Name: kay_brooke
Story: The Prime
Colors: Cherry Blossom Pink #12 (Monogatari), Plant Party #49 (Carymbia), White #6 (red, white, and blue)
Styles/Supplies: Canvas
Word Count: 1,137
Rating/Warnings: PG-13; no standard warnings apply.
Summary: Tabitha sees David's place for the first time.
Note: Constructive criticism is welcome, either through comments or PM. Last White.


He invited her back to his house after their fourth date, and though Tabitha was flattered, she felt a little like it was merely reciprocation, as she had invited him to her apartment after their third. An invitation which he had declined, and she'd gone home certain she'd never hear from him again.

But now there they were, pulling up in front of a surprisingly modest ranch style house on the west side, painted white with a small, undecorated porch. Heavy, dark curtains were pulled tight against the windows, and Tabitha's steps faltered as he led her up the walk.

David noticed, and turned toward her. "Everything okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Tabitha. "I just, uh, I didn't expect your place to look like this." His family was loaded, one of the richest families in the city, and David himself was a successful lawyer, so even if he didn't have access to his family's money he could surely do better than a small home in Eagle Creek. It was so...middle America. It didn’t fit with her vision of his lifestyle at all.

He frowned at her. "Did you think I still lived with my parents?"

She hadn't really thought about it. But his parents lived in a mansion. He would probably have his own wing if he lived there. It didn't exactly carry a negative connotation in that context. But she remembered that first meeting they'd had, when he'd insisted he'd reached his success through his own efforts and not because of his family name, and she figured it made sense that he lived on his own. "No. But..." She trailed off, wondering how that sentence was going to end. But I expected something fancier just sounded crass, even if it was true. Tabitha shrugged. "Sorry. No."

He went back to unlocking the door. "My friend Ben lives in the area," he said, and there was that hint of defensiveness again. Tabitha wondered if it might someday grow into a deal breaker. "We met at the firm, after I finished law school. I was looking for a place to move, he recommended the neighborhood."

"Okay," said Tabitha. She hadn't met Ben--she hadn't met anyone in David's life yet, though they were only four dates in and she wasn't in a hurry--but she assumed he was a lawyer, too. Maybe she would have to adjust her assumptions on how much lawyers made, if he also lived in this neighborhood. It was a nice neighborhood, to be sure, but solidly middle class. A place her parents might have lived in back when it was just her and her brother David, before her dad lost his engineering job and the family got swamped with four more kids.

David opened the front door and flicked a switch on the wall right inside. A light came on, illuminating a front hall that was bare aside from a blue rug, an end table, and a vase of plastic flowers. "It's nice," said Tabitha, stepping inside. The living room was to her left, and she could see dark furniture sitting in the gloom: a couch and a recliner, both angled toward a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. A coffee table sat between them. The back wall was entirely lined with full bookshelves. Well, he was a reader, so that was something. Unless the bookshelves were just a pretense.

David ducked his head, looking bashful. "It's a little bare, I know. I'm not much of a decorator. My mom keeps threatening to hire someone, but she hasn't gone through with it yet."

"Does your mom visit often?" David didn't seem inclined to move, so Tabitha took a few steps toward the living room as a hint. She wasn't sure what was going to happen tonight--invitations to a date's home usually meant one thing, but she'd already clocked David as a little awkward and naïve. Also perhaps a pretense, but she couldn't rule out that he literally just wanted to make her a cup of coffee.

"She's never been here." David stepped into the living room and threw another switch. He hadn't made any move toward the kitchen, which Tabitha could just glimpse sitting opposite the living room, the two connected by an open dining room. So maybe not literal coffee.

"How can she know you need an interior decorator if she's never been here?" Tabitha murmured, moving toward the bookcases.

"She knows me," said David with a shrug. He looked away from her for a moment, focusing on the coffee table, like he was embarrassed.

Reaching the nearest bookcase, Tabitha could already see that these were books David had actually read, at least most of them. People who were faking being well-read tended to have pristine, matching editions of classic fiction artfully arranged among prestigious works of nonfiction. But this bookcase was a hodge-podge of different genres and styles. One shelf looked like it was dedicated to law books, which she supposed made sense. Another shelf held what looked like old college textbooks. The fiction was varied: Jane Austen, Umberto Eco, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, the entire Harry Potter series. There were some children's books scattered among the rest, and half a shelf dedicated to what looked like some kind of Japanese comic.

David touched her shoulder as she bent down to look at the bottom shelf. "So you go straight for the books."

"Sorry." She straightened. "It's a bad habit. Looking at people's books tells you a lot about them."

"What are they telling you about me?"

"That you read everything you can find, apparently," said Tabitha. Looking up at him, she said, "I mean, that's a good thing. It's good to have varied interests."

"Not everything," said David. He pointed to the Harry Potter series. "My sister got those for me a few Christmases ago. I've only read the first book. I just couldn't get into it. But I like to keep everything." He shrugged.

Ah. So a little bit of pretense. And maybe hoarding tendencies? Tabitha mentally admonished herself to stop looking for problems. The rest of the house, at least what she could see, was clean and free of clutter, perhaps even on the bare side. The books were aligned neatly, even if they didn't seem to be in any kind of immediately apparent order outside of series being shelved together. So he liked to keep all of his books, even the ones he didn't like. That wasn't a big deal.

"Do you want something to drink?" David asked. He took her arm and turned her toward the couch. Steering her away from the books, she realized, but that didn't matter. His hand was warm on her bare arm, and she could think about books some other time.

"Sure," she said, giving him a slow smile.