Please Go Away //Nell

”Papa, I don’t understand why we’re doing this.” Nell was in her usual spot on the man’s kitchen counter, butt planted on the granite and feet held against the cherrywood cabinets below. Next to her sat a half-finished cup of hot chocolate and her section of the paper. This had oddly become a ritual between the two. Perhaps that’s what kept her coming back, even though she couldn’t stand her father. ”Doing what?” he asked in his native language of Spanish as he read his own section of the newspaper, sitting at the table. With the sound of ruffling papers, she lowered the print to look at him. ”Letting Jane do whatever she wants. We don’t need her here. I mean…all we’re doing is deciding what we want the lawyer to do, and I don’t think Jane should be privvy to that information.” There was a short silence as León picked up his own cup of coffee and drank. This is when her saintly patience wore then—when she was with this man. ”She is her own person,” he said, once against speaking Spanish against her own English. She really wanted to stop having full conversations in the language around him and would save that for whenever Jane was around. She was making too many slips into the language lately. ”I can’t control what she does.”

Nell sighed. It was one of the reasons she hated him, one of the big reasons. He acted as if he were powerless. Was that what brought him to leave her when she asked him to help she and her sister? He was a weak man, a coward, and she hated thinking of how she was a lot like him. She ran, too. At least my family didn’t want me. She dumped the rest of the coffee down the sink drain, and rinsed out the cup before placing it in the dishwasher. León had house staff because he was rarely home, but she still didn’t feel the need to leave messes around. Mostly so the staff wouldn’t have anything to clean up. It’s part of what prevented her from majorly sabotaging him—her respect for those who had to clean up after her father. ”What are you going to do today?” he asked, almost conversational. He was about as conversational as he could get. ”I have to work the streets, you know,” she said dryly. At least she wasn’t exploding at him too much lately. And she knew that her being a troll annoyed him even more. There was a connection by blood that one couldn’t sever no matter how far the travelled or how long they left. She still knew the man a little too well. ”So you actually have a job?” he drawled and she tensed, turning to look at him. Was that a quip about the money of his she was spending? Or the fact that she didn’t ever tell him personal details about her life? Well, except for the fact that she was going out with Josh, just because she knew that the man hated her boyfriend.

She left the house with only a few more words, quickly bouncing down the steps, her flats making no sound against the concrete. She wore a shirt with Jim Morrison’s face down the side, and her new favorite invention of the jeggings—it was inexpensive for once now that she was actually easing up on her father. Her PT Cruiser sat painfully out of place, and she felt sorry for it then—especially since the car didn’t deserve all the grief she gave it. She gave her. The car did have a name after all, Gwen, even though the Earth girl would rather have a different car to name. As she drove out through the gates, she was not headed to whore herself out as she told her father. She needed to go get a new coffee maker, because in all her appliance savvy glory she somehow managed to break her own. Upon arriving, she found the store and headed to the section where she knew she’d find the boxes. She almost didn’t want to spend her father’s money now that she had the sneakign suspicion he knew. Of course he knew, it’s not like you were being subtle about it. She held two boxes in her hand, looking at what was written on them when she heard a shy, familiar voice.

Nell looked over to see Kyra and a man…who was standing way too close. She caught what he said, and put a smile on her face as she walked over. ”Excuse me!” she said cheerfully to the man. ”Since you’re so kind, I was wondering if you could help me pick out a new coffee maker.” She looked between the two boxes in her hands as if deliberating, before peering back up at the man. ”You see, I was just deciding which would be a better blunt object to assault you with.” She gave him a wide-eyed look, as if expecting to do something in return. Of course, she didn’t plan to hurt him, but he didn’t know that. Besides, he shouldn’t want any trouble, not with people watching. It would better for him to just walk away.

outfit,
music,