Raleigh Harper / Emily Watkins (
callmeemily) wrote2014-12-24 01:25 am
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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!
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!
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"And anything that brings back good memories? I'm all for it." She smiled as she said that, and she nodded when he asked about the wine. "It's Christmas Eve, and there's no way I'm not having wine," she said with a laugh. "It'd be rude of me not to, right?" She's clearly kidding - she knows he wouldn't be offended if she wasn't drinking.
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Having Raleigh here, smiling brightly at him in the midst of the enormous turnout to the impromptu bakery gathering, is no exception.
"It would absolutely be rude of you," Spencer agrees, already pouring a generous portion of wine into one of the mugs and holding it out to her. "Besides, you said you wanted to see me get drunk and giggly one day, didn't you? Here's your chance to be both those things with me."
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As long as he was on board with all of that? It probably wouldn't be a bad thing for Spencer to unwind. God knows Raleigh's needed it for herself, over the last couple of months.
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"That's all right, I'll likely just blush and get awfully sentimental. The giggling will happen if Joel comes up, that's all I know." He takes a long sip of wine from his mug, smiling over the rim at the dryness of the red and the sweet taste of the cherry on his tongue. It's one of his favorites, this wine, and his mother's, too. It's what she'd always take to dinners they'd be invited to or what she'd set out for guests at their home, and it had never disappointed.
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"It's nice of you to have brought it - want to set up shop over there?" She nods over towards the couch.
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Spencer's needed something relaxing, especially because he's been doing his best to run the store while Joel's still healing, while his own shoulder had still been healing, and Charlotte's been helping but Spencer can't ask her to spend all her free time working at the store because that simply wouldn't be fair. Besides that, Ellie and Brian will be joining them for the holidays and that's why Joel had stayed behind, to make sure his parents settle in well enough for the evening in the guest room--the one that will soon enough become the nursery.
He turns his head to look at Raleigh, trying to get an idea of how she's doing just by looking at her and upon finding that he can't get quite a good enough reading, he opts instead to just ask. "Is there anything new with you? You haven't run off and gotten married while we weren't looking, right? There's been so much going on lately that it seems almost impossible to keep up with much of anything."