They stand there is silence for a few moments as Madge's heart goes on pounding in her ears. The sound is matched only by the knocking of knuckles on the wood of the door once again. Madge thinks of the times before, when Gale has come in and cracked a joke with a kind smile, or talked about his fish. They're all memories she likes to look at, but not too closely, never too closely. She cannot stand the thought of intimacy. She cannot stand Delly's smug insistence that something should happen between the boxer and the shopkeeper. Delly quirks an eyebrow and holds her key ring up, nodding to the entryway expectantly.
"Should I let him in?" She prompts.
Madge nearly jumps out of her skin, pulled from a more recent memory of an encounter in this store, when Gale told her that his youngest brother tried to drown one of his fish. That story coaxed only a little smile out of Madge when it was first told, but Gale told her it was his greatest accomplishment of the day.
"What?" Madge snaps, suddenly thrust back into reality.
Delly's deadpan look gives Madge all of the information she needs to know; Delly thinks Madge has been in some sort of fanciful day dream about the man on the other side of the door. Absurd.
"You've been looking at the door for a while with that dumb look on your face. Should I let him inside?" She asks, raising an eyebrow in the other woman's direction.
Madge's heart isn't steady and pounding now. It is erratic and marathoning. Her body can hardly keep up and her mouth speaks before her brain registers the words, the words that Delly knows and understands, but doesn't particularly care about.
"We're closed," Madge reminds her.
Scoffing lightly and resting on her hip, Delly levels her gaze.
"That's not going to deter him."
Of course, Delly doesn't think Gale would do anything crazy like break the door down or wait for Madge to leave and follow her home or anything as scary as all that. He isn't a stalker; he is just smitten. Delly simply knows that, to Gale, being closed today means that tomorrow is another opportunity, the chance of seeing Madge tomorrow is enough to get him through the "Sorry, we're closed" sign tonight. Madge sharpens her gaze.
"We're closed," Madge repeats, simply.
As if on cue, a man's voice cuts through the wood door. Madge doesn't know if he's heard everything, and she isn't sure she cares if he has heard.
"I just need some fish food," Gale calls through the door, the quirk of his smile evident in his very tone of voice.
Instead of looking up or acknowledging his words, she applies more lemon-scented dust-remover to the fresh rag she took out of the cleaning supply kit hidden behind the counter, and returned to the piano in the corner. Perfect circle after perfect circle. Her body is so used to it that her joints hardly even ache anymore. She's at it for only four or five seconds before she hears the click of Delly's heeled boots against the floor, heading toward the sound of Gale's voice. Madge's head snaps up.
"Don't open it," she commands weakly.
Give it a rest, Delly wants to say. Unfortunately, she knows that will only hurt the poor boxer's chances even further, so she just shrugs and selects the key to the front door.
"He just wants some fish food. Besides, it's freezing out there. Give the guy a break."
She thinks on this for a minute. She doesn't want to seem cruel.
"Fine," Madge mutters under her breath.
She returns to her cleaning. She is a sore loser. A rush of cold air floods the room as Delly pulls the door open, allowing the winter to break the insulated heat of the shop. Madge hears Gale shuffle in, blowing air into his hands to return feeling to them.
"Hey, Delly," he says, a twinge of gladness and relief lighting his voice.
Sliding her coat over her arms and buttoning it up to the neck, Delly pats him on the shoulder.
"Hey, Gale," she responds, conspiratorially.
As he catches a glimpse of Madge, hovering over a piano, a smile slides on his face, one that looks like a stiff, cold-weather grimace instead of an expression of happiness. Delly attributes the poor execution of the smile to the fresh cuts on his cracked face, but knows that, somewhere deep inside her, whether she recognizes it or not, Madge will only find it all the more endearing.
"Madge," Gale says, nodding his head once.
The young blonde girl knows that there is no more dust on this piano, but she continues her near-frantic cleaning anyway.
"We're closed," she says quietly, with a measure of hopeful finality.
Nodding, Gale steps further into the shop, closer and closer by the step to her place near the piano in the farthest corner. There's still some distance between them, but he likes being near her; it's a simple pleasure for him.
"I know. Thanks for letting me in. It's cold out. Like stepping into the flu." He jokes with that grimacing smile of his.
The sound of clanking keys and Delly swinging the door open.
"I'm gonna head out," she calls before wishing her friend and Gale goodnight.
Traitor, Madge thinks to herself.
