milliways_bar | (no subject)

She comes hurrying through the door while in the process of tying her hair back from her face in a ponytail.

Kim looks around the room, spots Meg, and smiles.

"Hi."

Meg sets her pen down, slides the pages she's writing on under the ones that are still blank, and looks up.

"Hi, Kim."

She finishes securing her hair with the hank of blue yarn, and asks,

"How's it going? Oh, while I'm up -- do you want something? Tea, cider...?"

No coffee.

"Good. You?

"And, um . . . lemonade, maybe? Thanks."

"Not bad, except for my hair clip breaking earlier today," Kim tells her.

"Lemonade it is. Be right back."

She's as good as her word, returning shortly afterwards with lemonade for Meg and a cup of coffee for herself.

There's a proper hair rubberband waiting at the place across from Meg's seat when Kim returns. (You never know when you're going to need to pull your hair back; Meg keeps an extra shoved in her pocket or bag most of the time.)

"Thanks."

So . . . what do they do now?

"Thank you." Kim pounces gratefully on the band, and yanks the yarn out of her hair. "This stuff kept slipping all afternoon -- do you know how hard it is to give an exam to a child when he's trying to pull your hair the whole time?"

She sits down and locks her fingers loosely around her coffee cup, then nods to the letter.

"To Alain?"

"You could keep extras at your desk," Meg says. "And . . . that, at least, is one complaint I've never heard from Dad about practicing medicine."

John Ford doesn't really have enough hair for that to be a danger.

Meg looks down at the stationary, and almost automatically straightend the pile of paper. "Yes."

"That's a good idea. I think I'm going to have to," she says, then laughs. "Can you imagine Dad with a ponytail?"

"No."

There's a beat.

"Maybe with a Mohawk, though," she adds, thoughtfully.

"You think?"

Kim considers that for a few seconds.

"Would he have to dye it?"

"Purple," Meg says.

There's a pause, and then she asks carefully, "Do you ever think about dying yours?"

Back to brown.

The hesitation, if there is one, is minimal.

"I thought about it," she says. "I still do, sometimes. It's just..."

"... it felt like it would be trying to deny what happened. How I'd changed. If I did."

A beat, and a wry smile.

"I didn't consider trying purple, though."

Meg liked it better brown. She still hasn't quite decided if she likes the white . . . but even if she does . . . she liked it better brown.

But, then, it's Kim's hair.

"You'd probably have even more kids grabbing it if it were purple," she says.

"True," she muses. "And the same probably goes for blue or green, too."

Another beat.

"I'm not even going to consider pink."

"We'd clash pretty horribly if you went with pink."

Not that they haven't managed to clash on occasion with Kim's hair white.

But.

"Good point," she agrees. "Yet another reason to stay away from pink."

"So . . . aside from hair-pulling patients . . . how have you been?"

"Pretty good, I guess."

She takes a sip of coffee.

"How about you? Anything new and exciting going on in the world of Meg Ford?"

"Dad and I went to Toronto to see the Blue Jays. They lost, but . . . it was still fun.

"We're re-wallpapering the upstairs hall. If Mom ever decides which paper she likes best.

"And I write a lot of letters."

"Who'd they play?"

She shakes her head at the news of the new wallpaper, then adds,

"I'm going to bet Alain gets most of them, right? Does he write back?"

"The Mariners. Nine to three, and Seattle scored five runs in the fourth inning alone."

Not a good night for the the Blue Jays.

"He gets a lot of them," Meg concedes. "But probably not most."

She does write to other people, too.

"He writes beautiful letters."

"Ouch."

Kim winces, then smiles at her sister.

"Oh he does, does he?"

Meg arches an eyebrow, amused.

"I'm not giving you details."

They're beautiful, but really, really personal.

"Not even one or two?" she teases back. "Not even a hint?"

"They're in French."

Kim laughs.

"That's impressive."

A beat-- just the barest hesitation, and then,

"I can't imagine Dave writing letters in French; just as well, though, because you were always better at it than I was."

"It's less impressive when it's someone's first language, I suspect," Meg says.

"I'm guessing it's not Dave's."

Whoever that is.

(Meg could guess, honestly. Five blue notebooks on all this, after all. But she's going to make Kim say it.)

"No, it's not."

After a moment, Kim adds,

"He's a lawyer. In Toronto. He was... well, one of us who went."

She doesn't need to say where.

"The other one who came back," Meg says.

Two out of five.

Less than good odds, really.

"Mm-hmm."

"I think you'd like him, actually."

It's hard for her to imagine someone not liking Dave.

"He doesn't come here, though."

"Hmmmmm," Meg says.

"So . . . am I to infer from that rather strange segue that you're . . . dating him?"

She opens her mouth, then shuts it again.

"It's, um, complicated. With me living ... well, where I do. But I guess... sorta..."

Kim's smile is a little wry as she adds,

"... anyway, I wanted you to know."

"Okay," says Meg, a little confused.

"I'm . . . I'm, um, I'm honestly not quite sure what you just told me, Kim.

"You wanted me to know that you're sort of dating someone? Or that you think I'd like him? Or that he doesn't correspond in French?"

"The first two," Kim says. "Less the French."

"Okay," Meg says.

"Um . . . what does 'sort of dating' mean?"

Because Meg tends to either date someone, or not date someone. There's not a lot of grey area on that one, for Meg.

"It means that we're seeing how things go."

Her smile's even more wry than before.

"As I said, it's a little complicated. And -- well, neither of us wants to do anything that'd ruin our friendship, no matter what else."

Meg . . . doesn't get it.

"I'm pretty sure I still don't understand," she says.

But they might want to put figure this out near the top of a to do list.

Because . . . well, it seems to Meg that you're actually running one heck of a risk of messing things up if they don't.

"So, what's he like?"

"Well, for one thing, he's really tall," Kim says, with a little laugh.

"He used to play basketball. And I think I mentioned he's a lawyer? He's --"

A slightly distant, far-away look enters her glance.

"--he's steady, but not boring. He's brave. He understands. And he's someone you can trust. With anything."

"It would never occur to me to equate steady with boring," Meg says.

"He sounds nice."

There's a beat.

"Really tall, huh?"

"Yes, but you're smarter than a lot of people," Kim returns.

"He is nice."

Beat.

"And yes -- really, really tall."

"Yes, but you're not talking to any of them.

Another beat.

"That sounds potentially awkward.

"I mean, Alain is tall, with no reallys, and even that's occasionally awkward."

Kim is taller than Meg . . . but not much.

Kim's smile turns mischievous.

"Oh, we've figured out ways to adapt."

Meg raises an eyebrow. "Have you?

"In case you're wondering, the more you talk about him, the less sort of it sounds."

Color flushes her cheeks as she admits,

"He's pretty special."

"I'm getting that," Meg says.

"I guess . . . this is completely unsolicited advice, and you can ignore it, of course, but . . . don't mess it up by trying not to mess it up, okay?"

The last year is a pretty good example of where that can lead.

She knows what Meg means, and why she's saying it.

Kim simply nods.

"Okay."