marmalade #30 + fotd
marmalade 30. traffic light + fotd : "impedimenta" + sprinkles
story: second chances ; pre main chronology. wordcount: 831. rating: pg13.
By thirty, she'd expected to feel like a real adult, but she still felt young and lost and scared. Anna tries to make some decisions.
notes: so Anna and Sandy are Rayn's parents, who we've seen as teenagers before. But this is about 15 years after that, when things are...less than sunny. With Shayna's, +1.5k for the summer challenge.
It was supposed to be one of the most dangerous intersections in that part of the city, which was saying a lot in LA.
Anna just found it the slowest.
She rolled to a stop, cursing the newly red light, and reached into the cup holder for a fresh cigarette. It was not enough, apparently, that she spend the last half hour slogging through her way through freeway traffic in this rattle-trap of a Geo-she was also destined to hit every red light between the off-ramp and her kids. The dash clock said 5:42. It was fast, but how fast? She lit the cigarette.
The car to her right was a clean, white Mercedes with the windows rolled up. A woman with coiffed hair and manicured fingernails was driving, staring straight ahead at the traffic light. A little girl sat in the back seat reading. Anna turned to blow smoke out the window, and when she looked back the woman was looking at her.
Nice car, Sandy would say. They must be lost. Anna wasn't sure whether the thought made her want to laugh or cry. Maybe both. Every time she thought about her husband now, her chest felt like it was trying to cave in. She couldn't ignore it anymore, not after he'd all but disappeared for three days, stumbling home yesterday with a weak explanation and a handful of money won at some poker table, like that was supposed to make up for it.
He had promised her this was just a rough patch for him, that he was trying to get his life in order. He was going to stop drinking, he was going to start composing again and he would find another job too, if she wanted. A steady job.
She wanted to believe him so badly. They had both stopped drinking when she was pregnant with Rayn, and that had been easy. Why couldn't it be easy again? But she knew she couldn't count on it; there were too many broken promises, to her and the kids both.
She had pulled her hands from his grip and mumbled an excuse to leave the bedroom. Sandy would fall asleep and not remember making those new promises in the morning.
Anna looked away from the woman in the white Mercedes and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She hated this intersection. She hated idling in the heat with the sun beating down through the windshield. She was beginning to think the city had lost its appeal sometime during the last five years.
She was turning thirty next month. Thirty. By thirty, she'd expected to feel like a real adult, but she still felt young and lost and scared.
She'd called her sister last night, for the first time in months.
Anna, you have to think of your kids, Dinah had pleaded. You can't do this to Rayn and Tina.
Her sister, the perfect, self-sacrificing mother as always, still making her feel like an irresponsible sixteen year old.
I know, I know. Anna had a headache; she had headaches a lot lately. But I can't just leave, I can't-
Yes, you can, Dinah insisted. You can come back home. You can stay with me or with Mom and Dad-they have enough room for you and the kids.
It's not that simple, Anna said.
Why? Dinah's tone turned to scoffing. Do you love him too much to leave him?
And when Anna didn't answer, Dinah sounded suddenly horrified: Wait, you're actually still in love with him?
Eyes fixed on the red light, Anna inhaled on her cigarette until her lungs burned. She used to think she couldn't live with herself if she had to ask her parents for help, her parents that had been openly unsupportive of every decision she'd made since dropping out of high school. But maybe what she couldn't live with a husband who couldn't hold a job, or keep a promise or even be trusted to watch the kids in the hours before she got home because he was too fucking drunk. Maybe she couldn't live with watching their paltry savings drain away while she tried to support four people on a cashier's salary, sneaking out items past their sell-by dates from the store so she wouldn't have to worry about her kids getting enough to eat.
Fuck it, maybe Dinah was right.
Or...maybe Sandy just needed one more chance. Still focused on the light, Anna squeezed the steering wheel tightly. One more chance, please, God. This time.
Let him be sober this time. Let him be sober and I won't have to leave.
The light turned green.
Tossing the cigarette butt out the window, she stomped the accelerator and took off down the boulevard.
Writing this, half of me was like ARGH, ANNA! and half was like ANNA, ILU, I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU'RE MAKING BAD DECISIONS. It's funny, I got really attached to Rayn's parents as characters :P.
story: second chances ; pre main chronology. wordcount: 831. rating: pg13.