"Bye, Delly," Gale calls, watching at the door closes behind her.
Gale would never admit it, not to anyone, but this shop is one of his peaceful places. The noise in his head…The sound of flesh against flesh and Sae's laughing and the roar of the crowd and the cars passing him on the street and the rain against the pavement… When he walks into the door of this shop, when he looks at Madge Undersee, they all quiet down. She quiets the noise in his life.
She stands and moves to the next piano; this one is closer to him, which is a risk, but Madge knows the cleaning supplies will eat through the wood of the farthest piano if she doesn't move onward. She refuses to look at him.
"That's a pretty dress you have on," Gale says, trying his best.
It's one of her work dresses, simple and clean. It's modest and it is apparent to Gale that she doesn't dress for anyone, least of all him.
"Oh. Thank you," she says, ducking her head in deference.
Gale chuckles and takes another inching step closer, trying his best not to scare her off.
"You're so formal," he imitates her, his voice teasing, "Thank you."
When she was a child, raised in a politician's home, constantly a fixture in campaigns and public life, her greatest fear was taking a misstep and ruining everything. Gale's laughter quiets her; she thinks she's done something wrong.
"It's polite to say thank you," she nearly whispers, a tinge of embarrassment breaking her voice.
A flush colors her cheeks and Gale knows that he's screwed up. Piping up, he struggles to find the words to erase his careless mistake.
"No. Don't get me wrong. I'm not making fun of you. It's sweet," Gale says, backtracking.
Shit. He didn't mean to hurt her feelings. He rubs at his face tenderly, as if rubbing away the guilt he feels at the poorly chosen words, and thinks back to something that might cheer her up.
"Remember the first time we talked?"
Gale isn't sure why he thinks that this will be the story that makes her smile, but he's already halfway through the sentence before he realizes that it might be a bad idea.
"Yeah. You walked up to me and made fun of my dress because it was too nice to wear to school," Madge says, applying more lemon cleaner to the rag in her hand.
It's true. It was her first day of class, and he strode up to her like he owned the place, and asked if "her rich daddy bought her that pretty dress." She didn't react, as it wasn't her way to do so. Instead, she got even in the only way she knew how. Gale smiles as he thinks of it.
"And then you kicked my ass in stickball at recess, even in a dress that nice. Fourth grade," he says, nostalgic and gentle.
Madge still isn't smiling, and the realization sets Gale at ill ease. She's just scrubbing; from the moment he walked into the room, she hasn't looked up at him, not once. There's a hummingbird heart in Madge's chest cavity tonight; she's flitting and busying herself to keep from having to confront the wash of emotion filling her from the tips of her toes up. Gale tries to get a smile out of her, and remembers the last time he managed it. He told her about Vick trying to drown the last fish he bought from her, and she couldn't help but crack a smile at that. This isn't exactly a funny story, but sincerity runs through him, and he leans across a piano, easing the pressure in his ribs from the left jabs of tonight's fight and to incline himself closer to her for this one, brief moment.
"This dress is better than that one," he says, smiling completely in spite of the pain in his split lip.
The blonde's reaction is immediate.
"Thank you," she states.
For the first time, Madge stands to her full height and looks him in the eye. He's a jarring sight to look at, and the realization of him in his full, current physical form traps the breath in her throat. His face is broken. Black eye. Busted skin over the left eyebrow. Swollen and split lip. Swelling along his jaw.
Of course, Madge knows what Gale does for a living, this part of it anyway. She knows he fights down at The Hob, and she knows that it isn't very pretty. She knows that they don't play by any rule book down there. But… Seeing it? Up close and personal? It makes her want to reach out to him.
"Are you-?" She begins to ask.
His smile is lopsided- the pain in his right cheek doesn't allow him much movement on that side of his face- and his eyes are knowing. He stopped in a the bathroom of a run-down bar on the way over here and cleaned the blood away, waited for the clotting to hasten to his skin, but obviously it didn't do well enough. He still looks like a wreck. Gale deftly changes the subject, hoping to keep Madge from worrying about him; that is something he never wants to condemn her to.
"How's the fish food today?" He asks, laughing to himself at his own joke.
He points to the wall behind the counter. The store is built that way; the floor and showroom is entirely musical. Pianos. Harps. Stands. But, the entire wall behind the counter is dominated by fish tanks and shelves of food and bowls and nets and odds and ends for fish of all kinds. Madge shrugs and restores her cleaning supplies to their place below the counter. Her voice is quiet and shy.
