Lip woke to someone pounding on a door somewhere in the house.
The sound came in bursts, hard enough to shake the wall once or twice, followed by a muffled voice yelling something he couldn't make out. For a few seconds he stayed still, caught in that heavy space between sleeping and waking where the noise felt far away and too annoying to deal with.
Then the rest of it came back to him.
The cold room. The weak gray light pushing through the curtains. The thin mattress under him. The smell of old smoke soaked into the walls, mixed with cheap detergent and whatever Mandy used in her hair.
And the weight across his chest.
He looked down.
Mandy was half on top of him, one arm thrown over him like she'd claimed her spot during the night and never bothered moving again. Her hair was a complete mess, dark strands across the pillow and part of his shoulder, and she made a low irritated sound the second he shifted.
"Don't," she mumbled.
Lip let out a sleepy breath that almost turned into a laugh. "I barely moved."
"You moved enough."
"That's what happens when people wake up."
One eye opened just enough for her to glare at him.
"Then go back to sleep."
"Real tempting."
Something slammed downstairs, followed by a man's voice and then another louder one answering him. Mandy groaned and pressed her face against his shirt for a second like she could disappear back into sleep if she committed to it hard enough.
"God, I hate this house in the morning."
Lip stared up at the ceiling. "Only in the morning?"
She made a tired sound that might have been a laugh. "Fine. I hate it in the afternoon too. Morning just feels more personal."
"That's fair."
There was another thud from downstairs, then silence, then what sounded like a cabinet getting kicked.
Mandy pushed herself up with clear reluctance, keeping the blanket wrapped around her as she sat back against the wall. Her hair was still all over the place, and there was a faint crease on her cheek from the pillow. She looked tired and annoyed and somehow softer like this than she ever did when she was fully awake and dressed and ready to deal with people.
She caught him looking.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You've got that face."
"What face?"
"The one where you're staring and pretending you're not."
Lip reached down and found his shirt on the floor. "You just woke up."
"That's not an explanation."
"It's enough of one."
She gave him a long look, like she was deciding whether to keep pushing or let it go. In the end she just shook her head and muttered, "You're weird today."
He dragged the shirt over his head and sat up. The room felt colder the second he left the warmth of the blankets behind. "I should get back."
Mandy watched him reach for his jacket. "That early?"
"If I don't show up, Fiona's gonna assume I got arrested or fell into Lake Michigan."
"She'd probably give it an hour before she started worrying."
"She knows me too well."
Mandy tucked her hair back with one hand and looked toward the window for a second before glancing at him again. "You coming by later?"
Lip looked over his shoulder. "You asking?"
"I'm asking if you're coming by later."
"Maybe."
She rolled her eyes immediately. "You always say maybe when you mean yes."
"Not always."
"With me? Yeah, always."
He laughed under his breath and shrugged into his jacket. "Keeps my options open."
"No, it keeps you annoying."
"That too."
She studied him another second, head tilted slightly. "You're in a suspiciously decent mood."
"Sorry. I'll try to be more miserable."
"That would at least make sense."
He moved toward the door, but her voice stopped him before he opened it.
"Hey."
Lip turned back.
Mandy had the blanket pulled around herself again, one hand gripping the edge of it loosely. Most of the sarcasm had slipped out of her face. She didn't look embarrassed exactly. Just quieter.
"You didn't leave in the middle of the night."
The sentence was casual on purpose. He could hear that. Like she was trying to make it sound like a passing observation instead of something she'd noticed enough to bring up.
Lip leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.
"No," he said. "I didn't."
She watched him for a second, then asked, "Trying out a new personality or what?"
That got a real laugh out of him.
"Maybe I was comfortable."
The answer seemed to catch her a little off guard. Not enough to show much, but enough that her expression changed before she covered it.
"Yeah?" she said.
"Yeah."
She looked down for half a second, then back at him. "Alright."
It was a small exchange, but it sat in the room a moment longer than it should have.
Lip left before it turned into anything bigger.
The morning outside had that bitter kind of cold that made his hands ache for the first few minutes. The neighborhood was already up. A guy in an undershirt stood on his porch smoking like he had nowhere better to be. Two kids cut through a yard chasing a basketball. Somewhere down the block, a car alarm chirped twice before somebody finally shut it off.
By the time he got back to the Gallagher house, the kitchen was already loud.
Carl and Debbie were arguing over cereal with the kind of conviction people usually saved for politics or religion. Fiona sat at the table with bills spread out in front of her, coffee by her elbow, expression tight enough that nobody smart would bother her unless they had to.
Lip stepped inside and kicked the door shut behind him.
Fiona glanced up first. "Where'd you stay?"
"Mandy's."
That earned nothing more than a nod. "Just don't come home bleeding."
Carl snorted. "That's asking a lot when it's Milkoviches."
Debbie kicked him under the table. "Shut up."
Lip grabbed a piece of bread off the counter. "Good morning to you too."
Fiona went back to the bills. "I'm serious."
"I know."
The kitchen kept moving around him like it always did. Debbie complained that Carl had used the clean bowl. Carl argued that no bowl in the house counted as clean if you had to wash it yourself. Fiona told both of them to either eat or stop talking. Nobody listened the first time.
