A Random Coffee House, The Mainland, Friday Evening

[stars_and_money]

Handwavily, Jeremy and George had caught meta for The Graduate at a movie theater on the mainland. It had been... Well, they hadn't exactly caught that much of it, to be honest. But the opening credits had looked good! Really, top notch! Or something. Whatever. Movie theaters were dark and the back row was made for way better things than actually

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[onapalebicycle]

George was totally glad that she had gotten a chance to see The Alumnus and could see now why it was a classic of cinema. Those had been some excellent opening credits and then the little bits of dialogue she had overheard here and there were really top-notch.

She paused to pose, dramatically, in her dress, which might be kind of fancy for a movie-and-coffee date but hello, he was going to wear the Ferragamo again. She had to step it up a bit to match.

"Still not as awesome as the suit," she said. "Probably way less expensive. Except you said rich people get shit for free. Was it a free suit? You have to tell me if it was, or else that's cheating."

[stars_and_money]

"No, I paid for this, I swear," Jeremy assured her with a laugh. And a slightly more lingering look because hey, she was posing and it was a really, really nice dress. "Although I think I did get a discount... It's kinda hard to remember sometimes."

He'd acquired quite a few new suits over his two recent trips back home.

[onapalebicycle]

Was he checking her out? Whoa. He was. This shouldn't surprise her, because they had been making out for the entire theatrical length of a freaking movie, but ... wow. It kind of did.

"So rich people get discounts and poor people pay full price," she sighed, teasingly. "How am I supposed to keep up? I work at a record store. I mean, the employee discount is sweet, but I can't be a sugarmama on that kind of salary. Not unless you want to be a kept man on the cheap."

[stars_and_money]

"No, see, the beauty of being me is that I can be my own kept man," Jeremy reasoned. Such high aspirations he had. "And you can just enjoy the benefits. Much easier that way, and you get to keep your salary."

[onapalebicycle]

"So what do you get out of the deal?" she asked, picking out a convenient table and pulling out a chair. This coffee shop was cozy. Maybe they even served ice cream? That would be just about perfect. "If you're footing the bills yourself, it could just be the Jeremy Darling Swinging Bachelor Pad."

[stars_and_money]

"Your company, obviously," Jeremy pointed out easily enough. He made sure she was seated all comfortably before pulling out a chair of his own. (That stuff was in his blood, he couldn't help it.) "Duh. Why else would I even be here?"

[onapalebicycle]

"People aren't ... usually fond of my company," she admitted, with a wry smile. "That's the kind of thing I got on report cards. 'Does not play well with others.'"

She wasn't aggressive or violent or anything, just ... antisocial.

"What about you?" she asked. "Nerd? Jock? Slacker?"

[stars_and_money]

"That last one, maybe," Jeremy shrugged, leaning back in his chair, and almost looking like he was giving it serious consideration. "I don't know if they ever really wrote it on my report cards but there was talk of me, like, not performing up to school standrads. Of course, we got kicked out of a couple of schools..."

Or, you know, so many that Tripp Darling had no choice but to send them to a boarding school outside the city.

[onapalebicycle]

"I'm impressed," George said, raising her eyebrows. "I just dropped out. College, before I even started."

And now she was back in high school again. That was weird.

"How did you get kicked out? Set something on fire?"

[stars_and_money]

"Well, only once, and it was an accident. No one got hurt." Was he kidding? It was hard to tell. Plus, he was tilting his head quizzically now. "How'd you end up back in high school?"

[onapalebicycle]

"What did you burn?" George asked. "I'm actually not sure. I mean, I know how I'm here. There were tickets, and something higher up the food chain enrolled me, and you don't really argue with ... those kind of ... decisions. Maybe it's a technicality since I graduated early and this place is sort of ... nontraditional."

She bit her lip. "My life is ... really fucking complicated."

[stars_and_money]

"I'm getting that vibe," Jeremy agreed, momentarily (or possibly for good) distracted from that time he'd messed something up in a chemistry class, which had resulted in a mild case of flames. "But hey, aren't all lives?"

His wasn't, really. He just sometimes thought it was.

[onapalebicycle]

"Most of them," George said, after a few moments of reflection. "The really interesting ones, anyway."

Like Mason. Drilling a hole in his head, looking for the ultimate high. okay, so maybe 'interesting' was a synonym for 'pathetic,' but hey.

"So ... if you don't have a favorite band, does that mean you don't have a favorite movie, either?"

[stars_and_money]

"Kinda," Jeremy admitted. "I mean, I like movies, I just don't... really have any set favorite." He was all abundance, in a lot of ways. "Do you?"

[onapalebicycle]

She had to consider that one, too.

"I don't know," she admitted. She wasn't coming up with much of anything, except late-night cartoons.

"Except ... you know what's really fun?" she asked, leaning in. "When you're really bored on a Sunday afternoon, and you find a local channel that's re-running a really shitty movie from the 70s as the Sunday Movie. One that you know that they got for like three bucks because they have nothing else to put on. And you only tune in halfway through, so you don't know why those two people are bickering so much, and it take you fifteen minutes to figure out that they're the couple that was using the trip to try to repair their marriage, except it just came out that he was cheating. But he says he's sorry, and that's how you know he's gonna try to sacrifice himself for her the next time the water level goes up. Oh, and it's a disaster movie, like the Neptune Incident or the Gigantic Blaze."

[stars_and_money]

Jeremy grinned. "Oh, dude, I know exactly what you mean." Benefit of the slacker lifestyle! "But, you know, I think I prefer comedies? You know, like... Ones where you don't laugh at a joke and you can't figure out if that's because you're too young or too high, or if it just was a crap joke."