14 years - Axl Rose x OC

9

-April 4th, 1977

Lita drowned out the sounds of her father and mother's bickering downstairs with her brand new Carpenters record, which she had bought just last week. It was an older one, if you could call 1970 old, but Lita Monroe wished to acquire every album of her favourite bands if her life depended on it.

Also, the 'Close To You' album was cheap and an easy practice for her piano skills.

Lita would listen to the album as she wrote the notes she heard in the songs, a skill she learned throughout her years of instrumental lessons. First she'd listen to 'We've Only Just Begun' before quickly switching to the title track, 'Close To You'–arguably her favourite from the album. Lita had recently taken to learning the notes for that son as well, writing them out in her calligraphy and then showing it to Bill the next day.

Bill had started writing his own lyrics recently, claiming they would be perfect for when he was in a band: the future. Sometimes they'd sing together or with Bill's younger sister, Amy, who held an affectionate liking for Lita's tone and the sweetness in her voice–something always reserved for the young girl.

Music was her comfort and her torture, and currently it served as the former when she heard more yelling and banging ring through her ears from the living room.

From what she could decipher, Lita's father was having problems with her job. That seemed typical for him.

For as long as she could remember, Lita's family always moved around, her father losing and gaining jobs faster and faster as she got older. She knew that this behavior of her father, the destructiveness and abrasiveness, the impromptu changing of emotions that made her so angry and red–like a pepper that's hotter than a whore in church. What she missed to realize, something of a revelation further down the road, was that Bill was also just like that.

Lita was the most informed person there could be on the polarity of an older man's emotions, somebody she was attached to by an unbreakable bond no matter how bad said person was to themselves and others, and her father and Bill fit into this same category.

No matter how destructive either became for her, which she knew sometimes would bring a catastrophic breakdown of her emotions, a locomotion from bad to worse, Lita Monroe could never let go of either, simply. They both were too similar, but she loved them for different reasons.

Perhaps Freud said something on this...perhaps. A thump up steps brought Lita out of her dissection of herself as the door opened to reveal her mother, whispering in a pleading voice, "Lita, can you come downstairs? Your father and I want to talk with you."

No doubt this would be about whatever her parents seemed to be disagreeing on.

She stalked down the steep staircase and into the presence of her mother, father, and Christopher. Oh, she thought, so this absolutely wasn't good.

Quickly she sat next to her brother.

"I was fired from my job today," her father proclaimed.

Shit.

"Money is going to be a little tight, so...Lita you're going to need to contribute something...It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, my boss said...They said they were lucky to have me...I'm going to start looking for another job soon...It might have to be outside Lafayette, though..."

Lita's mind drowned out every word that came out of her father's mouth as she heard his last sentence.

Leave Lafayette? She would never!, but it hadn't occurred to her that the possibility–almost always the outcome–of her father losing his job, then moving to another far-away city in another far-away state. Lita liked it here, the people especially, and she'd grown attached.