man / with a minivan;

          fresh air. that was lilah’s main concern. something about the intimacy that was left inside somehow feeling more suffocating than comforting. she couldn’t explain it. and she hoped her stepping out for a minute wouldn’t prompt concern. but her chest felt heavy and she needed a free space to breathe, thankful that the water bottle sweating onto her palm had managed to calm some of her nerves as she took a seat on the front porch. head cranked to look up at the starry night. the faintest of smiles painted onto her lips. – this calm only lasted a few minutes though before she heard the floorboards creak behind her, lilah jumping slightly at the interruption but calming as soon as she saw who was approaching her. “ i’ll be back inside soon, don’t worry, “ she was quick to excuse, facing forward again and taking a swig from her water. “ it’s like we were having too much fun in there, huh ? exactly like old times. “ the nostalgia in her tone apparent, a hint of bittersweet coloring her words.

being the host, oliver can’t help but feel a little responsibility for everyone, and that includes their resident mom friend. he gives delilah a minute or two alone before he puts up a couple fingers to let everyone know he’s gonna go after her, ducking his head as he passes the screen door. lilah’s staring up at sky, which, ollie can’t exactly blame her. the hills are the best place in town for stargazing: no distracting lights or pollution around to take away from the view. ollie lopes over to her, his legs dangling lazily over the front steps as he takes a seat. his beer can nearly topples when he sets it down, but he grabs for it at the last second. “you remember the sleepover we had right before the eighth grade class trip? the one to the, uh, the museum of natural history?” he can always count on delilah to make him miss his childhood. even if they’ve never been all that close, even if she kinda feels untouchable sometimes, like someone you could spend a lifetime talking to and never really know. “the, um,” ollie coughs. “the old times aren’t... gone for good. we still have this summer together.”

(  open  starter  ,  sleepover  event  )  !

“make  some  fuckin’  room  ,  will  you  ?”  lennon  slides  onto  the  hay  bale  turned  makeshift  chair  in  front  of  the  fire  ,  nudging  the  other  with  their  elbow.  in  the  other  hand  they  grip  a  fresh  beer  .  the  bottle  sweats  &  so  does  lennon  ,  but  if  they  get  bit  by  one  more  mosquito  they’re  going  to  lose  it.  so  it’s  worth  heating  up  a  little  more  to  avoid  that.  anyone  else  may  believe  they’re  in  a  pissy  mood  because  of  it  ,  but  this  is  just  how  lennon  talks  ,  even  during  their  greatest  of  moods.  "having  fun  ?“  they  ask  the  big  fish  they’re  basically  hip-to-hip  with  ,  stubby  nails  nudging  under  the  bottle  cap  &  yanking  it  off.

    she  can’t  help  but  shake  her  head  with  a  smile  that  widens  as  she  sees  ollie  with  the  stringy  cheese  pizza.  mandy  could  admit  that  she  wasn’t  surprised  he  ordered  something.  she  shakes  her  head  at  the  silent  offer  ;  the  femme  couldn’t  imagine  a  greasy  pizza  would  make  her  already  upset  stomach  feel  better  –  if  anything ,  it’d  probably  make  things  worse.  her  face  softens  as  he  tells  her  about  his  day  but  then  the  question  is  asked.  that  damn  question.  with  as  little  as  a  sigh ,  mandy’s  bottom  lip  is  quivering  and  the  inner  corners  of  her  eyebrows  upturn. “ my mom, she uh – ”  she  sinks  into  the  back  of  the  chair. “ we got into an argument earlier, ”  mandy  hated  being  emotional  but  she  was  comfortable  with  oliver  and  that  meant  she  wasn’t  afraid  of  him  seeing  her  cry  ;  despite  their  current ,  awkward  situation.  she  looks  up  at  him. “ . . about my dad. and what happened to him. ”  her  teeth  clench  as  she  tries  to  fight  back  the  tears  that  so  desperately  wanted  to  be  cried. “ i thought being back .. i - i’d be able to just forget about him and forget about what happened. but – i guess not. ”

“woah, woah, woah.” ollie isn’t inexperienced with tears, not by a long shot. fifteen years of foster kids cycling in and out of the farm have done their job, and made him cool in the face of explosive emotion. but not from mandy. not in years, honestly, not since before they... before everyone left for college. oliver moves quickly into the chair nearest mandy, managing to nearly trip over his own feet in the process, and uses one arm to scoop her up against his chest. “hey, hey,” he mutters soothing, his voice a hoarse whisper. “i’m...” truthfully, he’s struggling for words. everything oliver ever learned about the situation concerning mandy’s father, he learned against his will from lunchtable gossips and post-game locker room talk. he always shut it down when he realized who his friends were discussing, but not before a few choice details of the story had lodged themselves in his memory. ollie scours that memory now, searching for the right words to stay that will erase the glittering tears lining mandy’s lower lashes. “we can talk about it. or not, if you don’t want to. but...” he bites his lip, considers, and then plows ahead anyway. “if it helps... i don’t think losing your dad is a thing you just move on from. maybe we can work on a more... i dunno, a more achievable goal?”

