[center][img]https://img.roleplayerguild.com/prod/users/019d7fc4-0e4f-74cf-b013-2fcd533400cb.webp[/img] [img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/e15c8a781c0f68f64fe50b7e4bb8d50f/22f04e5ac52bf8b0-41/s400x600/40e9aa585c332c16a6d430d606506c6b070f13a4.gifv[/img] [sup][img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img] [color=808080][color=#4DBDB5][b]#4DBDB5[/b][/color] [color=2e2c2c]....[/color]|[color=2e2c2c].....[/color] [url=https://i.pinimg.com/1200x/5d/f4/ef/5df4ef7eba9181e0868e07f60ce8ea7e.jpg][color=808080][b]outfit[/b][/color][/url][color=2e2c2c].....[/color]|[color=2e2c2c].....[/color] [color=808080][b]anna lou's trailer[/b][/color][/color] [img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img][/sup][/center] [indent][indent][indent][indent][color=#808080]The heat is the first thing that registers. Not the light through the curtains nor Gerald's weight on her feet. Just the heat, thick and immediate, pressing down on her like a second blanket she didn't ask for. Anna Lou opens her eyes and stares at the water-stained ceiling of her room and knows, before she's fully conscious enough to reason it out, that the power is out. Gerald confirms this by standing up, walking the full length of her body, and sitting directly on her chest. [color=#4DBDB5]"Yeah,"[/color] she tells him. [color=#4DBDB5]"I know."[/color] He blinks at her slowly, deeply unimpressed, and she lifts him off with both hands and sets him beside her on the mattress, where he immediately begins grooming himself. She lies there for another minute, maybe two, listening to the silence and the way everything sounds slightly more present without the AC running. Somewhere down the hall, a cabinet closes. The smell of coffee drifts under her door, which means Lorraine is already up and has somehow produced coffee without electricity. Anna Lou sits up slowly. The sheet has left a crease along her cheek, and her hair is doing something she doesn't have the energy to investigate. She finds her phone on the nightstand — 9:30 AM, no signal, forty-two percent battery — and sets it back down. She pulls on yesterday's plaid shorts and the first shirt her hand finds in the drawer over her bra and underwear, something faded and soft that used to have text on it before the washing machine took care of that. She doesn't look in the mirror because she has learned over the years that mirrors on bad hair days during summer heat outages are an entirely optional experience, one she is more than willing to forgo. The hallway is narrow and warm, the air thick with last night's fried chicken and the faint, dusty scent of old carpet. She passes the bathroom, passes the small cluttered shelf where Lorraine keeps her collection of decorative roosters for reasons Anna Lou has never fully understood, and emerges into the kitchen to find her mother standing at the counter with a mug in each hand. [color=white]"Coffee's from the thermos,"[/color] Lorraine says, by way of greeting. [color=white]"Made it last night."[/color] [color=#4DBDB5]"Good morning to you, too,"[/color] Anna Lou says, and accepts the mug. The ceramic is warm against her palms. She takes a sip—black, a little stale, but hot, caffeinated, and therefore perfect. They stand together in the kitchen for a moment, the way they often do, the morning not requiring much of either of them yet. Through the window above the sink, Anna Lou can see the yard: the patchy grass, the fence that leans slightly to the left, the pale, bleached-blue sky already suggesting the kind of heat that will only get worse by noon. She can also see the edge of number fifteen's porch. It is empty. Delia has not surfaced yet, which could mean anything, really, but probably nothing all that great. [color=white]"Your father's out front,"[/color] Lorraine says, nodding towards the door. Anna Lou takes her coffee and goes to find him. Dennis is on the porch step, his own mug cradled in both hands, when the squeaky second step announces Anna Lou before she can say a word. He shifts slightly to make room without looking up, and she lowers herself beside him. For a while, neither of them speaks. They just watch the street in an easy silence. A kid goes past on a bicycle, standing up on the pedals the way she used to at that age, his shirt billowing behind him. A dog barks a few times somewhere down the row of trailers and then stops. [color=white]"Husker'll have his generator going,"[/color] Dennis says eventually. [color=#4DBDB5]"Yeah."[/color] He takes a slow sip of his coffee while down the street, a screen door bangs shut with a loud thud. [color=white]"Hot one today,"[/color] he says next, as if the thought occurred to him only just now, though Anna Lou suspects he has been sitting with it for a while. [color=#4DBDB5]"Supposed to hit eighty-five."[/color] She'd checked yesterday, so she knows this to be a fact. He nods slowly, like this confirms something he already knows as well. A truck idles past—an old Ford going nowhere in particular with the windows rolled all the way down. The driver, a man Anna Lou recognizes but cannot name, raises two fingers off the steering wheel in a lazy salute. Dennis raises his mug slightly in return. They sit with that for a while as the heat presses in, and Anna Lou can feel the sweat beginning to gather at the back of her neck because of it. She glances at her father's profile, at the gray threading through his stubble and the way his shoulders seem to slope a little more than they used to. Then, she does the thing Dennis hates but has probably come to expect by now. [color=#4DBDB5]"You eat yet?"[/color] [color=white]"Your mother's working on something."[/color] His answer is a perfunctory redirection that has worked on her before. It will not work today. [color=#4DBDB5]"That's not what I asked."[/color] The corner of his mouth moves until it forms the barest beginning of a smile.[color=white]"I'll eat. Don’t you worry now,"[/color] he says. He reaches over and ruffles her already messy hair the way he has been doing since she barely came up to his shoulder, and she ducks away from it on instinct, making the corner of his mouth move a little further. The thing is, though, Anna Lou does worry. She has noticed over the past few months the way he sometimes sits down to a full plate and stands up, having moved most of it around without actually eating much of it at all. She hasn't said this out loud because Dennis wouldn't want her to (he has never been the kind of man who accepts concern gracefully), and besides, she wouldn't know how to say it without it sounding like an accusation. Which it isn’t. It's just that…she notices. She lets the silence settle between them again. A fly buzzes somewhere near the screen door. The kid on the bicycle has long since disappeared around the bend. Anna Lou takes a final sip of her coffee, which has gone tepid and bitter, and makes a decision. [color=#4DBDB5]"I'm gonna head over to Husker's,"[/color] she says. [color=#4DBDB5]"See if they need the help."[/color] It is, technically, her day off. She is aware of this. She is also aware that the trailer has no power, that the heat is only going to get worse, and that Husker's will be pulling in half the town before noon, whether they're staffed for it or not. The extra hours would not go unappreciated either, not with the rent having gone up three hundred dollars and Dennis's Dollar General shifts being what they are. So it isn't entirely selfless, the impulse to go. It rarely is, if she's being honest, which she tries to be, at least with herself, at least some of the time. Dennis nods once and lifts his mug again as Anna Lou stands up. The porch boards creak beneath her, and she pauses for half a second with her hand on the screen door, looking back at him. She wants to say something else. Maybe an [i]I love you[/i]. But the words stick in her throat, too heavy and too light all at once, and so she pushes through the door instead, the screen whining shut behind her.[/color][/indent][/indent][/indent][/indent] [center][sup][img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img] [color=808080][b]interactions[/b] [color=2e2c2c]....[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]....[/color] none [color=2e2c2c]...............[/color] [b]mentions[/b] [color=2e2c2c]....[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]....[/color] delia[color=2e2c2c]...............[/color] [b]collabs[/b] [color=2e2c2c]....[/color]|[color=2e2c2c]....[/color] none[/color] [img]https://i.imgur.com/9qIY4OK.jpeg[/img][/sup][/center]