◟ with @theimanidavis ╱ hexmore outdoor theatre , after closing .
A stillness began to settle in the night's air, a stark contrast to the effervescent company the theatre kept all evening. Locals gathering around to support their neighbourhood artists, almost everyone would know everyone. It was hard not to in a town like Hexmore, especially when you ventured into the rural part of town. While it wasn't uncommon to see Benji at the outdoor theatre enjoying the company of those around him, tonight he was only there for Imani. The woman who seemed to carry on so easily in her daily life despite everything that had happened.
Waiting until the theatre would begin to clear out, and silence settled over the space until there was no potential crowd left. He knew the woman knew more than she was leading on, and he was here to get answers.
He moved around the same space as Imani, slowly assisting packing up for the night. Moving chairs back to where they belong, and watching Imani from the corner of his eye before he finally spoke up. "I never did get to speak to you after- well you know." He's referring to the breakup of course, the one that happened not long before Hazel disappeared. "You seem to be fairing pretty well considering it all."
Imani has always loved staying late in the theatre. When she was a kid, there was one time when she actually spent the entire night there, fell asleep among the design sets and that resulted in her parents being worried out of their mind, unable to find her until the sun cracked at the bottom of the horizon and Imani woke up herself and headed home. It gave her peace and quiet and distracted her mind and she needed that a lot these days.
So it wasn't at all surprising to find her to be the last one to leave the theatre at the end of the night, sometimes doing mindless tasks all alone. Hazel, while the two of them were together, has joined her from time to time, and seeing Benji move along her silently has sent pain through her heart, reminding Imani so much of that.
She wondered if Hazel ever mentioned how she used to be around similarly to Benji - Imani knew the two were close, Hazel speaking fondly of Benji himself when he came up.
The silence was broken eventually, however, and while Benji was speaking of the breakup, Imani has assumed immediately that he was referring to Hazel disappearing. Not that that was much better.
"What exactly would be expected of me, do you think? Should I throw a fit, make a scene at my place of work?" she asked, her voice think with sarcasm. "Or maybe I should do it somewhere else? Go into the Academy, make sure every single person there sees me wail and make a fool of myself? I'm going to pass on that, even if that's what you'd prefer from me."
They reached the end of the line and she stopped in front of him, looking him up and down and releasing a sigh. "You look pretty put together yourself, too, considering everything." She was being unfair, but it was easier to hide the pain she was feeling behind sarcasm and harshness, easier to not even think about the pain of losing Hazel rather than acknowledge it, especially to somebody she wasn't close herself.















