Now...we feast, open to all!

So this Disney thing? Definitely not a bad idea. Actually, it’s probably one of the best ideas Alec’s ever had.

Sure, it had taken a while to hitchhike from Chicago to Florida and he’d spent one miserable night on the side of the road but all things considered, not the worst thing that had ever happened to him. By some miracle, the Disney people had actually hired him in spite of him having virtually zero experience and not even a grade twelve diploma. Maybe they’d seen something in him they’d liked. Either way, within a day or so, Alec had gone from sleeping on the side of the road and picking pockets to having a roof over his head, a real job that would actually give him a steady income, and guaranteed meals.

The food was almost the best part and Alec still hadn’t managed to stop himself from his street eating habits; eat as fast as you can before someone else comes and takes it from you. So even now, as he sat in the Italian part of The Land, he was scarfing down pizza like his life depended on it. Which, in the past, it pretty much had. But it was good pizza, possibly the best thing he’d ever tasted and he wasn’t going to let that go to waste.

There were some very weird things about this whole Disney business, though. Like how walking around the park was basically like being transported into bizarro land, at least for Alec. Kids and adults everywhere, screaming, laughing, running, taking pictures, carrying candy, exclaiming about rides, all kinds of things. People here clearly had money to burn and it was like a foreign concept to Alec, to watch and see people shelling out hundreds of dollars for merchandise to...what? Hang on their walls at home? Most of this stuff wasn’t practical, so why even get it? It didn’t make sense to Alec but very little about this place did.

It happened to be his day off today (day off...from his real job...that he actually earned money at) so he was grabbing some lunch before he went off to explore. The park was a big place and Alec hadn’t been here all that long but he’d always made it one of his goals to know his surroundings and he wanted to get to know this place as well as he could as quickly as he could. Where were good hiding spots, what beams were strong enough to climb on, those kinds of important details. He was planning escape routes too, or ways he could lose himself in the crowd which would be laughably easy considering how much of a crowd there always was here. Walking through that made his thumbs itch but he kept them firmly in his pockets. Stealing from customers was probably an excellent way to get himself fired so he kept his hands to himself.

For the moment though, he was focused on the pizza that he was hungrily wolfing down, sitting at a table by himself in a battered jean jacket, T-shirt and jeans. Brown eyes darted around, watching the people who walked by him even as he ate in case they were a threat, but he was almost done his pizza so he woudln’t have to worry about it soon, anyway. He was anxious to keep filling in his mental map of this place, as good as the pizza was. He didn’t know the place as well as he wanted to yet and that had to be fixed.

The week had been brutal, and anyone might have seen it like that but to someone like Jessamond that had never had a real day of work in her life she’d really thought about crawling in her bed and crying.

Just because Disney was the happiest place on earth didn’t mean that the magic worked on everyone. There were always those adults that let out their stress on the “help” or the kids that were just complete brats. Yelling, screaming, running around and breaking things… brutal. She felt like she’d been thrown into a boiling pot of water, after this she was sure that she’d think twice about having spaghetti. And yet, she wouldn’t trade it for the world she thought as she now, on her day off was taking a walk through the crowds in Epcot, she had freedom and that she was willing to pay for.

But right now she was enjoying the perks of working for a theme park. After Animal Kingdom Epcot was one of Jazzi’s favorite parks here. She loved going through all the different countries and looking at the shows like the Asian acrobats, that children at that age has such talent… wow it made her feel a twinge of jealousy.

At the moment she found herself in the Italian part of the park thinking of getting a gelato. The weather certainly was warm enough… but a short sound clip brought her attention to her purse from which she fished her phone to see that there was a text from her father. Groaning she opened it to read and continued to walk. Unfortunately texting and walking weren’t the easiest things to do while maneuvering the crowds and before she knew it she found herself too close to one of the tables where a young man sat eating his lunch and she ended up bumping into him.

"Oh, I'm sorry" she said a little surprised, having been wrapped up in the conversation with her father.

As good as the pizza was (and it was really, really good) Alec was still keeping an eye on his surroundings. He always did. So maybe he had a mouthful of pepperoni and melted cheese but he could see the girl that was walking towards him, even though she was oblivious because she was looking at her phone. Seemed oblivious, anyway. He didn’t trust that it wasn’t just an act and he slowed down his eating, tensed and lowered his half eaten slice of pizza. Maybe she’d veer around him but it sure as hell didn’t seem like that since she was still coming on full bore.

She was about a foot away and still on a collision course so he barked a sharp “hey!” to no avail since she crashed right into him anyway. He was mildly jostled but grabbed his plate and pizza and jumped to his feet to put distance between them and protect his food. He narrowed brown eyes suspiciously. She was good looking but that could be just another trap. “Don’t you look where you’re walking or do you just expect everyone to get out of your way?” She’d apologized, sure, but that really meant nothing to him. She could have been using that as a ploy to try and get something off him or take his food. It’d happened before and Alec wasn’t about to let it happen again.

Without taking his eyes off her he finished off his piece of pizza and tossed the plate on the table. There, with the food gone, she should have no reason to stick around.

