He thinks about this. 

"...I think in Pleasantville we are supposed to be happy all the time. So maybe that is why we don't have poetry. Because it would be hard to have poetry that only makes you have happy feelings."

"I'm honestly not sure people in Pleasantville are supposed to have strong feelings at all. Which — I don't know, it's probably better for some people, but I'll break myself if I try to live in it." 

"I mean, you're supposed to love your wife and your kids, and be happy when the high school wins a football game, and have fun camping or playing cards or roller skating, and feel a sense of accomplishment about your garden or your job or your paintings. And those are all feelings. And-- it's kind of bad for me now because I don't really like most of the things teenagers like, but that's just because I'm not married yet."

She taps her fingers on the table. "Yeah, but — my parents give me sort of generically parental advice and have demonstrated absolutely no knowledge or awareness that I might have individual traits? And that might be the kind of relationship you can be sort of vaguely okay in but it's not really what I think of when I think of being strongly happy. Youre supposed to have a sense of accomplishment about something you've made but I am literally right now at this moment observing that Pleasantville doesn't have real art. You're supposed to be happy when the high school wins a football game but I don't actually mean that when I say strong feelings, you don't get to see really new things or go really new places, or I mean you personally do because of me and colors but the general you doesn't?" 

"My parents are loving and supportive and know me? I think it might be hard for your parents to give you specific advice because your parents met you two weeks ago."

"That's... fair. Also I am in the habit of never telling adults anything about me or my life if I can possibly avoid it which can't be helping. Everything they say to each other still feels very generic, though, and that's not because they only met two weeks ago." 

He shrugs. "Some people are like that? I guess I wouldn't know whether love is, uh, more intense in your homeworld than in Pleasantville. I've only ever been in Pleasantville."

"Yeah, fair, and I haven't seen much of Pleasantville." 

"I think-- they're trying really hard to get us to fall in love with each other? That's why you're supposed to date around and make sure you find the right person. But some people don't find someone they can be in love with. If you're getting married when you're old, like 23 or something, it's probably just... you found someone you like well enough and can make a life with."

"Casually mentioning that twenty-three is old enough that you probably settled for what you could get is really not helping!" 

"...um, I'm confused and I don't know how to put into words what I'm confused about."

"So in my world, when people get married, which most people do, they've generally spent some time as adults figuring out what they want to do with their lives first. And this is better, we used to do it the Pleasantville way where everyone got married right out of high school and it just sucked so much for so many people, and also the Pleasantville way is really distressing to me personally because a lot of people have hurt me a lot to try and make me into the sort of person who gets married like people do in Pleasantville when I wasn't and didn't want to be before, and in combination this really does not make me happier about the Pleasantville setup." 

"People shouldn't hurt you-- I'm sorry--"

"Yeah. Yeah, they shouldn't. And everything about this place makes me very sure that people are going to if I act like I want the things I actually want rather than the things they want me to want and I hate it." 

"You don't... want to get married?"

(He sounds like he doesn't doubt Raine exactly but this is a preference as confusing to him as "I would like to spend the rest of my life stepping repeatedly on rusty nails.")

"I have literally never been the kind of person who gets married. If literally everyone else gets married no matter what, I don't know, maybe I'll choose the white picket fence over being alone my whole life, but if I could actually choose I would live in a city with a population of more than a million and at least five different art museums and I'd have an apartment that I shared with three friends." 

He doesn't know whether to say "that's so many people" or "that's so many art museums" or "but maybe I want to marry you" or "you wouldn't be alone, you'd live with your parents," and so instead he says "I'm sorry that you're here."

"In a lot of ways it's better than where I was, especially short term? But long term I miss having meaningful options. 

...also colors. I miss colors. And good stories that I haven't already read well enough to retell and good poetry that I haven't already memorized and music that sounds anything like the kinds of music I like. Also not looking just like all my classmates but I can actually just fix that one if I decide the attention is worth it." 

"At least... I'm colors now?" he says hopefully.

"Yeah, you are colors now." Hug? "Just, you know, the caged bird sings of freedom." 

Hug!!!! 

Unfortunately, Lee is very distracted from Raine being sad by her being loose in the public library. (Fortunately no one is watching.)

If she knew about this thought process she would snarl about Pleasantville some more, so it is probably better that she does not. 

"Thanks," she says after a moment, and lets go. 

Lev would probably have THOUGHTS about Raine saying WEIRD THINGS but instead he was HUGGED and now he is having a furious internal conflict about whether he should be ungentlemanly with Raine in the future.

Cons:
-it would be bad for Raine and he only wants good things for her
-there are probably reasons you are not supposed to, like that you're not supposed to fall for people who might not fall for you back 
-he doesn't know where he would do it because he doesn't have a car in which to visit Lover's Lane

Pros:
-Raine is doing it with Anthony anyway so it's probably not going to be worse if she does it with him
-He already has kind of stupidly intense feelings about her and hugging her won't make it worse
-He really really wants to

He decides to delay this decision by saying, "um, do you want to get dinner afterward?"

"Yeah, sure, dinner sounds good." It actually does, which continues to be a really weird feeling. 

"You're not supposed to go on really long dates with guys you're dating," he says. "You're supposed to have a different date for Saturday afternoon and Saturday night-- I mean, you could also just not have a date one of those times, but you're not supposed to stretch the date out unless you're going steady with someone. And in general you're not supposed to have a date with the same person twice in a row, I guess the Saturday afternoon/Saturday night thing is a special case of that? People won't gossip about it but your parents will get annoyed. It's like not doing your chores or forgetting your homework at home or something."