ring ring ring bananaphone:"Hi, this is Liz. I'm prooobably having an out-of-body experience, but leave a message with your name and number and I'll get back to you when I'm back, okay?"
Libby's machine clicks on, leaving as a message ..................silence. Lots of it! If it manages to convey total confusion and the inability to form the starting syllable of a sentence, that will not surprise anyone, because that is how powerful a silence it is.
"Oh. Sorry, I was um, lookin' for a um. A Libby. Not a Liz. But maybe I wrote the number down wrong. I done that before one time. Maybe two."
"Aaaaaaa-" So, that's definitely a girl calling him back shortly (long enough to fumble for the phone and hit "voicemail", listen to the message, and then pound in the numbers for Tad's phone immediately) and that's definitely something heavy and loud hitting the floor in the background "-my breakfast ... good thing I haven't ... poured anything in there yet ... Tad." Her brain was working on autpoilot for a second there, hold on. Let the rest of her catch up to where that was going. "No. This is Libby. Uhm. Hi. I only let my friends call me that. Libby, I mean. Not Liz. That's in case I get a call from a professor or something."
Pause. Rustle. She may not be awake enough to pick up a cereal bowl and also converse yet. (She's clearly not awake enough to converse intelligibly ever.) "Which you, uh, aren't. Yeah. Hi. It's Libby."
Tad may actually need the reassurance, there, but mostly that's just immediate half-awake dazed panic talking. "... hi." Stop talking, Libby.
"Libby!" He sounds marginally more awake than usual, like he is actually interested in hearing from her, which ...he did call the next day, so. (It's poor form in some Guy manual somewhere, but those sorts of rules are an encumbrance he ignores. Or sleeps through the explaining of.) "I called a Liz."
It slowly penetrates his brain, her words. Which are making sense of that for you, Tad, like words do sometimes. "So that's ...two names. I'm called Tad but am also ...Thaddeus, and um. Sometimes I let people call me Wesley."
He sounds very sly about that, and should never tell Libby any of these stories.
"Thaddeus," she says, like it's some kind of secret knowledge stolen from Atlantis and given to her in fire. This is awesome she knows his full name. "And sometimes Wesley. Your ... uhm. Your brother lets you pretend to be him sometimes?" She had to think there, because she's not sure Tad's brother ever actually introduced himself, and besides some of that conversation got lost under the memory of "Tad kisses good" and probably Tad's brother existing was one of those things.
This alertness pleases Libby in some vague way that she steadfastly refuses to label under "cute guy, likes me, AWESOME" because that would make her feel like she was still in high school and she is a sensible, mature (...) young adult living in a dorm with two roommates and that would not do because she is not in high school anymore, obviously. "Does that mean you like to wear panties like he does, hm?" Her memory of that conversation, hazy as it is, may still be better than Tad's and she may be using this fact for evil. Who knows
( ... )
"Oh, well, sometimes it's like a game we play." TAD. Do not ever say you have done this with girlfriends. "And sometimes people just ...think it an' I don't stop 'em."
It is occasionally easier than being himself, although he strategically tries to lower the expectations people have of him by being perpetually like this. Today, as previously mentioned, he is actually slightly soberer, a word which sounds wrong but is apparently spellt right, thanks Firefox!
....and then it dawns on him that this person (girl ...person, woman creature thing) whose face he was attached to yesterday is, in fact, telling him about the state of her underwear. He stares helplessly around his living room for Wes before realizing Wes is in fact in his own house. Why did he try to do this on his own, what will he say to this -- "Oh."
That. Yeah. "Well, um. Sometimes if you forget it's weird if you have to go through airport security." Weird for whom, exactly, because it's certainly not Tad.
"I could call you Wesley sometime if you want me to," Libby says. "But i like calling you Tad."
This would be a very different conversation if Tad were capable of responding to comments like that in some way other than "OH GOD WHERE IS WES THIS IS CONFUSING".
"That might get you some odd looks, yeah," Libby agrees without really thinking too hard about it - she just considers the image of airport security going "... panties?" and moves on, basically - and then starts pouring herself some breakfast, which Tad can probably hear over the phone if he's got a good enough model (Libby's phone is cheap but it has a tendency to pick up a ton of background noise). "I got Frosted Flakes. You like Frosted Flakes?"
There's a pause while she opens the fridge door and starts rummaging for the milk ... oh, it's in the front, that's where it is, why didn't she think of that. "I dunno what you eat, though - if you don't like Frosted Flakes, what do you like?"
