callmeemily: ([pleased] better days)
Raleigh Harper / Emily Watkins ([personal profile] callmeemily) wrote2014-12-24 01:25 am

Here comes santa claus!

The holiday this year is so incredibly different than the last.

Last year? Raleigh was holed up in the boarding house, no one in 300 miles but her shitty boss knew her name, and she was so poor that she was eating rice, beans, and leftovers from the Seaside bakery.

This year, everything's changed. Orchard House is chugging along astoundingly well; Raleigh puts in long hours, but it's paying off. She's been able to hire somebody else to work the register, she's getting custom orders - the whole thing. She has friends. Honest to god friends, and she's got enough money that she's actually got presents for people. For a lot of people - it's a mix of cookies and things, but there's a little something for everybody piled on the table in the back corner, and one mass-text later she's humming through the bakery, music playing from the speakers, warm cider in a carafe, and everything's warm and cozy.

She looks at it, at this business that she's made with the help of this whole town, and she can't help but smile. Tonight? Spending tonight with friends and found-family? That's what this whole thing's about.

Gathering post! Raleigh will tag everyone who tags in, but feel free to tag one another, too. :) It's up to you if they have gotten a text, or just heard the music and seen the crowd. Everyone'll get something!
goesdownsmooth: (big ol smile)

[personal profile] goesdownsmooth 2014-12-31 09:41 am (UTC)(link)
"I am, indeed, a psychiatrist," Jameson answers with a laugh that he tries to hold back because he's not laughing at her, she's just already very endearing. She's ridiculously petite, Jameson physically has to bend his neck to look down at her, but she has an infectious smile and such a positive vibe about her that he imagines it must be difficult to not just constantly be smiling back at her. He doesn't know her much at all yet, obviously, but Jameson has a habit of making attempts to figure people out in first impressions and while it doesn't always work--in fact, they're most often the most false impression he can get--it still at least gives him an idea of what he might expect for the next encounter.

He always prefers it when he meets someone new, when they seem him as just another face, because he's seen what it does to people when they figure out that his family's maybe worth a little more than the average Siren Cove resident. That's when he starts to get people who had been initially uninterested in spending a lot of time with him--and there are the first impressions again--suddenly being incredibly friendly to him the next time they see him walking down the street.

If there's one thing he hates about coming from a family that doesn't want for anything material, it's having to sift through the people who are genuine and those who just want something from him. He doesn't get that sense from Raleigh, she doesn't seem like that kind of person, and he's confident in that assessment because he's seen plenty of people who are.

"I'd offer a free consult but most of the time, people just assume I'm implying there's something wrong with them," he teases with the shrug of a shoulder. "I just think that sometimes, everyone needs a good, objective ear."