Re: log: joey & ella, gatsby
He was raw-boned, she thought, in the adjustment, all that straightening out and fussing and hunching back, like whatever had been done to make him, there hadn't been enough and they'd stretched him out some to make do. She looked at the back of his neck, parsing cleanly through the overlong dark hair as he stared at her shoe like maybe the mysteries of jobs and lives and homes and sisters who didn't tidy themselves away easy, would write themselves on the tip of scuffed mary-janes, and she smiled at the idea because life didn't write itself anywhere you could read. Maybe not until you were done living it.
She figured family was the best place to start. From the outside, the Alexanders stood together, shoulder-to-shoulder like a barricade to keep the bad out and the good inside. But the rough-and-ready didn't make it any less charming, like a little boy bringing an apple to a teacher and Ella lifted her chin from the edge of her arm cresting her knees and she smiled at him, bright and warm as butter.
"I don't make jobs and places to live," she said, soft but no sadness to it. She didn't make either of those things but comfort, she could live with that. She let her chin float back down, pillowed on the edge of one arm, "You need more than me. I can get myself a job someplace they have a short order cook and maybe someplace like this. But I wouldn't know where to start for you."