Bad For You

12

Early the next morning Lane rolled out of Matt's bed as gently as she could, hoping to let him sleep after she'd kept him up late, but as she tip toed toward the door a floorboard made a low squeaking sound.

"Really?" She turned to see him lying on his side, head propped up on a hand as he grinned in her direction. "You come over and I happily entertain you for the night and I don't even get a goodbye? Tell me you at least left a nice tip on the dresser."

She turned sheepishly. "I was trying to be nice and let you sleep. I did make you exert yourself quite a bit last night, didn't want to toss in an early morning as well."

He shook his head as he shifted and rose from the bed, grabbing his t-shirt from the floor as he came around the bed to stand in front of her. "Do you at least want a coffee or something before you go?"

She raised a brow. "Do you actually have something other than beer and expired takeout in your apartment?"

"No," he said with a laugh. "But I can run out and grab something."

She brought a hand to his cheek, patting it gently before letting it run down his chest as it dropped and she stepped back. "I'm good, but the attempt is appreciated. I'm probably going to grab donuts and stuff on the way to Paloma's anyways."

"You're not heading back upstate?"

Her smile dropped. Even exhausted after their tryst she's laid awake for hours thinking about what would come next for her. She needed to come up with a plan that involved getting out of New York if not the states completely but she didn't want to disappear like she had before. This time she had people, Paloma, Dio, and Blanca, that she wouldn't leave behind. They'd given her family in a way she never had before and she wouldn't walk away from it. Which meant she would have to convince them to go with her and the most likely way to make that happen would be to tell them who and what she was.

She wasn't ready for that yet so she would take today and pretend her world wasn't on the verge of exploding. She'd spend the day at Paloma's playing with Dio and listening to her best friend complain about the crazies at her job as the scent of Blanca's Sunday prayer candles mixed with her cooking and then she'd head back to the compound for one of the last times. She'd pack, transfer the funds she'd managed to keep after Tony caught her to a new name and location, maybe buy a place so they'd have a somewhere to settle into right away...if they chose to come with her. And then soon enough she'd go.

She ignored the tiny little pokey feeling in her chest and pushed away the other name trying to shout into her brain as she headed to the door. "Nah, I think I'd rather spend the day hearing about dinosaurs. Way cooler than hanging around a bunch of superheroes."

"Marlene," she stopped with her hand on the doorknob and felt a cold shiver run down her spine. Even after all this time the sound of her real name, even from Matt, terrified her. She didn't look at him as he continued. "Be careful, please."

"This time, just for you Matty cakes, I will be."

-

Later that afternoon she laid on her stomach beside Dio coloring. She'd raided her quickly dwindling stash of clothes after plopping sugary treats in front of her nephew and then hastily, and with little detail, explained her failure of a hook up to Paloma as she changed. After their joint moaning about the falling quality of dating in the city their conversation devolved into their normal chit chat. They'd eaten half the donuts before deciding they needed to work it off and taking Dio to the park down the block and returned to Blanca muttering about being the only adult in the house as she cleaned up what had been left. Lunch, several episodes of a weirdly addicting children's show, and a few hours of racing Hot Wheels on various sketchily built tracks Dio darted into his room before returning with crayons and a stack of paper.