“We should get a pet.” Deanna studies the array of nail polishes in front of her, then selects a light blue and holds it up for me to examine.

I stick out my hand at her artistic mercy. “I don’t wanna mom you here, but you are definitely not responsible enough for a pet.”

“Ridiculous. I house you and feed you--”

“I make dinner most nights--”

She pokes the nail brush in my face. “Don’t talk back to me, young man.”

Don’t talk back to me. The memory lies in wait, but I drag myself back into the moment before I can drift too far. “What kind of pet do you want?”

“I thought I was too irresponsible.”

“Theoretically.”

“A cat.” She smiles like she knows what she’s doing.

“Unacceptable. We’re getting a dog.”

“Fine. Name ideas?”

“Bark-tholomew,” I grin.

“Zero out of ten. I’m revoking your naming privileges.”

“Hold up--is this our dog or your dog?”

“You get feeding and bathing rights, I get playing and naming rights.” She gestures for me to switch hands.

I hold my left hand out, closely inspecting the robin’s egg hue on the right. “Sure, that seems totally fair.” I tap experimentally at my ring finger nail with my thumb, and it smears a little.

“Hey now, don’t touch your nails for a while; it’s still drying.”

“How long?”

“Mmm…” She bobs her head side-to-side. “Bout an hour? Just to be safe?”

“An hour?”

“Yeah, boy. It’s fucking paint. Never done your nails before?”

“If I had tried it would have made the goddamn front page: Dude Paints Nails; Stereotyping Father Immediately Calls for Conversion Therapy.”

She snorts, but there’s a familiar sympathy in her look. “Well you’re rocking it, so Stereotyping Father can go screw himself.”

“Amen.”

Deanna hesitates in painting the next nail--pauses for a moment and glances up at me. She takes a breath, like she wants to say something. There’s a fraction of a second when I think she’s going to confront it--the thing we haven’t talked about since I stumbled into the bar she works at, a drunk kid spewing curses at my dad. Since she poured me a glass of water and let me babble about how if they didn’t want me, then I didn’t need to live with my parents, anyways, lots of teens live by themselves, right? Since she let me sleep on her couch, and I woke up the next morning panicking about where I was going to stay and what I was going to do, and she just shrugged and told me the couch was mine if I wanted it. Never asked for details. Never asked how I got kicked out.

And she doesn’t ask now. “Blow on them, they’ll dry faster.” She demonstrates a motion that looks like she’s attempting to mime harmonica playing.

I copy the movement, glancing up for confirmation that I’m doing it right, and Deanna gives me a thumbs-up.

I take a deep breath. “Hey, Dea?”

“Yeah, bud?”

“If we get a girl dog we can name her Lizzie Bork-den.”

“I hate you.”