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When Therese leaves her apartment, she's dressed about as warmly as she can possibly manage, which feels both a little ridiculous and a little necessary. It's been cold these past couple of days, beyond just a normal winter brisk, with temperatures staying well below freezing. Mostly, it's just sort of annoying, but regardless, she would rather be excessively prepared than spend the walk from her apartment to the café where she's agreed to meet Oliver shivering. It wouldn't be enough to keep her inside, either. She's far from social at the best of times, but she does like to keep up with her friends, and embarrassed as she might be to admit it, she doesn't have many of those left. Enough time has passed that she isn't still reeling from losing Chloe and Elias and Arthur in such quick succession, but she's all the more grateful even so to have Oliver around, the person with whom she's closest.

Inside, it's almost blessedly warm, and she lets out a breath of shaky relief as she slips off her scarf and gloves. A good number of other people seem to have had the same idea, but she manages to find them an unoccupied table, gaze on the door so she'll be able to see when he comes in.

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Oliver wasn't running late, at least not at first, but the taxi he'd taken got stuck behind unexpected traffic. What should've been a minor fender-bender at an intersection created gridlock for nearly five blocks. Realizing that he could make it their quicker on foot, he paid the driver hastily and got out, jogging the rest of the way.

He was pink-cheeked and out of breath as he burst in through the door, unwinding his scarf as he shouldered his way towards the table she'd claimed for them.

"Hey," he said, sliding into the booth across from her. "Sorry, traffic was beast. How are you?"

Edited 2019-02-01 04:40 (UTC)

"I'm cold, but alright," Therese says, her smile warm and easy in a way it is for few others. "And it's no problem, I've only been here a few minutes. Did you run here to get out of traffic?" He seems short of breath and even more frozen than she is, though she has a feeling that anyone who's gone outside today is operating on close to the same level of being very, very cold. It still seems worth having braved it, though. She'll warm up easily enough, and at least they don't have to head back out into the cold too soon.

Once this cold front passes, she'll probably feel ridiculous for thinking so much of it at all. In the meantime, though, it seems pretty inescapable.

Edited 2019-02-04 10:59 (UTC)

"My cab got stuck behind an accident, I didn't have the patience to wait it out," he admitted, laughing softly as he set his scarf down on the table and combed the fingers of one hand through his hair, pushing it off of his face.

"So, how are you?" He asked, nodding to the waitress when she come over and offered them both coffee.

"Oh, I don't blame you," Therese says, wincing slightly at the thought of it. She hopes no one was hurt in the aforementioned accident, that everything is alright, but cold or not, she probably wouldn't have wanted to just sit there, either. "There's never any telling how long things like that might take."

At least he's here now, and it's nice and warm inside. Shooting the waitress a quick smile, she nods in turn before turning back to Oliver again. "I'm alright. Nothing too eventful going on, which I think is a good thing around here. You?"

"Since New Years? It's been quiet. Which I'm considering a much needed break," he admitted with a soft chuckle.

"Elio had a rough few weeks at the end of the year. Come to think of it, I suppose I did, too," he admitted, his lips pressed into a thin smile. October on had been eventful. Not all of it was bad, of course, but he knew better than to take a few weeks of much needed quiet for granted.

"How are things going at the paper? Are they giving you much to do?"

"They're giving me enough, I think," Therese says, nodding. She likes what she does, and she likes that she has enough time to take the pictures she chooses to take, too. Someone more ambitious might be trying to make a career out of that, but she's satisfied enough for now. There doesn't seem to be any reason to disrupt that.

"And quiet is good. Especially with what the alternatives can be around here." She's witnessed far too much excitement in her time in Darrow, much preferring when things aren't too eventful. "I'm glad you've gotten a bit of a break."

Unspoken but, she hopes, implied is that she'll gladly listen if he wants to talk about any of it. She doesn't want to pry, but she does want to be here.

"We lost a few friends, and this time of year, I think, is difficult. He misses his family," Oliver clarified. She didn't ask, but she didn't need to. While there would always be aspects of his life that he would keep mostly to himself, Therese was a friend, and he wanted to be honest with her.

"They were very close." With a wry smile, he added, "Unlike mine."

And unlike her own, as far as he'd been able to gather.

"It's hard," Therese says. "I've lost some people recently, too." At least that's one thing she can speak to. Missing her family is another matter, as she thinks Oliver probably knows. She does miss her father sometimes, but she's been without him now far longer than she ever had him in the first place, and what she misses are a child's memories of him. What he would have been like if she'd known him as an adult, she can't say. And there's no one living whom she has any reason to wish she could see again.

"And it seems like it's not an easy time to be without family, if you're close to them."

"I'm sorry," he said, frown creasing his forehead. "It seems to be happening a lot lately."

It wasn't something he liked thinking about, and he and Elio avoided the subject whenever possible. They would, at least, know how to find one another, if they woke up at home tomorrow, but he knew that most people couldn't say the same.

"So I've heard."

"And then there's us," Therese says with a bittersweet, crooked smile. As much as she might like the idea of it in theory, her own family was never that to her, and she doesn't regret that, either. With the situation being what it was, she wouldn't have wanted to spend any more time with them, and it isn't as if she could go back and be born to someone else. She's been fine on her own. At least it means she has no one else to miss too much around the holidays, besides Carol, of course.

"One of the last times I saw my mother was Christmas. It wasn't my favorite Christmas."