TAKE IT EASY • TC ✔️

46. Nothing

Lu hadn't known what to do with herself for the rest of the day. She'd thought about it thoroughly. Even given some thought as to what she could do for Giulia to make things...bearable.

Marco had been no use. He was back in bed by the time Giulia dropped Lu back home, and was very evidently asleep, his face mushed into his pillow. Lu stayed by his doorway for a few seconds, looking at his room. It had never changed as far as she could tell. It had always been the same shade of blue. Same green curtains, same yellow lamp in the corner, same red bedsheets. Same boy inbetween them, only it sufficed to say that Marco had changed even if his surroundings had not. Lu smiled a little. Drew the door ajar behind her and thought of things to do on birthdays. Board games, walks, presents, food, maybe. But there were bits of Ron in all of those activities, and Lu didn't quite know how to them without him.

She sorted through her closet first. Looked through the stacks of clothes she'd made before she'd left for New York, things that had no space in her suitcase but would have been entirely welcome in her closet at home. They would have made some kind of impression, stoppered up the gaps. If she'd had more clothes at her apartment, Timmy's wouldn't be taking up the other half of her closet.

Lu resolved to fit more clothing into her suitcase than last time. She even thought about packing techniques. Tried rolling her clothes, folding them, squashing socks into shoes. She went through all the things she'd left behind, and was left with piles. Keep. Donate. Take back to New York.

The latter was the biggest pile of all.

She'd have to find some way of kicking Timmy out. Lu didn't suppose she'd have much trouble kicking Timmy as a person out, now she was sure that he hated her, but his clothes were another matter entirely. They were all supposed to be donations, anyway, but it wasn't like she could take them to a thrift store herself. And it wasn't like she could just turn up on his doorstep with armfuls of clothing and dump it there on the threshold.

She wasn't even sure she wanted to dump it. Wasn't entirely sure that keeping Timmy's old clothes was a bad idea. They were a part of him, and if she never got the real Timmy back after what she'd put him through, then... then she would have something.

Lu stood up. Fetched the hoodie from her carry-on, which lay mostly unpacked by the door. She lifted it over her head, did up the zipper, considered pulling a Marco and going back to bed. And she did, only when she got under the covers and closed her eyes, she wasn't waiting to drift off. She was burying her nose into the hood of the sweater, tucking her knees up to her chest.

She was not trying to sleep but to pretend.

Giulia came back around lunchtime, uncharacteristically happy. Usually, you couldn't tell what Giulia was feeling. Usually, it was hard to believe that she felt anything at all, but when she came in and saw that Lucia had made her a club sandwich (and Lu had made one for Marco too, but that wasn't the point) Giulia beamed. Stroked a hand over Lu's head, picked up her plate, and made a beeline for the garden.

Lu sat for a few moments, brushing her hair back into place, and then got up. Went over to the sink and began washing the plates from lunch. She even ventured into Marco's room and retrieved his plate, too. As she scrubbed, she looked out of the window, right down to the far end of the garden, where Giulia was sitting on the bench with her sandwich, shadowed by the big old oak.

How many hours had Lu herself spent on that bench? Too many to count. Often she'd sit there with a book, the rungs digging into her back, her limbs squashed awkwardly against the wood, not even noticing her discomfort as she guzzled down pages upon pages. She watched Giulia, now, an odd reflection of herself. There were bits of her mother in every part of Lu, she knew that. Even if she took after Ron, there were things she couldn't change about herself, things that were her because they were Giulia first.