One Day At A Time

Chapter Forty-Five: Downpour

When Lilly gets home later that day, she runs right to her room, and looks for a place to put her small flag.

After a little bit of thinking, she sets it on her dresser, leaning it up against the framed photograph of herself and Ava on Halloween.

So, her small flag sits proudly by the picture of herself and her girlfriend.

Ava was right with her comment about rain, because Lilly can hear rain drizzling down from the gray clouds in the sky.

She looks out the window, watching the rain.
Her dad's car isn't in the driveway, he's probably out with his friends, spending a few hours away from the house.

About an hour after she gets home, Louise knocks on her bedroom door.

For a second, Lilly looks at the small pride flag and the picture of Ava and herself, thinking of hiding them or at least separating them, but she doesn't.
She just says to her mom,
"Come in."

Louise steps into her room.
"Your dad is out with his buddies, so it gives us some time together." She starts out with. "I wanted to ask how your shopping trip went, so how was it?"

Louise rarely asks about how Lilly's outings go, which is admittedly why it's strange that she's doing it now.
And Shawn only goes out every few weeks.

Lilly takes these things, her sudden mother-daughter time as a sign from the universe, a sign that things will go smoothly, that her mother is engaged and willing to listen.

Maybe it's wishful thinking.

Nevertheless, Lilly anxiously sits up on her bed, answering with,
"It was good- great, really." She answers honestly.

Her guard is very much up, there's no doubt about that.
But she answers honestly.

"I'm glad to hear it." Louise says, smiling.

Lilly can never tell the intention behind her mother's smile.

"What did you buy? I saw a bag with you when you came home." Louise asks.

Lilly hears Ava's voice in her head.
"You got this..."

She gets up off the bed and hesitantly picks up the flag, looking at it briefly.
"I bought this little thing, I thought it was cute, I guess..."

She looks up at her mom and she sees it, the look of bitterness, of frustration, of everything she's been worrying about and fearing since she woke up this morning and pulled her saved-up birthday money together.

"Why do you need another flag?" Louise asks bluntly.

"I don't know, I just... saw it and liked it."

Louise's focus shifts for a moment, standing up and walking towards Lilly's dresser and looking at the framed photo.

"When did you get this?"
"Oh, um, I got it for..." She swallows hard, feeling a thick lump go down her throat and sit like a rock in her stomach.

The picture frame says, "I love you" on it.
Maybe she should've hidden it.

"For Valentine's Day." She says.
"Why was the flag put with it? I'm not stupid, does it mean something?" Louise questions.

Her voice is low and it scares the ever-living shit out of Lilly.

Lilly wants to rewind time and put the flag anywhere else.
A cute, simple idea is now making a boulder of anxiety form in her stomach.

But she doesn't want to lie, she doesn't want to lie at all.

The handful of lies she's told her mom throughout her life have gotten her in deep trouble, deep trouble that she doesn't want to be in again.