where :  jimmy’s pizza. when :  10:45pm.

    mandy  looks  exhausted  and  honestly ?  she  felt  just  about  as  bad  as  she  looked.  there’s  a  hint  of  a  smile  on  her  lips  as  she  sees  the  other  big  fish. “ hey, ”  the  femme  plops  down  into  the  chair  in  front  of  them. “ thanks for coming - i , uh. didn’t want to be alone. ”  she  taps  her  fingertips  on  the  top  of  the  table;  unable  to  find  words  to  say  for  the  first  time.  the  glisten  in  her  eyes  told  a  tale  of  hurt  –  of  not  being  100%  there  in  the  moment.  “ so , um .. how was your day ? ”

The question made him think about his parents for a brief moment. If his answer translated … what did that make them? They didn’t exactly feel like his parents – well, not in any way other than putting pressure on him to be what they wanted. He decides that isn’t something he feels like thinking about at the moment and instead just smiles brightly over at his friend. “Aw, Ollie. I’ve never been so happy to have someone offer to be my brother cousin before,” he teases, and thinks for a moment.

“You know, actually…” he starts, “I was kind of considering doing something like that. Uhm, having some sort of gallery thing here during the summer sometime. Not just for me, but like anybody here that is interested in art. High Schoolers maybe. I know that if someone did something like that when I was in High School I would have been all over it…”

“jaime!” ollie’s so excited, he almost says jaime’s name correctly. almost, but still just a little too white. “dude, that’s a great idea,” he crows, clapping his hand down hard on the other boy’s shoulder. “god, not even out of school yet, and you’re already being all... philanthropic. what an icon, this guy.” ollie wonders if this could possibly be fuelled by some sort of guilt jaime feels, staying away from elmridge for so long. lord knows how oliver would feel if he’d ever left for any extended period of time, save his annual trips to england and going to princeton. not for the first time, oliver wishes he was a character in a classic novel, one who’d been expected to leave and seek his fortune. at this rate, he’s not sure he’ll ever escape elmridge. “where would you host a thing like that? don’t tell me downtown elmridge has suddenly turned some of those storefronts into gallery spaces while we were gone.”

Listening rather intently, Colette nodded and moved her hand to rub Ollie’s upper arm softly. “What are you thinking about it all?” She laughed at his question and shrugged, “I don’t really know if there’s an answer to that. Yeah – you might be cousin by blood, but how do you feel about her? When you think about her, what’s your first though?” By all means, Cole understood that family could be adopted, legally and figuratively. “But also, who’s to say that it can’t be a spectrum – could be both. Oh…” Laughing a little harder now, she looked over, “It’s pretty confusing and open to intrepretation, huh?” 

Jaime absently sat there stirring his iced coffee with the straw as Ollie talked beside him. He looked over at his friend … confused, and not really sure how to answer that question. “Uh… Cousin Sister, perhaps? Maybe it really only matters what she feels like. Does she feel like your sister? Or does she feel like your cousin?” If only it were that easy with parents. Then Jaime supposed he just wouldn’t have any. His head tilts a bit while he considers Oliver. “Are you going to go? I know if I was doing something like that, and I had any cousin brothers I would want them to go. But maybe that’s because I’m an only child and I don’t get the whole sibling thing.”

ollie chews at the tines of his plastic spork absently, already finished with the cherry turnover the roast is famous for. he turns over jaime’s question in his mind, coming up with, “sister, i guess. like we were raised together, so it seems like sister is the word. but then again, i don’t have any other cousins, i don’t know what a cousin would feel like.” he shakes his head, leaning back in his chair so two of the legs come off the ground. he didn’t expect it to be an easy question to answer, but who else is he going to ask? aunt annie? not likely. “uh... good question. maybe? she hasn’t asked us to, and i think uncle mark thinks she’s too nervous to have us there. but if you had something like that, you’d invite me, right? i could be your cousin brother.”

“My mother’s got a newspaper clipping framed in her office from when the Big Fish was first formed and we were like… a big deal.” The thought prompts immediate laughter from Vera. “Actually thinking about hunting down 9-year-old Vera’s stylist, to be honest. Pigtails with pink overalls? Revolutionary.”

“god, you had a stylist back then? that makes so much sense.” oliver blows out a low whistle, rolling his shoulders beneath his standard flannel. “i’m pretty if 9-year-old ollie was in a clean t-shirt and jeans with minimal tears, it was a good day.” he pointedly doesn’t mention his barefoot phase, because he unfortunately did not have a stylist to tell his tiny tom-sawyer-wannabe past self that that wasn’t the awesome look he thought it was.

it took presley about five seconds to decide what she wanted to do, at least once ollie was within her sights. sure, he was at work, and sure, they hadn’t done this in a year, his instincts might have deteriorated. but… she wanted to. and there was nothing but the soft ground for him to land on. so, with that, presley took a running start towards ollie’s turned back. with a hup, she jumped onto his back, wrapping arms around his shoulders and her legs around his hips. “gotcha!” she called out. 

@branscns