"Lydia, would you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Lawrence inquired, breaking a silence that lasted more than a few minutes.
Lydia grunted, rolling her eyes in response, taking some time to think up a response. But nothing seemed to be coming to her. Yet another silence befell the living room before Lydia grumbled out,
"Whatever!"
Lawrence didn't seem to hear that. "So, how close were you to your father on a scale of 1 to 10?"
"I'm guessing 9.85," Lydia snarked positively, her attention focused away from Lawrence and towards a wall that she, for some reason, seemed to find interesting.
"Okay! Great!" Lawrence took out a tiny notepad and a pen from his pocket and began taking notes. "I'm guessing that he was an immense help to you?"
"He was, he was!" Lydia replied, though she remained focused on the wall.
"How did he make you feel while you were around him?"
"Great! I was free to tell him whatever I wanted. He lightened my mood and made me really happy!" Now Lydia was looking towards him. Lydia's grin was genuine and Emily couldn't help but grin too.
This was going to be the greatest $950 she had ever spent.
Lydia continued. "Is that it?"
"Yes." Lawrence put his notepad and pen away and leaned backwards on the couch. "As my guru, Dewey, always says, 'the greatest gift in life is the ability to think great thoughts and have the strength to take action so that those thoughts become reality in this wonderful and abundant world."
Emily got up and left the room, picking up and taking Lydia's empty glass and Lawrence's empty coffee mug with her. Lydia turned her attention back to Lawrence.
"You're tacky and I hate you," she commented, far from sarcastic, giving him a side glance.
Emily peeked her head out from the kitchen, looking at Lydia. "Lydsie! Be nice to him!"
Lydia scoffed and folded her arms, rolling her eyes and looking away.
Lawrence ignored that first comment from Lydia, instead turning to Emily and asking, "Is my face okay? I think you melted it off!"
He let out a laugh. Emily did so too, rolling her eyes in amusement and re-entering the living room. Emily, upon hearing a ping, took out her phone and glanced at it. She put it away and turned her attention back to Lawrence.
"You want to stay? For dinner?" she asked, with a smile. "I don't mind if you don't want to."
Lawrence looked away and thought, hard, for a moment. Then he nodded as his attention focused back on Emily. Emily nodded too.
___________
Lawrence had only been Lydia's life coach for six months, with sessions happening every Wednesday, followed by him staying for dinner. Though those life coaching sessions had been moderately useful to Lydia, for the first couple of months, they were slowly starting to become meaningless. Most of those life coaching sessions consisted of continuous and subtle flirting between Emily and Lawrence, and Lydia only pretended to notice.
However, one Wednesday afternoon, just as soon as Lawrence had shown up at the Deetz house, Lydia had no idea that things were going to change soon.
After yet another meaningless life coaching session that had, yet again, consisted of subtle flirting between Emily and Lawrence, and not much talking to Lydia about her mental health, dinner had been served. Lydia grumpily plopped herself down on her usual seat at the other side of the kitchen table across from her mother, whereas Emily set each plate down before she and Lawrence sat quietly down across from her.

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Mixed it up together: A Beetlejuice AU (collab with DemonofmyNightmares)
FanfictionWith Lydia still in mourning for the death of her father, her mother Emily moves her and her new life coach Lawrence to a new house. There, Lydia meets and befriends a lonely recently deceased couple who are still yearning for a child of their own a...