"I don't know. I haven't tried it."
Gale continues to tease, watching as she turns her back to him to stare up at the fish food on the wall behind the counter; he follows her, standing on the outside of the counter, content to joke with her. One day, he knows, she'll come out of her shell. Not because of anything he does, oh no. It'll be because she's ready. And when she does, he knows she'll understand that he's been waiting for her all along.
"Sounds like shoddy business to me. Not testing your products," he laughs.
Madge reaches up and pulls a bottle of his usual brand from off the wall. Gale has goldfish, but likes to "bulk them up" with Beta fish food. Madge does not understand, nor recommend, this method, but she goes along with it anyhow.
"The fish seem to like it," she breezes.
The man across from her is an easy sell.
"I'll take it, then."
He holds his hand out to take the bottle, but she hesitates, as if there is some complicated moral issue attached to it.
"Gale?" She begins.
Is this it? Gale is shocked by how quickly she can make him hold his breath. He isn't one of these guys who falls all over themselves over girls. But Madge? She can make him pay attention.
"I'm concerned," she confesses.
Normally, she would be hustling him out of the store at top speed, taking his two dollars and change before getting him out without much exchange of words. But, today, she has some courage. Perhaps it's because animals are concerned. Perhaps it's something else, she couldn't say.
"Huh?" He asks.
They lock eyes for a moment, and the air turns static and dense around them, as if they couldn't move even if they wanted to. Gale can see flecks of color in Madge's eyes that he's never seen before. Green and black and silver, the colors of winter forests that hide infinite secrets. Then, when the unbearable weight of it all becomes too much, Madge turns her gaze from him and looks at her hands.
"I think you may be over feeding your fish," she mumbles.
A tension-releasing laugh escapes Gale's lips and he shoves his hands into his pockets.
"Why?" He asks.
"You've bought three cans of fish food in the last week."
"They're hungry little suckers, what can I say?"
"It isn't healthy," Madge protests.
Gale's gaze softens, and asks a question he knows the answer to.
"Why don't you come by my apartment and see them, then? Make sure I'm taking care of them?"
It isn't a come-on. It isn't a beckoning for her to go back to his for sex or whatever it is that normally comes from a question like that. It's fine. Gale's intentions are good, and Madge believes in them.
"No, thank you," she says.
It is Gale's turn for a confession. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets and furrows his brow, as much as he can through the throbbing in his head from the blows he took tonight. Gathering his courage, he puts it into the one sentence he's been waiting to say, the sentence that Madge has been dreading.
"I didn't come in here for fish food."
She ducks his statement, avoiding it as if she hadn't heard, when, in truth, she both heard it and felt it.
"That'll be $2.39," she clips.
Gale knows that she's trying to evade this. But he's been coming in here for weeks, trying to start conversation, trying to make her smile, trying to make her notice him, just to build up the courage to ask her to go out with him. This is his shot.
"Look-" He breaks in.
Madge looks away. She can't stand the sad determination in his eyes; she cannot look at him because one look could ruin her strength.
"I need to finish closing up," she says.
Gale tries again.
"I was thinking-"
Madge holds up the bottle of fish food to him, a sort of physical barrier between them.
"Are you going to buy this or not?" She snaps, her eyes a bit more annoyed and a little less understanding than he's ever seen before.
He opens his mouth to ask her out, on a real date. Tomorrow, maybe. But, no. He looks at her this way, her eyes wide and her pulse visible against the skin of her wrist, Gale knows that it wouldn't be smart. He doesn't want to scare her off; he wants to love her.
"I was thinking that I could walk you home," he offers.
It isn't really what he wants. But, at the same time, it is exactly what he wants. To make sure she's safe, looked after. Happy. He's known her since he was a kid and all that time... It's always sort of been there. This connection between the two of them.
"That's not necessary," she confirms, terse and tense.
Her voice doesn't give any permission for him to continue this line, but Gale plows forward. The streets in a neighborhood like District Twelve aren't ideal for someone like him, much less for a girl like Madge.
"It's cold, it's dark, and it's late. I just want to make sure you get home safe," he pleads.
He is quiet. Still.
"I'll be fine," she says, walking toward the door.
"I haven't paid yet," he calls after her.
