranted a Tito's or Smirnoff night. It didn't matter too much, yet he still found himself indecisive as he tried to pick which specific poison he would use to wipe the slate clean and try again tomorrow on the wrong foot and with a headache.

It didn't matter much either way -- every day here felt like it was the same.

Most of them for him felt like the way an overcast sky looked. Gloomy, endless, a wait for it to turn in one way or the other that never materialised. Purgatory personified. He was getting used to that feeling gradually, finding a way to feel okay about it.

Even if the sun never broke through the cloud of those feelings, he didn't need it to. The only sun he needed had her mother's golden hair and no true grasp yet on her father's shortcomings.

That could be enough, he was determined for it to be no matter how many times he found himself struck by how his hometown felt like it no longer held space for him.

Catching sight of a figure in his peripheral, he was about to take a step back to let them pass without a second glance when something told him without words to look over in their direction.

It couldn't be and yet it was.

Sometimes he worried he was some sort of emotional grim reaper, destined to drain the life out of those he wanted to keep close. He never felt more like there was an invisible scythe in his hands than that exact moment in a vodka aisle with his eyes on Imogen's.

"You're... Here."