#atepride

She’s dealt with worse these past few months;   she’ll survive these words, just like she’s survived the countless other arguments they’ve had. They’ve been tense for months   —   it’s difficult to grasp the time she’s been spending in this position with him, especially because she’s not even sure when all this shit actually started. (She knows their predicament started shortly after he came home with that black eye out of the blue, and then ended up in the hospital for the first time.)

Her head leans against the front door of their house, arms folded over her chest as she stares at him. She can hear her words echoing throughout her head, eyes watching as he began making his way to his car   —   which do you love more? Your “job” or me? Because, she feels she already knows the answer but she wants to hear it from him. (All she wants is to fucking hear the words from him   —   she needs to know.) Her stance feels as if she’s sunk into the patio’s flooring, like if she even tried to move an inch, she’d rubber-band right back to where she initially was. Her stomach is churning with nausea because all she wants it to be loved. All she wants is for things to go back to normal but that’s the thing: she barely remembers what normal feels like. She’s put up with so much shit because she loved him. She still does love him. 

“Really?”   Her words taste like acid, burning her tongue when they leave. It feels like yesterday when she got her brothers to follow him in that stupid fucking RV that took up so much space in the driveway   —   she should’ve known the moment he wouldn’t let her inside that something was going on. They followed him as he picked up Mr. White, their old fucking Chemistry teacher, and made their way to the desert. She still has a hard time wrapping her head around it, but at least the fucking RV isn’t here anymore. No, they’ve moved to some Laundry place, according to him.   “If you love me so much then let’s go. We’ve got all the money we could possibly want, we can go anywhere we want   —   let’s fucking go.”   Let’s fucking go before you get caught by the Feds, is what she means to say. There’s an internal war inside her body; the way she sees it: there’s two options being presented in front of her. 

She can stay. She can keep living in this fucking house, pretending nothing is going on and the day the cops come knocking on the door, she can lie and say she knew nothing about all the drugs. Her life will be flipped upside down and she’ll be moving back to Chicago before she knows it, if she’s even legally allowed to. Or she can leave. She walk back inside, pack her bags, and leave before things get worse because she knows things are going to get worse. People always get caught, no matter how hard they try. 

She inhales, sharp and pointed, as her gaze remains still on him. Her family has always been involved in shady shit, but this is new territory for her. A drug empire that’ll land him in federal prison until he dies? At least her brothers are in and out of jail within months. 

Shirley’s always looking for a roundabout way of saying things,   so her forward words cause Luke to raise his brows. Fingers immediately stop fumbling with his tie as he turns around, eyes meeting his older sister’s gaze who’s currently standing in the doorway.   “Yeah?”   He knows she’s saying the truth   —   she was Shirley after all; if she didn’t mean it, she wouldn’t say it. She wasn’t like Theo who’d say anything on her mind, because she was Theo. Shirley would say something under her breath and be on her way, continuing to mumble things until she would eventually explode; Luke would take any compliment he could get from her. (Especially because he can’t even remember the last thing he received a compliment about anything from her.)

He can’t stop the lop-sided smile forming across his face either.

Turning back around, his focus goes back onto his reflection staring back at him in the mirror.   “Thanks, Shirls.”   He moves back to tying his tie, his struggle becoming clearer and clearer with every passing second. On the back of his head, he can feel Shirley’s gaze staring directly into the back of his skull. (He swears, if she had laser vision, she would’ve probably have incinerated him by now; it probably looks like he can’t tie a tie, which he can. That’s one of the few things he remembers Dad teaching him.) After a final attempt, he finally grabs the tie and balls it up in his grip, head craning over his shoulder.