Everything is backwards. She wants him to stay, she wants him to walk her home, but she doesn't want those things at all, all at the same time. It isn't fair. Madge attempts to force herself into the strength she had when they first began tonight's dance.
"Just have it," she says.
He follows her to the door, where Madge is standing with her arms folded over her chest. He's trying his very best to quell the new ache in his chest that has nothing to do with tonight's fight and everything to do with the fact that she can't look him in the eye right now. Jaw grinding, she stares at the floor.
"But I don't- Madge, if you want me to get lost-" He begins.
She cuts him off seamlessly.
"Get lost."
Quiet. Deadly quiet. Gale feels like an arrow just tore through his chest. He struggles to swallow the feeling down.
"Really?" He asks.
She doesn't answer or move. She doesn't look up. He counts to ten, then twenty. And she doesn't make any move to try and keep him here. Then, he nods once, a sigh falling from his lips.
He knows when he's been beaten. He knows when he's been defeated. And, even after everything, he knows that he can still smile for her. He does, just a little bit, as he tries to catch her gaze, unsuccessfully.
"Alright. Have a good night, then. I'm gonna head out."
The front door opens. He's halfway down the steps in painfully slow fashion, halfway out of her night, when he hears her feet quickly pacing the store before calling after him.
"Gale, wait."
He turns on a dime, hope filling his eyes and his chest.
"What?"
In the dim light coming from inside the shop, Gale watches Madge conservatively flit down the steps until she is standing two higher than him. She extends something in the darkness, and, upon further inspection, Gale realizes that it is an ice pack. He takes it and looks up at her for some explanation.
"Your eye is swollen," she says.
And she's smiling.
It's almost indiscernible, but Gale can see it. He doesn't know what has caused this shift, why she's holding out what feels like a peace offering, but he accepts it, offering a beam of his own.
"Thanks."
And, with another goodbye from his lips, he turns and dissolves into the chilly night rain.
Gale's apartment is on the wrong side of the wrong side of town. A black hole of single room dwellings and junkies, this block has three working streetlights and no working police officers. But, it's a place for him to sleep, and it has working heat and water, most nights. He's in the middle of feeding his fish, realizing that he has spent more money this week on fish food than human food, when he hears a voice coming in from his front door.
"Gale!"
The older Hawthorne sighs, recognizing the voice. His glance flits upward toward the clock on the wall. Past midnight. Moving his aching body inch by inch, Gale crosses his tiny room to open the door.
"What, Rory?"
The door swings open and Rory's face immediate scrunches up in displeasure at the sight of his brother's busted features.
"Shit. You fight tonight?"
A few steps take Gale away from the threshold, allowing Rory to follow inside. Now tired and aching all over, Gale's patience for his younger brother's appearance at this hour runs thin.
"Yes. What're you doing out so late?" He asks.
Gale crosses to the kitchenette in the corner of this single room apartment, running the water of the sink cold over his sore knuckles. Rory holds up a plastic grocery bag in the air before passing it to his brother.
"Ma heard you fought again tonight. Wanted me to bring you some leftovers and make sure she heard right."
A stomach rumble can be clearly heard through the room; Gale isn't starving, he wouldn't go that far, but he hasn't had a square meal in a few days. Most of his diet lately has consisted of ham sandwiches and ninety-nine cent chocolate cakes from the gas station down the street. Opening up the plastic containers, Gale lets the smell of his mother's cooking fill the room, sighing in satisfaction before realizing that something feels odd here.
"What's Ma doing up so late?" He asks, suspicious.
Leaning against one of the half-painted, unfinished walls of the room, Rory looks off, not necessarily embarrassed, but not necessarily willing to share the details of his night with his older brother. Gale knows about Prim, of course; he's the reason that the two of them met. On her free weekends, Prim plays medic at the gym where Gale trains, stitching up minor things and patching people up here and there. Rory came in one day to check on his brother during a sparring session; the two kids locked eyes and that was the start of everything. That was a year ago, and they've been together ever since.
"She went to bed hours ago. I've been out with Prim," he says, offhandedly.
Gale is just about to pour some of his mother's rice onto a plate when this stops him in his tracks. He raises an eyebrow, cringing a half-second later when the muscles in his forehead contract painfully.
"Not getting into trouble, are you?" Gale prods.
Rory rolls his eyes; he isn't going to indulge his brother with this conversation.
"We're smart, Gale," Rory reassures his brother.
