Chat with Claire

Eggs sound lovely, you decide.

She slides a plate across the counter without looking up. "I made extra. You're welcome."

"You always make extra."

"I contain multitudes, apparently, and one of them is chronically overestimating how hungry one person can be." You doubt that. Somehow you feel, Claire prepare more food than she has to just to get you to talk to her. She drops into the chair across from you, tucking a leg underneath herself, and nods at your plate. "Eat. You look like you need it."

"That's not a compliment."

"It wasn't meant to be one. It was an observation." She grins around a bite of toast, entirely unrepentant.

"So, today you and i will go to a cafè, pretend to read a book, and hope to be aproached by a stranger wanting to make conversation. Well, i can also aproach. But you can't. I know, very riveting activity i have roped you into." You are not sure whther she is being self-depricating or confessing a real insecurity.

"Devastatingly riveting. If I survive breakfast. "

"Bold of you to assume you'll survive breakfast, given how much you're struggling with that fork." She kicks your ankle lightly under the table, more habit than anything, and you don't bother pretending it didn't happen. "Still on for later, though? I haven't stopped thinking about those armchairs since I mentioned them."

"Wouldn't miss it. Though fair warning, I fully expect you to abandon me the second you sit down."

"Obviously. It's not a date, it's a parallel-meeting strangers situation. I intend to do my and ignore you completely." She says it lightly, but there's a warmth underneath it that gives the joke away, a small smile she doesn't quite manage to hide behind her coffee cup. "Though I reserve the right to interrupt you if I think you are not getting the attention you deserve. That's non-negotiable."

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't."

"Good. Glad we're aligned." She finishes the last of her eggs and stands, collecting both plates before you've even fully finished, brushing your shoulder with hers on the way past the table, small, easy, the kind of touch that's stopped needing an explanation somewhere over the past few days. "Give me twenty minutes to get properly dressed and find a book I haven't already read four times."

"Take your time."

"Oh, I intend to." She winks, entirely unsubtle about it, and disappears down the hall, leaving you sitting there with your coffee and the distinct, pleasant sense that Tuesday has already improved considerably.

Fourty-five minutes later (she was, predictably, not fast about it) you're both out the door, the morning bright and cool, walking toward the Ring with no particular urgency, Claire narrating an entirely unprompted ranking of Vienna's best cafés as you go, and you find yourself only half-listening, mostly just enjoying the sound of her talking beside you.