Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 136: Hurricane

It had taken Courtney a week of back-and-forth to decide whether to let her mother stay at their place, and a prompt from Conrad that she'd been asking him whether he knew whether she and Shayne were free in late August before she had relented and texted her.

"Sorry for the delay, had to sort out work schedules – there was a possibility we'd be out of town filming sometime in August," she had started the text with a little white lie, "yes, our spare room is free the 21st/22nd if you'd like to use it."

"Great! Would it be okay if I stayed the Friday night too? I can get a cheaper flight if I fly in Friday and out Monday somehow," she had replied, Courtney sighing before telling her that yes, that's fine.

They have a relatively full week of shoots the week before, and Courtney all but forgets what they're doing the next weekend until she has a slightly earlier wrap on Thursday, driving home by herself and quickly moving down to the living room floor to play with Mocha and Nutmeg. She glances up from the living room towards the kitchen bench, as she watches Mocha dart out towards the kitchen chasing after a ping-pong ball, her eyes immediately zeroing in on the dishes sitting by the sink.

"Mum'd fucking murder me for that," she mutters, under her breath, begrudgingly moving up off the floor and away from the cats – much to both of their dismay as they meow insistently at her to come back and play with them – to fill the sink with hot water and wash up the dishes.

She glances around the room as she dries the dishes after washing them, eyes scanning over the stacks of paper – a couple of Shayne's scripts from Goldbergs, which starts filming again in a few weeks, and her own sketchbook and pencils – and making anxiety rise up in her chest.

They can't have shit all over the dining table for her mother to make fun of, either, can't they? She'd always hated Courtney's penchant for drawing, anyway.

Courtney's hands fumble with her pencils as she quickly shifts them back into her case, inwardly cursing her own clumsiness as she finally gets everything into a pile and carries it upstairs to the second spare-room-slash-office and dumping it on the couch. She pauses, staring at the couch for a moment.

She's probably going to want to see the whole house, isn't she? God fucking damn it.

Courtney reaches for their things, again, moving Shayne's scripts into a neat stack on the computer desk before she moves to stash her own sketchbook and pens into one of the pull-out boxes in the office shelving unit (definitely an IKEA Kallax, but hey, they're functional). She continues putting away things in the office, before moving into their bedroom to do the same there. In the process of sorting clothes back out of the washed laundry pile into her closet and clearing off her makeup desk, she manages to bump a powder blush off the table, spilling out onto the floor.

"God fucking damn it!" she curses, hot tears springing at her eyes as the drops to the floor to pick up the product and slam it back up on the table, staring at the mess of light pink powder now sitting on top of their dark grey carpet. Why the fuck is spilling a goddamn blush making her cry? She doesn't even like that shade much-

"What-fucking-ever," Courtney mutters, under her breath, tears streaming own her face as she trudges downstairs to get the stick vacuum and drag it upstairs.

"This whole fucking house is just a messy fucking shit and she's just going to make fun of it and make fun of me and tell me I'm not enough of an adult to have my own house-" she rants, voice largely drowned out by the whir of the vacuum cleaner as she vacuums the carpet in their closet and, after a moment's hesitation, the rest of their bedroom, the hallway, and the office.

She moves downstairs to put the vacuum away, but her eyes immediately zone in on the bits of cat litter on the floor around their litter box in the laundry and she sobs as she starts vacuuming there, too, and if she's doing it she may as well do the whole house-