Gale wishes he could say the same thing for himself. He catches the sight of the discarded ice pack melting on his kitchen counter, and his mind drifts off to Madge Undersee. Her blue eyes and her gentle ways. Nodding to his brother's injuries as Gale shoves the leftovers in the microwave, Rory asks:
"Did you win?"
Brimming with cliches, Gale clips:
"You should've seen the other guy."
Distaste settles over the younger Hawthorne's face as he tries to imagine the guy that lost this fight. He's never been queasy around blood, but if Gale is the winner, he isn't sure he wants to see what the loser looks like.
"No, thank you," he grumbles.
Once he's set the microwave timer, Gale fumbles in his pockets and pulls out the bills from Sae. Almost all of them.
"Here's my winnings. I had to take ten out to cover the last of my rent, but give the rest to Ma for me."
Rory nods thankfully and pockets the cash. Then, he looks at his face.
"Y'know, Gale, I was thinking about maybe getting a job? Picking up a few shifts at The Mine? I'd make a real good sparring partner, I think."
Gale's heart almost stops. The Mine. He can't fucking believe this. The Mine is the boxing gym where Gale works. Seedy and grimy, it's where the low-lives of District Twelve fight for their survival, paying for it in their teeth and sweat and skin and blood. It's a two-bit operation run by crooked mobsters and kingpins. Gale started young. Twelve years old, after his father died, getting towels and water for the boxers who then seemed larger than life. It was just to pick up a little extra cash. That was all. But, at fourteen, he became a sparring partner. The money was better in that position, so he decided to do it. Little did he realize that he was signing his life away. What started as a way to pick up cash became a lifetime of busted lips and broken noses and midnight fights in front of bookies and tramps alike.
"You don't just pick up a few shifts at The Mine," Gale snaps, knowing how it works.
When you start working at a place like The Mine, you live and die there. It's a factory of fighters.
"You work there," Rory protests.
"It's different," Gale snaps.
"It's good money."
Not good enough. Not for this. Gale won't let his brother go through what he does.
"Yeah, and it's also your life," Gale barks, his voice almost raising to a shout.
As if diffusing the tension, the microwave begins to beep. Rory and Gale both take a step back from one another, breathing out sighs of relief at the end of a fight.
"I was just thinking about it," Rory says quietly, "I don't want you to spend your whole damn life getting beaten to a pulp to make sure we have grocery money."
He rubs the back of his neck and looks at the floor again.
"I like getting beaten to a pulp. It's the only thing I'm good at," Gale says darkly, picking a plastic fork from his drawer and digs into his dinner.
Oh, Ma's home cooking. Gale sighs gratefully.
Rory looks away from the floor, taking in the small, sad room round him. When he catches sight of Gale's beside table, he furrows his brow.
"What's with all this fish food?" He asks, impertinent.
"My fish're hungry," Gale says, defensively through a mouth of beef and rice.
Realization dawns over the younger brother. He knows what this is about.
"You see Madge tonight?" Rory asks.
"It's her store," Gale says noncommittally.
A sigh of aggravation falls from Rory's chest and he begins a sermon he's practiced a few times in his head.
"You're still hung up on her, aren't you? God, Gale, she's pathetic. Can hardly look people in the eye, and she hides in that damn store. When was the last time you saw her out?"
There aren't many times that Gale has felt rage at his younger brother. But calling Madge pathetic makes the older Hawthorne's voice drop to a low that would send weaker men running scared.
"That isn't the point," he growls, putting his plate aside.
No, Madge isn't particularly social. No, she doesn't "go out" in the way that a girl like Delly does. It doesn't make her better or worse. She's just made different choices, that's all.
"Because you can't think of a time," Rory says, satisfied with himself.
Gale looks at his brother with sharp eyes, thinking about the blonde girl with the pianos and the fish. The girl who stepped into the rain to give him ice for a swelling eye.
"She and I are the same, Rory."
The younger knows when it's time to quit. He shrugs and holds his hands up, surrendering.
"I don't see it," he concedes.
Patting his younger brother on the shoulder, Gale walks him to the door.
"Go home. Tell Ma I'll see her tomorrow before I go to work."
Rory's halfway out of the door when he turns around, a winking smile accompanying his tease.
"Give my best to Katniss," He says.
Gale and Katniss grew up together and now they're stuck together at The Mine. It's the only place where kids like them can get work, and now they're both stuck there forever. Katniss as a trainer, Gale as a fighter.