By thirty, she'd expected to feel like a real adult, but she still felt young and lost and scared. Anna tries to make some decisions.
notes: so Anna and Sandy are Rayn's parents, who we've seen as teenagers before. But this is about 15 years after that, when things are...less than sunny. With Shayna's, +1.5k for the summer challenge.
It was supposed to be one of the most dangerous intersections in that part of the city, which was saying a lot in LA.
Anna just found it the slowest.
She rolled to a stop, cursing the newly red light, and reached into the cup holder for a fresh cigarette. It was not enough, apparently, that she spend the last half hour slogging through her way through freeway traffic in this rattle-trap of a Geo-she was also destined to hit every red light between the off-ramp and her kids. The dash clock said 5:42. It was fast, but how fast? She lit the cigarette.
The car to her right was a clean, white Mercedes with the windows rolled up. A woman with coiffed hair and manicured fingernails was driving, staring straight ahead at the traffic light. A little girl sat in the back seat reading. Anna turned to blow smoke out the window, and when she looked back the woman was looking at her.
Nice car, Sandy would say. They must be lost. Anna wasn't sure whether the thought made her want to laugh or cry. Maybe both. Every time she thought about her husband now, her chest felt like it was trying to cave in. She couldn't ignore it anymore, not after he'd all but disappeared for three days, stumbling home yesterday with a weak explanation and a handful of money won at some poker table, like that was supposed to make up for it.
He had promised her this was just a rough patch for him, that he was trying to get his life in order. He was going to stop drinking, he was going to start composing again and he would find another job too, if she wanted. A steady job.
She wanted to believe him so badly. They had both stopped drinking when she was pregnant with Rayn, and that had been easy. Why couldn't it be easy again? But she knew she couldn't count on it; there were too many broken promises, to her and the kids both.
She had pulled her hands from his grip and mumbled an excuse to leave the bedroom. Sandy would fall asleep and not remember making those new promises in the morning.
Anna looked away from the woman in the white Mercedes and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. She hated this intersection. She hated idling in the heat with the sun beating down through the windshield. She was beginning to think the city had lost its appeal sometime during the last five years.
She was turning thirty next month. Thirty. By thirty, she'd expected to feel like a real adult, but she still felt young and lost and scared.
She'd called her sister last night, for the first time in months.
Anna, you have to think of your kids, Dinah had pleaded. You can't do this to Rayn and Tina.
Her sister, the perfect, self-sacrificing mother as always, still making her feel like an irresponsible sixteen year old.
I know, I know. Anna had a headache; she had headaches a lot lately. But I can't just leave, I can't-
Yes, you can, Dinah insisted. You can come back home. You can stay with me or with Mom and Dad-they have enough room for you and the kids.
It's not that simple, Anna said.
Why? Dinah's tone turned to scoffing. Do you love him too much to leave him?
And when Anna didn't answer, Dinah sounded suddenly horrified: Wait, you're actually still in love with him?
Eyes fixed on the red light, Anna inhaled on her cigarette until her lungs burned. She used to think she couldn't live with herself if she had to ask her parents for help, her parents that had been openly unsupportive of every decision she'd made since dropping out of high school. But maybe what she couldn't live with a husband who couldn't hold a job, or keep a promise or even be trusted to watch the kids in the hours before she got home because he was too fucking drunk. Maybe she couldn't live with watching their paltry savings drain away while she tried to support four people on a cashier's salary, sneaking out items past their sell-by dates from the store so she wouldn't have to worry about her kids getting enough to eat.
Fuck it, maybe Dinah was right.
Or...maybe Sandy just needed one more chance. Still focused on the light, Anna squeezed the steering wheel tightly. One more chance, please, God. This time.
Let him be sober this time. Let him be sober and I won't have to leave.
The light turned green.
Tossing the cigarette butt out the window, she stomped the accelerator and took off down the boulevard.
Writing this, half of me was like ARGH, ANNA! and half was like ANNA, ILU, I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU'RE MAKING BAD DECISIONS. It's funny, I got really attached to Rayn's parents as characters :P.