A Time for Moving On || Open

At what point had Caitlin Gallagher's life become so complicated? When the year began, Caity was bust loving her life of parties and comic books, music and one night stands. Now, she wasn't sure what to do with herself. Eddie had broken her heart and nothing else seemed important. Nothing was the same, and Joram was a mess. She couldn't burden him with her problems. Cait supposed she could go to Ben, but he'd been through a lot and unfortunately, he reminded her of Eddie quite a bit.

For now, Caity was coping on her own, living a quiet day-to-day of going to class, staying in her room and looking after Joram when he needed it. She was doing alright, honestly. Heartbreak hurt, but with distractions she made it hurt a little less. Missing him was hard, and trying to understand why he called it off when he went away was even harder, but she was trying. The trick was to keep busy, go outside. Today, was the perfect day to lay in the grass and catch up on homework.

Of course, it wasn't homework that kept her busy. She'd taken it out, looked at it even, but after discovering her enchanted pen set in the bottom of her bag, Caity had spent her time producing six different, animated drawings of her cat, Stan Lee, and was in the middle of drawing a seventh when the loud music finally caught her attention. Looking up, she spotted a boy with long legs, and a boom box on his chest. Stan Lee would look silly with that boom box, she thought, and after a few more glances, Cait started to add it into her drawing. She had to look up at it a few more times, and on the last peek, she met his eyes. The boy, whom she hadn't seen before, gave her a light smile. Crap, maybe he thought she'd been staring. Shit, maybe she looked creepy. Giving him a smile back, Caity held up her drawing of the cat sitting atop the boom box, in hopes that it would explain her staring.

Oh good. It didn't seem to look like he thought she was being creepy. And the thumbs up seemed like a good sign. But really he didn't need to turn off his music. When she saw the little dial she had missed, Caity turned to her picture and quickly fixed it, adding the knob in. "There. That's more like it." She turned the paper back to him and giggled looking down at it. "Stan Lee really likes music."

Glancing back at him she took in his features, intending to draw him next. He was tall even laying down, and his hair was a mess. She particularly liked his smile, which was wide and looked like it would accompany a very goofy laugh. "Umm... I'm Caitlin. Eh... Caity for short. Or just Cait. Or what ever." Wow. That couldn't have been any more awkard or stupid sounding. Had she lost her ability to talk to boys when Eddie left? No, that was impossible. Joram might have been gay, but he was still a boy and she'd spoken to him just the other day. Cover it up with something else. "You didn't have to turn your music off. I really like music too." Sure... that was a little better.

notes: Sorry! It's short. She got awkward and I cut her off.

Caitlin blinked watching his hands move about as he spoke. The hell was he doing? Oh. Bloody. Hell. He was deaf. Well, this was good and bad. He hadn't obviously heard her idiotic rambling on about her name. However, she was now realizing that communicating with him could get complicated. She had no idea what to do with her hands, or if they could even pull off the flourishing waves. Her hands were rather childlike and she never thought them to move elegantly. Not even when she'd most recently learned to play violin from Addie.

How was she supposed to tell him anything? Could he hear her? Was he just reading her lips? That was a thing, right? "uhhh... I'm... Caitlin...." She felt like maybe her first run through with this was less awkward. Not that it was weird that he signed or couldn't hear. Just she didn't know how to handle herself without being stupid or offensive.

Glancing at her notebook she grinned and drew out her name in cute girly bubble letters with stars and hearts and bright colors. "Caitlin!" She beamed at him pointing from the word to herself. With a soft giggle, she allowed him time to read it before flipping to draw on the next page. The words "Nice to meet you, I like your music" followed a series of scribbled music notes and sketched looking instruments. When she had to doodle her words to him, Caitlin found even the most mundane conversation brought her to giggles.

Signing looked hard. Her little nose wrinkled as she watched his hands. It was interesting, for sure, but she wasn't sure how he learned it all. Then again she sort of assumed it was like learning to speak another language. It was a language after all. And heck she spoke two! Surely she could figure out a third. "Yep! Caitlin!" She nodded with a bright grin. Good! The writing thing was working better than she thought.

Caity listened to him talk, with patience. What did he spell? "Annoying? Nah." She shook her head and picked up another marker, the same color as his shirt and doodled out the words 'It's coooooool' with a little smiley face wearing shades next to it. The girl giggled her infectious laugh again, at her own little scribbles. 'Are you new here?' she wrote on the next page. She wasn't entirely sure what else to talk about. Maybe she was losing her ability to be social. Since Eddie had left it had become far easier just to hide away in her room than even fathom interacting with other people. Perhaps she should have stayed in bed.

He was reading her lips? Caitlin's fingertips found themselves smooshing along her smile as it curved into a curious look. She didn't even know that someone could read the way a person's mouth moved. "Readin' my wha'??" Her voice was muffled as she spoke, squishing her lips together. Distracted by his ability to read where there were no written words, Cailtin hardly caught what he was saying about where he came from. She managed "Romania, business, moved" but it seemed that was the jist of it as like a lot of stories.

"Accent?" Her attention snapped back, moving on to the next quizzical thing he said. How the heck could he tell? Did she talk weird? Maybe she moved her mouth different. Turning her eyes in and down, she tried to look down at her lips. It only hurt and she gazed back at him. "I'm from Ireland. How'd you know I have an accent?" This guy was a puzzle and a half! Caity was more and more interested in him by the second.

So,she did talk funny. Caity had never given much thought to the way her lips moved when she spoke. Then again, she'd never had a reason to think about it. Naturally, it was going to be on her mind all the time now. Anytime she spoke, she'd wonder what her lips were doing. Where they cute lip or were they ugly lips? Did she show too much of her teeth when saying words like "tea time" or "swiss cheese"? Not that she minded her teeth much. They were straight and she kept them well brushed. Her lips, in Caity's opinion, were a tad on the thin side; but she hadn't heard any complaints yet.

Caitlin found herself staring at his lips as he spoke. Not only was she now self conscious about her own mouth, but she was hyper aware that everyone else had a pair too. This made it rather hard to focus on what he was saying. "Huh?" She blinked, looking up at his eyes, forcing herself to concentrate on them instead. His eyes were a mossy brown that reminded her of home. The trouble with looking at his eyes was how distracting they were as well. "Leprechauns?" She really was trying to hold onto the conversation. After blinking again she looked away, anywhere but his face. "Why would leprechauns bother anyone? It's the gnomes you've got to watch out for. The leprechauns are fairly nice people." Caity had always viewed them as people or beings rather than beasts or creatures. Had he ever met a leprechaun? Maybe not. Maybe that's why he assumed they were bothersome? Did leprechauns move their lips weird?