“Greg,” Cindy said, as sternly as she could without drawing Madison’s attention from the bed, “you seem to be forgetting that while you’re off galivanting around with your favorite daughter and living the high life, some of us are still down here toiling away in the Madison Wessen salt mines.”
“I am not living the high life,” Greg muttered, not looking up from the shoe he was scrubbing. “And for the record, I tried to smooth things over with McKenzie for you. I can’t help it if the way you treated her pushed her away. I can’t make her forgive you, and I definitely can’t make her want to.”
Cindy gave him a sharp look.
“And second,” Greg went on, “it’s not a salt mine. She has us do homework and some cleaning. It’s not that different from going to work.”
Cindy stared at him in disbelief. “Yes, it is, because our boss is Madison and our CEO is McKenzie.”
Greg almost smiled despite himself.
But Cindy didn’t.
“If you go with McKenzie, Greg, I’m left here alone.”
That came out more raw than she intended, and the edge of real fear in her voice hit him immediately.
Greg’s hands slowed.
“I’m not leaving you behind,” he said, and this time there was no sarcasm in him at all. “I told you that, honey.”
Cindy kept her eyes on him. “So you’ll stay here, then? With Madison. With me.”
Greg hesitated.
“That’s not really up to us,” he said finally. “It’s up to Madison and McKenzie.”
Cindy looked away.
“And you heard what that lawyer said,” Greg added quietly. “Or caseworker. Whoever She was. If they decide to split and it isn’t amicable, we already have our marching orders.”
He hated how cold that sounded, but he also knew that false reassurance would only make things worse.
“I’m trying to tell you the truth,” he said. “Not what sounds better.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Behind them, Madison shifted slightly on the bed.
The movement was small, almost lazy, just a turn of her body as she angled herself the other way, phone still in hand. Her thumbs kept moving across the screen, tapping out messages with quiet speed. But after a second she glanced over at them.
Only briefly.
Just long enough for her eyes to flick from Cindy to Greg, then down to the shoes they were cleaning.
Her expression gave nothing away.
No annoyance. No smugness. No interruption.
Just that unreadable, thinking look she got sometimes when something mattered more than she wanted anyone to know.
Then she looked back down at her phone and kept typing.
And somehow that silence felt heavier than if she had said anything at all.
“Do you think she heard us?” Greg asked quietly, not daring to look up for too long. “That didn’t feel normal.”
Cindy kept scrubbing for a moment before answering.
“I don’t know for sure,” she said at last. “But she’s not exactly known for hiding her feelings when she’s upset.”
Even as she said it, she wasn’t sure she believed it.
Madison made her feelings known, yes. Usually. But she was also learning. Getting subtler in certain ways. And that, Cindy thought bitterly, was somehow worse.
She forced herself to keep working, dragging the cloth along the side of the sneaker in slow strokes. Her anger had nowhere useful to go, so it settled into the task instead. Into the shoe. Into the ridiculous fact of it.
These were all things Madison should have been doing herself.
No one wanted to clean Madison’s sneakers.
The air around them still held the stale trace of wear. Faint sweat. Old pavement. The flattened, unpleasant smell of something that had been worn all day and then kicked off without thought. Cindy scrubbed harder at a dark scuff along the side and moved down toward the tread, where dust had packed into the grooves. A bit of gum was stuck near the edge, gray and flattened from repeated steps, and she stared at it in disgust before forcing herself to work at that too.
She could remember telling Madison, more than once, that if she were more careful with her things, she would not have to spend an hour cleaning them later.
Now Cindy was the one cleaning them.
Because Greg had decided to start improvising with delusions of grandeur, they were going to spend the rest of the evening polishing Madison’s shoes instead of sitting in the habitat, exhausted but at least left alone, after a day of homework and chores.
The floor gave a low tremor.
Then the bed squeaked.
Both Greg and Cindy looked up.
Madison had stood and was crossing toward them.
She didn’t say anything right away. She just came over with the relaxed ease of someone moving through her own space, then turned and sat down in the desk chair. A second later she leaned back and propped both feet up on the desk in front of them.
The impact sent a faint vibration through the desktop beneath Greg and Cindy’s feet.
They both looked automatically.
Madison’s socks were dingy from the floor, pale fabric darkened along the bottom with dust and faint grime from the house. One heel had a gray smudge across it. The toes flexed absently as she scrolled through her Shard account, feet wiggling now and then in small unconscious movements while she skimmed through trending clips and sounds, deciding what kind of post she wanted to make.
She looked perfectly comfortable.
That, more than anything, made Cindy want to scream.
Go Greg!!! Get her!
with this close up, i just now noticed the lettering on their collars lol
i get the feeling that Madison either A: doesn’t like that they’re talking to each other so much, or B: probably did hear them and is going to interject her own opinions on what she wants them to be thinking
Can I also say even tho she’s a bitch, Cindy is beautiful!
her face and hairstyle remind me of a Fallout 3 NPC but i can’t remember which one, i think either from the Vault you start in or in the Megaton saloon
Her clothes still need to be updated lol, she is attractive but not worth the hate inside her. Greg can do better as a little lol