"Uh--Fruit Loops." He thinks that's what Americans call them. "An' the vampire one?" ....Yes, that cereal, Tad. "Aaaaan' all the sugary ones, I like. Sometimes with milk."
He is a master of conversational nuance, by the way. Sometimes with milk. "But um, people only call me Wesley 'cause sometimes I pretend to be him an' sometimes the other way round." >___> Perhaps her phone is picking up the background noise of him eyeshifting. "'s not like, you know, you'd call a bloke in bed or anything." A pause. "I'd like to be called Elvis."
.............................Elvis. SO. She's wearing panties, and he wants to be The King. Awesome.
Libby pours milk all over her Frosted Flakes and takes several loud, noisy bites of it while Tad talks ... at her, basically, because she honestly wanted an answer so she's just waiting for him to finish talking before she says anything else. "Sugar's good," she says, nodding, and swallows. "It's like, one of the three basic flavors, like salt and ... uhm. Meaty bits."
Libby ... may in fact be balancing on the ball of her left foot in the middle of a kitchen, with a bowl of cereal in her hands and the phone tucked between her head and shoulder. No one ever said she was sane. (She likes Tad.) "Awwww. Well, I like you just the way you are, you don't need to pretend around me
( ... )
"Well...no, but I reckon I never asked, either. Because I just thought of it now, mostly." Her flesh bone meaty bits breakfast cereal eating is making him hungry, so as he listens and - arguably - contributes to this conversation, he also begins the process of peeling himself off of the couch to lurch forth into the kitchen.
"An' no, that's only somethin' we do to be wankers sometimes. Girls don't like it, it makes 'em hit us. 'Sides, now you c'n tell cos as far as I know Wes don't want to be called Elvis. He wants to be uh, maybe Zeus, I don't know." That sounds ...about right. "With lightnin' bolts, like." Tad, maybe this girl who likes you does not want you to inform her of your brother's lightning bolts.
"Maybe if there was some time you weren't all busy with uh, wossit--school--yeah, anyway, maybe we could go an' get sugar. Or salt or whatever, out at a place."
..........is he trying to ask her out or asking her to borrow a cup of something from a neighbor here.
"Oh." Libby considers this, for a second. "So does that mean I can call your thingy 'the King'?"
Libby is taking a science class this semester, she understands the proper use of hypotheticals.
Enjoy the sound of Libby flailing around looking for the calendar she doesn't keep important dates on to remind her of what day it is so she can remember what she might have forgotten from the calendar she tries to keep inside her own head, Tad; you're going to get a full minute of it. Well, that and a lot of "ums" and "uhs" before she finally settles the conundrum by placing the cereal bowl down on the countertop and thinking really hard. "I think I'm gonna be free - uh - I can skip studying on ... Tuesday, I have all afternoon Tuesday. We could meet ... at that bar?" That bar whose name she does not know, fantastic. (But she does know how to get there. How this works: more complicated than you want to know.) "You know, with the free food." This will always be a wonder to Libby, who is a college student and thus unaccustomed to anything
( ... )
"....um." CONGRATULATIONS, LIBBY. You've broken him. He chooses apparently in light of that to just ...go on. Slowly. Fortunately within seconds he forgets she even said it, because he's less high than usual, but that doesn't mean he's not still illegal in all the states ever.
He has to think quite hard about where "Tuesday" is in relation to their current space time positioning, and finally settles on "soon," which sounds pretty good to him. "D'you eat Thai? The food, um. Not the people."
....actually, that's sort of a loaded question, isn't it.
"... I ... yes? Thai sounds great." (Libby doesn't eat people. Usually. She's a progressive little monster, not like her mother ... these days, anyway. One time, on a vacation with her brother, she ate a platypus ... she was three, it was smaller than she was. Sometimes she wonders how her father ever put up with her as a baby.) She covers her mouth with her hand as her cheeks dimple in a smile before she realizes he can't see her and does it anyway. "I ... usually order in, but that's 'cause I don't, uhm. Have anyone I want to eat - mnh - with
( ... )
"Oh. Sorry, I was um, lookin' for a um. A Libby. Not a Liz. But maybe I wrote the number down wrong. I done that before one time. Maybe two."
...so it's definitely Tad.
Reply
Pause. Rustle. She may not be awake enough to pick up a cereal bowl and also converse yet. (She's clearly not awake enough to converse intelligibly ever.) "Which you, uh, aren't. Yeah. Hi. It's Libby."
Tad may actually need the reassurance, there, but mostly that's just immediate half-awake dazed panic talking. "... hi." Stop talking, Libby.