Lip leaned against the counter, chewing quietly, his mind drifting in spite of himself.
Back to Mandy.
Back to that line about him not leaving.
That was the thing about her. She almost never said what she meant in the cleanest possible way. She wrapped it up in attitude, in sarcasm, in offhand comments that sounded careless if you weren't paying attention. But once you started hearing what sat underneath, it was hard to ignore.
She had noticed he stayed.
Worse, it mattered enough that she'd brought it up.
And the more he thought about that, the more it bothered him—not because of her, but because of how low the bar had clearly been before he got here.
Original Lip had really managed to make "staying until morning" into some kind of special occasion.
That was almost impressive in the worst way.
The rest of the day moved without much happening. He spent part of it around the house and part of it outside, mostly because staying in one place too long with the Gallaghers usually led to noise, chores, or somebody dragging him into a problem he didn't ask for. He drifted around the neighborhood, cut past the Alibi at one point, traded a few words with Kev, and let the hours pass.
It gave him too much time to think, which was never ideal.
The bigger stuff kept circling in the background—school, the timeline, the future, all the things he knew were coming but didn't yet know how to steer around cleanly. Then there was the other layer beneath it. The simpler one.
Mandy.
Not in some dramatic, all-consuming way. Just in the steady, stubborn sense that she kept getting under his skin whenever he wasn't busy enough to stop it. The way she spoke to him like she expected him to understand her without her spelling everything out. The way she looked at him sometimes when she forgot to hide it fast enough. The fact that being around her felt easy in a way most things in this life didn't.
By evening the sky had gone flat and gray, and the cold had sharpened again.
He told himself he was just walking.
That lasted until his feet brought him to the Milkovich house anyway.
Mandy was sitting on the porch steps when he got there, elbows resting on her knees, looking out at the street like she had nothing better to do and did not appreciate being reminded of it.
She glanced over the second the gate clicked.
"You move this slow on purpose?"
Lip stopped at the bottom of the steps. "Didn't know I was on a schedule."
"Everybody's on a schedule. Some people are just bad at keeping it."
He sat down beside her. "That your way of saying you were waiting?"
She gave him a look. "Don't flatter yourself."
"But you were."
Mandy huffed softly through her nose and turned her attention back to the street. "I was sitting outside. You happened to show up."
"That sounds close enough."
Now she looked at him again, eyes narrowed just a little. "You always this pleased with yourself?"
"Only when I'm right."
"That must be exhausting for everyone around you."
"Mostly, yeah."
That pulled the faintest smile out of her before she looked away again.
The street in front of them had started settling into evening. Cars rolled by slower now. Porch lights came on one at a time. Somewhere farther down the block, music was playing too loud from an open garage. A couple kids were still out, yelling over a ball in the street while somebody's mother shouted at them to watch for traffic.
For a minute, neither of them said anything.
The silence wasn't uncomfortable. It never really was with her. Mandy didn't talk just to fill space, which made sitting beside her feel easier than sitting beside most people. He could feel the cold through the step beneath him, but her shoulder brushed his once when she shifted, warm through both their jackets.
"You get yelled at when you got back?" she asked after a while.
"Not really."
"Surprising."
"Fiona had bills spread everywhere. I got lucky."
"That's not luck. That's timing."
He glanced at her. "You sound impressed."
"I'm not."
"Little bit."
"Keep dreaming."
He smiled to himself and looked out at the street again.
Mandy pulled one knee up and rested her chin on it. "You ditch school today?"
He let the question hang for a second. "Maybe."
She sighed like she had expected nothing else. "You're wasting your brain."
"That sounds dramatic."
"It's true."
He turned his head to look at her properly. "You really don't let that go."
"No one else is gonna say it enough times for it to stick."
He held her gaze a second longer than necessary. "You volunteer for a lot."
She frowned a little, like she was trying to decide whether there was something in that line she didn't like. "Somebody has to."
There it was again. That absolute certainty she had about him. No hesitation in it. No embarrassment about caring, even if she'd rather bite someone than say it too openly.
Lip looked away first.
A car crawled past, bass heavy enough to rattle the porch for a second. Mandy waited for it to go before speaking again.
"You staying over tonight?"
He looked back at her. "That an invitation?"
"It's a question."
"Sounds a lot like an invitation."
She clicked her tongue and stood up, brushing her hands over her jeans. "You make everything harder than it needs to be."
"Not everything."
"Most things."
He stayed seated one second longer, looking up at her. Porch light caught along one side of her face, leaving the rest in shadow. She looked annoyed, maybe a little impatient, but not enough to hide the fact that she hadn't gone back inside before he got there.
He got to his feet.
Mandy tilted her head toward the door. "You coming or do you need another ten minutes to think about it?"
Lip smirked. "You ask all your guests like that?"
"You're not a guest."
The words came out quick, natural, like she didn't even think about them before saying them.
For the first time in the conversation, Lip had no smart answer ready.
Mandy seemed to realize what she'd said a second later, because her expression shifted, just barely. Not regret. More like awareness. Like she'd shown a little too much by accident and was already annoyed at herself for it.
So she covered it the way she always did.
"Come on then, Gallagher."
She turned and headed for the door.
Lip followed her inside.
Just another normal night on the South Side.
Advanced Chapters: cozyread.org