"I don't train with Katniss."
He trains alone. His only companion is Peeta Mellark, his sparring partner who asks no questions and offers little by way of conversation. He takes his beatings, throws no cheap shots, and doesn't complain. Gale likes him alright.
"Maybe not, but I know she owns your sparring partner's ass, so you'd better hope she was good to him tonight, if you know what I mean."
Rory winks and makes a crude gesture; Gale responds by pushing him out of the door with a chuckle.
"Get outta here. Be safe walking home. These streets aren't safe."
"I'll be alright. I've got the old Hawthorne right hook," Rory responds, holding up his fists before walking out into the dark night.
"Hey, Mama."
Madge arrives home late. Her body is aching and her mind is a mess, but she walks into her mother's room anyway. The television is on in the corner, its blue glow filling up the room and illuminating the image of Madge's mother, in a hospital bed outfitted for their home. Cancer is a nightmare, and this room is like stepping into one. A live-in nurse sleeps in the adjoining suite and takes care of Madge's mama- bringing her to chemotherapy, giving her medicine, helping her with daily tasks-, but every spare moment she has, Madge spends in this room. Tied up to tubes and monitors, her mother's eyes flutter open, groaning a bit as she turns to face her daughter.
"Madge, baby. You're late," she manages.
Pulling a chair alongside her mother's bed, Madge explains.
"Had to stay open a few minutes later tonight. Last minute customer," she says, hoping for no further inquiry into the subject.
"I know. Delly called."
Traitor.
"Did she?" Madge tries to keep her voice offhanded and light, but failing miserably.
As if she thinks she's just gotten the latest and best gossip, Madge's mother's voice dips into an excitable, if frail, tenor.
"Yes. She said that Gale Hawthorne stopped in," she says.
Drawing in a breath, Madge looks anywhere but at the woman next to her.
"Mama-" Madge attempts to cut.
A small cough escapes her mother's chest before she continues,
"For the third time this week," she says, awfully pleased with herself.
Madge is going to kill Delly.
"It isn't anything," Madge protests.
But mothers know best, and Madge's mother has watched her daughter sit in the room, in quiet reverence, for too long to not know the character of her heart. It is something, she's sure of it. But she knows that Madge is a shaking leaf when it comes to facing life, sometimes.
"It isn't anything, or you're scared of it being anything?" She prods.
Madge doesn't know what to say. So, she says the only thing she thinks that her mother may disapprove of.
"He's a boxer."
To Madge's surprise, this only makes her mother's smile grow.
"I know. Delly told me. He's pretty good, from what I hear."
It's a stupid sport, Madge thinks; she doesn't watch it or follow it, even for Gale Hawthorne.
"I wouldn't know," she says.
An eyebrow raise from the woman in the bed.
"He can't be coming in three times a week for fish food."
That is almost, verbatim, the same thing that Delly said a hour or two ago. Madge's annoyance reaches new heights with her friend.
"I'm blocking Delly's number. She isn't allowed to call here anymore," Madge says, hoping to end the conversation.
Madge isn't entirely sure why her mother, why anyone, is championing so hard for she and Gale to be, but she is all the same.
"Come on, Madge. He could be a good guy. You went to school together all those years."
Like an instinct, Madge defends Gale without even thinking.
"He is a nice guy."
Softening against her pillows, Mrs. Undersee sinks back into her bed.
"See? There you go. It's a start."
The television grumbles and Madge puts her hand atop her mother's nearly translucent hand, comfortingly. She doesn't want her mother thinking that she wants for anything. She doesn't need a man in her life, certainly not one like Gale Hawthorne.
"I don't need anyone, Mama. I have you and Pop and the store and Haymitch. I don't need anyone else. Besides, I don't even know what he wants from me," Madge whispers.
The protesting from the sickly woman comes back.
"You'll never know if you keep this up."
Madge gives her mother a look, begging her to stop.
"Mama-"
Leaning forward as best she can, the woman kisses her daughter on the head, patting her on the cheek lovingly.
"It's just something to think about. Goodnight, Madge. Get to bed. Love you."
She rises to her feet and heads for the door, giving her mother one last look before saying:
"Love you too."
Here you go! It's SUPER long, and I apologize for that, but it felt awkward to cut off! I hope you guys enjoyed it, even though it was long! Please leave a review and let me know what you think! I'd really love to hear from you all. :)