It's nearly nine when she finally leaves work, and it is bright lights that illuminate the city now instead of the sun. But she doesn't really mind.
This is Mandy's favorite time of year -when the city is stripped bare of all of its pretenses and the trees stand unadorned and revealing in the jagged shape of their skeletons, readying themselves for the inevitable blanket of white.
The ground is a minefield of gold and crimson and she can hear the sounds of a thousand paper thin spines break beneath her as she walks home.
Home.
It's odd for her to think that the cramped space with peeling plaster and cracked walls is what she calls home these days. Odd only because for nearly seventeen years of her life, home had been bloodied floors and weeping walls. But then again, there had been a time when she would have, in a heartbeat, called the eldest Gallagher boy her home, so maybe she doesn't really understand the whole concept of home anyways.
She really should have expected it – how it all played out in the end. Boys like him never ended up with girls like her- dirty, broken girls with only their bodies to offer.
But he had been kind and she hadn't known what to do with his kindness except to take all of the lingering looks and the sweet, sweet touches and twist them into a second skin that she wore to mask the marks and the filth. She had convinced herself wholly that just the act of simply being with someone so good could clean the permanent dirt on her skin.
And every time he had kissed her, or knocked on her window, or chose to spend his time with her, she couldn't help by feel like for the first time in her life's entirety, that she, the girl with all her marks and scars and dirty secrets, was being chosen because she had something worth loving, that she was something worth loving.
But the Gallagher boys had always been meant for greater loves and greater lives, and she thought that she had always been meant for the Southside. She knew she didn't have what it took to have a boy like Lip Gallagher stick around – had never been able to master the duality of being dirty and pure all in the same breath. She had always aired too far on the side of slut and whore to ever look good in white anyways.
This city, and Ian, however, took her in, scars and all. Didn't ask her to change a single thing, and loved all of her broken pieces. This city never had the unrealistic expectation that she should fit into some twisted dichotomy of womanhood and instead let her wear her sexuality loudly on the nights that she chose to while allowing her to still look at the world through child eyes the next morning, without judgement, without critique.
"Milkovich? Your order is ready."
Mandy is brought out of her reverie as the woman at the counter hands her a paper bag of take out. The grease is already forming dark shadows of oil at the bottom of the bag and she hopes she makes it home before Ian leaves for work.
She has her key in the lock of their apartment when she hears a sound that remotely resembles laughing. For a moment, worry courses through her and she thinks of Ian, but the sound is coming from the floor above and it sounds sad and broken and something about it is causing something in her to call out.
But she brushes the feeling back and pushes her way into the apartment and announces her arrival.
"Ian, I have food! What time do you have to leave?"
Ian's on the couch reading some book she recognizes as one of the many he had bought at the flea market over the summer. He smiles, a not-quite-whole smile, at her as she enters the room and she can hardly remember the last time she had seen his characteristic full faced shit-eating grin.
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out exactly who could induce that kind of smile from him. And neither of them had seen him in at least a year.
"I don't work tonight Mands." The news instantly brightens her mood. Nights in with the two of them were rare, with him working most nights and she most days and she intended on taking full advantage of a night in with her best friend. Her best friend who thinks she's most beautiful in the morning holding a cup of coffee with nothing masking her face; her best friend, who is, despite his words to argue otherwise, still in love with the boy that shares her eyes.
"Well come help me with the food then, we can watch a movie or something?"
Ian nods in response as he adjusts the switch to their radio until it is on. It's a piece of shit and the antenna is held together by duct tape, and they can only really find one station, but bringing it home had made Mandy feel like she was contributing something to the apartment that Ian had let her keep it.
They've both become immune to the happy pop that plays from the one station they are able to get. It makes Mandy laugh because she knows if Mickey were here, he'd have thrown out the stereo a long time ago. And for the second time tonight, she finds her mind drifting to thoughts of the brother who should have been her twin.
It's been nearly a year since she last saw Mickey. His face had been swollen and bruised and his body bent forwards as if the weight of defeat were too heavy to tolerate. He hadn't let her through the door that day, hid most of his body behind the threshold and stuck only part of his face through the crack to ask her to leave.
"The fuck are you talking about Mick? Why do I have to leave?"
"Mandy, just go."
"Mickey, I live here just as much as you do. Get the fuck out of the way."
"Bitch, I'm not kidding. Come back tomorrow. Go stay with Aunt Rani or something for the night."
And because, Mickey had never been one to hurt her, she listened. But had she known that that would be the last time she would see him, she would have found a way in – or at least those are the words she has to tell herself to help her sleep at night.
She hears the door above them slam and lock just as Ian asks her what movie they should watch.
And she knows she should be answering, and moving the muscle in her mouth to form some sort of sound, but she's too busy trying to remember the broken sound Mickey's laugh used to make.