A furious blush spread her cheeks as the guy jumped up and barked at her for bumping into him. “I- n-no I really am sorry, I was distracted” it really had been an innocent mistake, holding up her cell phone as evidence she hoped that might calm him down a notch or two, seeing the evidence.

He was strange jumping up and scarfing down the last of his pizza and that confused her for a second but then again most people confused the heck out of her. She’d missed the socialization that school gave most people. For all she knew this was a normal reaction from whatever part of the world he was from, not that she’d read about this sort of behavior, but Jessamond wasn’t one to judge.

“It’s just that my father is really stressing me right now, I normally have excellent coordination, and I normally never walk and text.” With a small embarrassed smile she hoped to break the ice. He was probably feeling like a lot of people in this weather, with all the screaming kids running around, after a while you needed a little break to regroup your nerves.

“My names Jess or my best friend calls me Jazzi” she smiled slightly more relaxed, as she stretched out her hand towards him, “Are you here with your family?” Maybe polite conversation would get him to relax as well and get him off the defensive and meeting new people was always exciting for her. Currently she felt as if she was playing catch up for all the socializing she’d missed over the past fourteen years of her life. And it certainly didn’t hurt that he was an attractive guy, probably more so when he wasn’t scowling.

Alec’s eyes stay narrowed even as he looks at the cell phone she holds up. The girl did seem convincing, with her whole oblivious, ‘it really was an accident’ act. The blush on her cheeks was convincing but Alec didn’t wholly buy it. Then again, even if she was just oblivious and clumsy that wasn’t much better. How did anyone get around in this world without knowing their surroundings and being aware of how close other people were to you? How did you survive without knowing that? Then again, Alec’s life hadn’t exactly been conventional but still. How people could be so clueless was beyond him.

His expression morphed from suspicious to disbelief and something very like disgust when she started talking about her dad. It’s not like he cared. “Oh do you? Well, too bad you don’t have it today.” He laid the sarcasm on thick, being snark being his usual go to. It usually kept people away, anyway.

But she was still talking and Alec didn’t hide his eye roll. At least she seemed pretty harmless, anyway, and that eased the tension out of his muscles. It didn’t ease his annoyance, though. “Jazzi? What a peppy nickname that is.” He looked at her outstretched hand but made no move to shake it and didn’t offer his name in exchange. He snorted and shook his head when she asked him if he was with his family. What family? “Do I look like one of these spoiled brats? Please. I work here. What about you? Daddy bring you on a dream vacation to Disney World?”

He really couldn’t seem to help the sarcasm but she’s the one who’d started this on the wrong foot by bumping into him in the first place. He couldn’t be blamed for how he reacted.

Ok… that was so not the reaction she’d been expecting. Then again she wasn’t quite sure what she’d been expecting. But certainly not this, maybe a little smile, for him to relax and oh what was the word… be nice? Nobody needed to strike up a song and dance with confetti and a cake for her but come on.

It was just a little bump and he hadn’t even been made to spill anything. Upset about having cold sticky soda spilled across your shirt or in your hair was one thing, or if your food got knocked to the ground, but nothing happened, it couldn’t have even hurt!

She had apologized, it’d been stupid to walk and text she could admit to that but the overwhelming weight of the snark in his responses was, well, overwhelming. A slight frown creased her soft features when he commented on her nickname. He was making fun of her, wasn’t he? Because of her name? What a jerk and, then he left her hand hanging in the wind, making her feel like a real idiot.

Feeling affronted by the whole encounter she quickly drew her hand back to herself, leaving the awkward and unsure feeling on the inside while figuratively puffing out her chest on the outside. “No. For your information I work here as well, it’s my day off. I hope you’re not this rude to your customers. Accidents happen, no one is perfect.” She said coldly.

Maybe it wasn’t just the guys her father wanted her to be interested in that were jerks, maybe all guys were jerks. That thought saddened her a little.

Nice? Why should he be nice? It wasn’t like people had gone out of their way to be nice to him on a regular basis or any basis really. Not sincerely, in any case. There was the fake nice from the tired social workers who would clearly rather be sleeping than dealing with you. There was the seemingly earnest religious folks who were obsessed with “saving” him but turned on him at the drop of a hat once they realised he didn’t believe in their God and didn’t want anything to do with Him. There were all kinds of nice but none of them were really sincere. Or at least that was rare so why should he put in the effort when no one else was going to? People couldn’t be trusted so why even let them try to get close?

Unsurprisingly, the woman was starting to frown now. All that pretense being dropped and showing what she really felt. It was always the moment Alec waited for, when that mask of niceness turned to annoyance or anger. It pretty much always happened and it just confirmed his beliefs about people. She told him she worked there and his eyebrows went up, mock interested. “Oh really, and what do you do? Wear a fancy dress and pretend to be a princess?” He snorted at her assumption. “I don’t have customers. I work behind the scenes and don’t have to deal with all the stupid crap. I like it better that way. And you’re right, nobody’s perfect. But accidents aren’t usually just accidents.”

At least not in his experience, anyway.