#*donna

4 - homecoming

transcript

‘ a--- ’  her jaw drops, her brows crease. she dons the most comical expression of offense you’ve ever seen in your life.  ‘ i don’t need a backup plan. ’

the insinuation has her reeling  ---  anxious and furious all at once. it’s been days since she’s slept (or, if she’s dropped off at any point during this frenzy, it couldn’t have been for more than ten, twenty minutes at a time), clear by the way her hair’s falling out of its pins. her makeup’s all smudged, the concealer under her eyes has long since been rubbed away, leaving behind the dark circles it was supposed to cover up. 

It looks like Donna’s been up for hours. Maybe she has been. Maybe she woke up right after getting to sleep and couldn’t bear to wake Joe with how restless she can get through the night. She’d made her way quietly through the house and fallen asleep for an hour or two on the couch, reading an old and tattered romance novel she’d plucked off the bookshelf. She wakes with the sun, and wonders if that’s what’s woken Joey too, or if it had simply been her clattering around in the kitchen.

She’s picked a fresh bouquet of roses from her own garden, three red and two white. They sit in a crystal vase on the kitchen counter while she brews a pot of coffee.