outofspace | (no subject)

It's odd, if not entirely unexpected, how everything just seems to go back to normal as if nothing ever happened. That often tends to be the way of things around here, Therese has found, Darrow's residents bouncing back from the latest trauma startlingly fast. Usually, though, it isn't nearly everyone having been gone for weeks that they all have to recover from. Those who were gone don't seem to think they ever went anywhere. Those who are left — well, she can't speak for anyone else, and she can't say she liked all that quiet, but she's still thrown by the sudden shift, the return back to normalcy.

Mostly, and more unexpectedly, she's found herself with a barely noticeable discontent. It's strange in its own right, really, when usually she's fine just to carry on as things are, not looking for much or attempting any big changes. And she's lucky, she knows, to have a job doing what she loves. Lately, though, going back to taking pictures for the paper, she keeps thinking about the weeks she wasn't doing that, her photography on her own time and her own terms. She's always felt a bit too daunted to try to do anything of her own, but it was nice, not having that structure.

Something to think about. She wouldn't be able to stop if she tried.

As usual, she's spending her day off out with her camera, taking pictures in the park, newly filled with people again. In that regard, at least, it's nice to have things go back to normal, and nice, too, to have the freedom she did a few weeks ago. Smiling faintly to herself as she lines up a shot, she then suppresses a wince when someone walks into the frame.

"Sorry," she says, as if she's the one in the way, which she very well might be, really. "I was just trying to —"

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Nodding, I smiled back. "I think I might've seen some of your work." It was an admission. An apology.

"We knew each other, didn't we?" I asked, with a friendly wince. "Elio showed me his engagement photos."

They weren't our engagement photos, despite showcasing a face that was undoubtedly my own. It couldn't have been me. I knew that, despite all my attempts, I'd never looked so genuinely happy in my life.

Therese nearly mirrors his wince, her nose wrinkling slightly as she nods, sheepish. "We were friends," she replies, light, if a touch guilty. She's never been sure how best to handle a situation like this, and she's not sure she did so particularly well. At first, though, she held off for Elio's sake, when he hadn't wanted anyone else to tell Oliver about his having been here before, and then as they kept running into each other, it simply seemed too awkward to mention it.

"I should've said something," she adds, an implicit apology. "But I wasn't sure how to bring something like that up."

"No, it's... Well, I don't know if fine is the right word, but I do understand," I admitted. Whatever resentment I might've felt wasn't directed at her, personally, but it was undeniably exhausting to be reminded every day that I'd been robbed of the chance at making a first impression.

Perhaps that should've been a relief.

"I wouldn't have known how to bring it up, either."

"It's... not really a situation there are any guidelines for," Therese says, part explanation and part agreement. Knowing things are possible doesn't make them any easier to handle when they actually happen. Besides, she can only imagine how uncomfortable she would be, finding out that a stranger knows her quite well, actually. Between that and how much else she knows he's had to deal with, she could never quite bring herself just to say it and add to any awkwardness.

"And I'm sure it's strange either way, to say the least."