Learning to Crawl - Return by April

Kat wandered in to The Lair, scanning the room to find a familiar face. There was a slight chance that her friends had chosen a new hideout while she was away but she was hoping that wasn't the case. As she made her way to the bar, she caught a glimpse of him in the corner. At first she thought it was a trick her eyes and her subconscious mind were playing on her. But it was no trick. There was Evan, crammed behind a small table at the back. He was hard to miss. He fit in to the punk-goth scene of The Lair about as well as a Hell's Angel at Starbucks. With his surfer boy tousled hair and not a stitch of black clothing on, he was not the standard Underground clientèle.

She stood at the bar, debating whether she should turn around and slither out the same way she came in or if she should just slam down her first two drinks to gather up enough liquid courage to approach him. Before she could decide, he had beat her to it. As she tried to steal a sly glance at him, she noticed he was making his way through the crowd towards her.

Kat tried to send a message to her feet to turn around and run but they just wouldn't respond. Her mind was screaming “Get out!” but her body wasn't cooperating.

And then there he was, standing next to her. He nonchalantly said hello to her and she may have mumbled something in return. At this point, she couldn't be sure what was real and what was just existing in her mind.

“What the hell are you doing here?” she asked him. Wow. Kat wasn't sure where that had come from but she was painfully aware that she had said it out loud.

Evan seemed hurt by her question. He shyly lowered his head and said to her, “I heard you were out of the hospital and I've come in here a few times hoping to run into you.”

“Well, now you have. What next?”