Hide Your Fires

7: Nachos

"Hallie, are you still pissed at me?" Matt asks me on our way home from school the next day, on Wednesday.

"No, not really. Why?" I wonder skeptically.

"Because it'd be really cool of you if you let me have a few friends over tonight," He tells me with a shit-eating grin plastered on his face. "Please?"

"Yeah, that's fine," I shrug. "You have to clean up the living room first though."

"I will," He assures me. "Thanks."

"Sure. Oh, and you can't annoy me because I'll be working," I tell him as I pull into our drive way.

"Or you could just take a break," He suggests. "I mean come on, Hallie, when you're not working at the store, you're working here. You work too much. Just take a break for one day."

"Taking a break doesn't pay the bills, Matt," I sigh, getting out of the car with my school bag and keys in hand. "But thanks for the thought."

"But it wouldn't hurt to just take one day off, would it?" He wonders with raised eyebrows. I unlock the front door to the house and we walk in together as I flick on the living room light.

"I have three orders to fill in two weeks and it takes at least a day to make each thing but I have five things to make and four days to make them since I only have two days off of work each week. Basically no, I don't have time to just take a day off," I explain to him. "When are your friends coming over?"

"I don't know. Soon, I think."

"Okay, well just make sure that they're gone before Jude comes home at ten," I tell him.

"Yeah, okay," Matt nods.

That ends our conversation because I walk down the hallway into my room where I change from my crème skirt and flowery blouse into gray sweats and a pink cropped top that used to be just a t-shirt but when it got too small, I just cut it into a ratty cropped top.

I've already gotten the shirt made for my first client, I just need to alter a few of the buttons and fix some of the stitching on the left sleeve and then I'll move onto Bridget's dress which will probably take me all night to make and then I'll probably have to finish it up on Sunday, the next day that I don't have work, which is when I can start Cindy's dress.

I open up my old, beat up laptop and turn on my music account so that I can listen to music while I work, and then I start sewing away, carefully fixing the buttons. While I fix the last one on the right cuff, I hear voices down the hallway, so I assume Matt's friends are here. I think the smartest thing to do is to just stay in my room and go unnoticed by them though, especially because I suspect that Tate is among those friends.

"Hey, is your sister here?" My suspicions are confirmed a little while later when I hear Tate's loud voice travel down the hallway.

"Uh, yeah, she's working though so you can't bug her," Matthew warns his friend, which I am grateful for.

"Working? Doesn't she have a job downtown?"

"Yeah, but she works at home too. She's always working," Matt explains and then he tries to change the subject to something about some movie that just came out or something, but Tate doesn't take the bait.

"So what's her deal?" Tate asks my brother.

"What do you mean?"

"Like, is she single?"

I hear Matthew laugh at the ridiculousness of his question. I even crack a smile at how insane the idea of me dating sounds. It sounds almost as insane as somebody saying that Elvis is still alive. "Yeah, dude, she's single."