He wondered how, if he'd lived his whole in a desperate bit to break from the norm, to be unpredictable, he'd ended up being both semi-normal, and predictable. His days blurred together. The same job for a year and a half, the same apartment for close to two years, the same diner for seven months, and the same regular order for six. His life had stability, order, and it was driving him mad. 

God forbid, it felt like he was [i]settling down[/i].

He loved his coworkers, didn't mind his job, was comfortable in his dwelling, and had nothing to worry about. That worried him. He'd moved away from his hometown, dropped out of school, to be a badass anarchist who answered to no one, not a slightly pretentious Democratic Party voter who paid his taxes. Surely, his high-school self was weeping.  

He blinked his already-strained eyes, staring at the dim laptop screen. A blank document. It had been blinked when he'd gotten home from bartending that morning. It was blank when he walked into the diner when it opened, and it was no less blank now. Sometimes, he'd write a few words, then immediately delete them. When he'd started writing, writer's block had seemed almost like a myth. He'd written tons of material, back then. Stories, of varying length and quality. He'd been at it for years, and had managed to publish one profitable piece of writing. It was a novel, out of print now. It hadn't even sold past the advance, which was enough for one month's rent, beer, and cigarettes. 

"Why do I only have existential crises when I'm sober?" He mumbled to himself. He groaned, and closed the laptop in frustration. He rubbed his temples, and looked down at himself. If he were seventeen, he might've looked trendy and counterculture. Faded jeans, a near-threadbare Streetlight Manifesto t-shirt, and a three-year-old pair of skate shoes. He didn't even know how to skateboard. 

He packed up his things and walked to the counter. 

"Check, please?" He asked, quite obviously comfortable with the waitress he was speaking to. She was older, older than him at least. Grey haired, rail-thin. 

"Aw, hon, leaving so soon?" She smiled at him. He sighed. 

"Yeah. I've got to get some sleep." He said, accidentally yawning for effect. She nodded, and walked off to get his check. He noticed, then, the girl he was standing next to. He'd never seen her around. Not at the bar, not at the diner, not on the street. Normally, he wouldn't have thought twice about her, but after his previous lamentations, it seemed self-defeating to pass up a possibly interesting conversation with a possibly interesting person. 

"Yo." He said, holding out his hand. "You're not from around here, are you?" He smiled a little. "I like to think I've got a pretty good handle of the patrons here, and you're not a regular, far as I can tell." He cleared his throat. "I'm Thomas. Thomas McClellan."