lottie grinned a little secret smile as she imagined parker’s version of a “man cave”—not that nell would allow anything that didn’t go with the rest of the house’s mid-century modern, magazine ready theme, but she still liked the idea of a basement filled with anime and star wars memorabilia and a threadbare couch in the middle of it all. “your point of view is biased,” she sighed, shaking her head slightly, “you can’t see the vision, but if you’re so worried about my patrons thinking you’re broke, you can always store some of it at my place.” lottie shrugged her shoulders and made her eyes go all big and round while simultaneously looking up at him through her lashes, “like maybe your flash runs.”
she dropped herself on top of a large plastic storage container, most likely filled with expensive christmas ornaments from pottery barn or some equally overpriced home decor store, and sat cross-legged with the binder nested in her lap. She flipped through the pages with more care than she showed her own limbs; the bruises on he body from hip checking tables and rounding corners too quickly were an ugly purple and yellow mottled testament. “yeah,” lottie said quietly as she studied the reflective cards a little more intensely. people were complicated, and family was even more so, but it was harder for her than it should be, like learning a language in class instead of at home. if people didn’t just say they cared about her, she didn’t get it. she couldn’t read it easily on people's faces—she was usually trying to read past it to the other parts, the ones that made sense to her: deceit, boredom, ulterior motives. but lately, now that she joined the ranks of family screw ups, she’d been thinking about how she blamed her mom for sticking around and messing her up more than she blamed her dad for leaving them, and how her mom always forced her to eat something whenever she came home because she knew lottie didn’t know how to cook ( despite many attempted lessons ), and how she texted her to ‘please drive safe’ whenever she had a nightmare. when she lived at home, all lottie thought about was how she couldn’t sleep over at her friend’s house because her mom would wake up the entire family with said nightmares. she never thought about how they only started after dad left, just that it wasn’t fair of her mom to count on her ten-year-old to wake her up before her eight-year-old heard what his mom sounded like when she cried. lottie always thought she sounded like a cartoon mouse or maybe a dying rabbit. “might be a good thing,” her smirk wasn’t quite as light as she wanted it to be, “familiarity breeds contempt and all that.”
it occurred to her more often than not that she was just as fucked up as her mom now, and the reasons they didn’t have conversations like this often was because parker wasn’t allowed to see that. mess was fine when it was fun. drunken babbling, doritos for lunch, embarrassing hookup stories, those were all fine and good and sitcom approved, but there was a whole lot of twisted intertwined with the novelty. it took a lot of work to keep it all separate. usually, it was easy. she just had to keep her mouth shut unless she was making a stupid, meaningless comment, but her tight-lipped mouth liked to flap when parker was around. maybe, she could make it a joke: who’s a twenty-something with two thumbs, no money, and a backpack loaded up with clinical depression and family issues too? dora the med school dropout. instead, she said, “anyway, i can guarantee that you’ll get a second house before i get my first. that’s a hernandez pérez guarantee; i’d say take it to the bank, but they don’t like me there.”
she glanced at the catalog and then returned her gaze to a very stern holographic alakazam because it felt like she stumbled upon a private moment. it was weird going from being in the center of everything to . . . whatever, it was just weird. she never quite knew where her place was when it came to talking about parker's problems with nell. “the answer to the riddle is i don’t have an inkling, but my answer is aspiring models and boomers who are afraid of big brother.” lottie looked up from his pokémon cards, and there was that look again. she nudged him with the toe of her sneaker and set the binders aside, “you know, the way i see it, you’re still in the black. you’ve got a steady job, being a musician of all things, and you aren’t in serious debt. you just beat more than half of america.”