Reply
It slowly penetrates his brain, her words. Which are making sense of that for you, Tad, like words do sometimes. "So that's ...two names. I'm called Tad but am also ...Thaddeus, and um. Sometimes I let people call me Wesley."
He sounds very sly about that, and should never tell Libby any of these stories.
Reply
This alertness pleases Libby in some vague way that she steadfastly refuses to label under "cute guy, likes me, AWESOME" because that would make her feel like she was still in high school and she is a sensible, mature (...) young adult living in a dorm with two roommates and that would not do because she is not in high school anymore, obviously. "Does that mean you like to wear panties like he does, hm?" Her memory of that conversation, hazy as it is, may still be better than Tad's and she may be using this fact for evil. Who knows ( ... )
Reply
It is occasionally easier than being himself, although he strategically tries to lower the expectations people have of him by being perpetually like this. Today, as previously mentioned, he is actually slightly soberer, a word which sounds wrong but is apparently spellt right, thanks Firefox!
....and then it dawns on him that this person (girl ...person, woman creature thing) whose face he was attached to yesterday is, in fact, telling him about the state of her underwear. He stares helplessly around his living room for Wes before realizing Wes is in fact in his own house. Why did he try to do this on his own, what will he say to this -- "Oh."
That. Yeah. "Well, um. Sometimes if you forget it's weird if you have to go through airport security." Weird for whom, exactly, because it's certainly not Tad.
Reply
This would be a very different conversation if Tad were capable of responding to comments like that in some way other than "OH GOD WHERE IS WES THIS IS CONFUSING".
"That might get you some odd looks, yeah," Libby agrees without really thinking too hard about it - she just considers the image of airport security going "... panties?" and moves on, basically - and then starts pouring herself some breakfast, which Tad can probably hear over the phone if he's got a good enough model (Libby's phone is cheap but it has a tendency to pick up a ton of background noise). "I got Frosted Flakes. You like Frosted Flakes?"
There's a pause while she opens the fridge door and starts rummaging for the milk ... oh, it's in the front, that's where it is, why didn't she think of that. "I dunno what you eat, though - if you don't like Frosted Flakes, what do you like?"
Reply
He is a master of conversational nuance, by the way. Sometimes with milk. "But um, people only call me Wesley 'cause sometimes I pretend to be him an' sometimes the other way round." >___> Perhaps her phone is picking up the background noise of him eyeshifting. "'s not like, you know, you'd call a bloke in bed or anything." A pause. "I'd like to be called Elvis."
.............................Elvis. SO. She's wearing panties, and he wants to be The King. Awesome.
Reply
Libby ... may in fact be balancing on the ball of her left foot in the middle of a kitchen, with a bowl of cereal in her hands and the phone tucked between her head and shoulder. No one ever said she was sane. (She likes Tad.) "Awwww. Well, I like you just the way you are, you don't need to pretend around me ( ... )
Reply
"An' no, that's only somethin' we do to be wankers sometimes. Girls don't like it, it makes 'em hit us. 'Sides, now you c'n tell cos as far as I know Wes don't want to be called Elvis. He wants to be uh, maybe Zeus, I don't know." That sounds ...about right. "With lightnin' bolts, like." Tad, maybe this girl who likes you does not want you to inform her of your brother's lightning bolts.
"Maybe if there was some time you weren't all busy with uh, wossit--school--yeah, anyway, maybe we could go an' get sugar. Or salt or whatever, out at a place."
..........is he trying to ask her out or asking her to borrow a cup of something from a neighbor here.
Reply
Libby is taking a science class this semester, she understands the proper use of hypotheticals.
Enjoy the sound of Libby flailing around looking for the calendar she doesn't keep important dates on to remind her of what day it is so she can remember what she might have forgotten from the calendar she tries to keep inside her own head, Tad; you're going to get a full minute of it. Well, that and a lot of "ums" and "uhs" before she finally settles the conundrum by placing the cereal bowl down on the countertop and thinking really hard. "I think I'm gonna be free - uh - I can skip studying on ... Tuesday, I have all afternoon Tuesday. We could meet ... at that bar?" That bar whose name she does not know, fantastic. (But she does know how to get there. How this works: more complicated than you want to know.) "You know, with the free food." This will always be a wonder to Libby, who is a college student and thus unaccustomed to anything ( ... )
Reply
He has to think quite hard about where "Tuesday" is in relation to their current space time positioning, and finally settles on "soon," which sounds pretty good to him. "D'you eat Thai? The food, um. Not the people."
....actually, that's sort of a loaded question, isn't it.
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment