Laughter bubbles up her throat and evaporates around her. Insecurities strangle her skin, blind her, numbs everything but her dissatisfaction.
Conversations with her mother clamp her to past she's tried so hard to leave behind. But traces litter her surroundings.
She thinks he'd understand. Six feet of muscles and scars as proof, Oliver drags an island and half a decade of pain over concrete, past steel like a mule. He smiles at her and her bright colors.
Felicity thinks it through twice and finds it best to keep quiet. She says good night and flips the lights off.
...
He feels guilty, but Roy is glad they have so much in common.
It takes him fourteen trips to the arcade, three tubs of mint chocolate ice cream, and one superb bottle of wine to get her to really open up. The pages begin to flip and he gets her story.
They both have a lifetime of eating nightmares, shared memories of gritting teeth, and too many times hitting microwaves. Cold dinners haunt their tongues.
She was seven when her father said goodbye in a wrinkled suit. He left her on a street curb, hands cupped and brimming with blueberries. The heavy sun melts them down her white dress. She goes home stained blue and heart hungry.
His last memory of his mother is in a decaying halfway home. The first and last time he'd seen her in three years. Sporting a new red hoodie, he left her, bleeding disappointment and contempt. The night found him drowning in salt.
It is a Friday night and they toast to absent parents and abondenment issues. They shout all the way home, drunk and jumping.
Laughter bubbles up her throat and explodes all around her.
