Back in Roja’s room, Lola is in the middle of telling her about her life, “It’s not easy to grow up with two brothers. But I still love them both.” As Lola notices that talking about her own family might not be the best idea in front of Roja, she tries to get her friend to talk about herself instead.

“There’s nothing to say about me,” Roja mumbles, trying to stop Lola from asking more questions. However, her new friend won’t give up that easily this time.

“How many foster families have you been with?” she asks.

“Just two,” Roja answers. As Lola asks if she liked them, Roja tells her that she really liked her first foster family. They cared about her. In contrast, Ric never cared about her well-being. Lola tries to ask why Roja had to leave her first foster family, but Roja just shakes her head and mutters, “Can we please not talk about that? I’m not ready.” Lola nods understandingly. She’s never been one to hold back what she thinks but she knows others do that a lot.

After a short silence, the outgoing girl starts talking again, “I’m 18 now, not much older than you. I try to imagine how I would feel in your position but I just… I just can’t describe it.” These words have some kind of effect on Roja. Something inside of her decides to open up to this special girl in front of her, even if it’s just a little bit.

“It’s a feeling of being worthless. I just don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all of this,” she explains, getting quieter with every word. Lola, who’s normally always cheerful and happy, is now out of words.

“You don’t deserve this,” she whispers, trying to think of anything better to say.

“You don’t know what happened. You don’t know if I deserve this or not. You don’t know me,” Roja spits out while clenching her fists.

As she sees the sad look on Lola’s face, she apologizes right away. But Lola stops her, “It’s okay, you’re right. I’ve just known you for a day and it’s okay for you to get angry and say what you think.” She tries to remind herself that no matter how attached she already feels to Roja, they’ve only known each other for a short time.

However, Roja still feels bad about just spitting out those words to her friend, “I’m sorry, I just don’t have any experiences with friendships.”

“That makes two of us. I only have some girls I talk to at… work, but I wouldn’t call them real friends,” Lola answers, thinking about all those girls who are just friendly to her to get to Jason or get a better position in the gang. She never felt understood by them.

“You’ve been the nicest person to me for many years,” Roja admits while feeling her eyes tearing up again. She feels weak after all those confessions. Lola sees a tear rolling down Roja’s cheek and slowly takes one step after another closer to Roja. She gives her enough space to dodge her, but as she stands right in front of her best friend, she hugs her tightly. This simple gesture makes Roja burst into tears. “Thank you,” she mutters while sobbing. Lola never thought she’d feel her eyes well up in tears again, but now it’s happening.

“You can hug me back, silly,” she says to the still sobbing girl in her arms. Roja is hesitant at first but then hugs Lola as well. “That’s better,” the purple-haired girl states before blinking back her tears.

***

In the meantime, Jason isn’t patient enough to wait for that background check on Roja and meets with Gabe at the bar. “Did you already find anything on her?” he asks his IT-specialist.

“Nothing very interesting. She was in the foster care system for quite some time now. But she’s turning 18 next week so they’ll probably erase her from the active cases,” Gabe replies. Jason nods and orders Gabe to keep searching for information on Roja and her first foster family.

As Gabe walks back to his office, Jason looks around in the bar. It’s filled with his gang members. He really wants a drink right now but he can’t lose control in front of all of them. He has to wait until the evening. So instead, he winks at one of the girls in the back. No girls would ever reject him, he is sure of that. The girl almost runs over to him and Jason offers her a drink. He doesn’t know her name, but he doesn’t care about that. For now, all he needs is some distraction.

***

Back at the Morellis' house, Mary is doing another check-up on Roja. Her wounds seem to be healing pretty fast. Mary is about to finish as they hear Oren shout, “Roja, come downstairs! We have pizza!”

Mary giggles, “You should go before he eats everything up.” However, Roja declines, explaining that she’s not hungry. “You have to eat, Roja!” Mary explains while Oren walks into the room.

“In case you didn’t hear me: We have pizza down there!” he states, trying to not move his hands around too much to not scare Roja again.

Again, Roja mentions that she’s not hungry. “Are you coming now? The pizza is getting cold!” Lola shouts from the kitchen.

“She’s not hungry!” Oren shouts back.

Already on her way upstairs, Lola answers, “Alright, that means the pizza is coming to you!” She tries to hide her worry about her friend’s food intake.

Mary laughs and, to a slightly confused Roja, she says, “I see you’re in good company. I’ll leave you for now.” With that, she opens the door, let’s Lola run into the room and leaves.

“You can’t say you’re not hungry if we have pizza,” Lola states while Oren already takes a slice. Lola laughs at her brother, “Roja, take a slice before he eats everything up!”

Roja doesn’t even think about taking one of the slices, “You can have it, you bought it and I already ate today.”

“You only had breakfast. I don’t consider that eating properly,” Lola explains while watching her brother trying to slow himself down as he’s already on the second slice. She decides to grab a slice and give it to Roja without saying anything. The shy girl’s stomach is already growling because of the smell of the pizza.

“Alright, but just one slice,” she mumbles, taking a small bite of her slice. Now all three of them are eating in peace. Lola already knows she’ll make sure that Roja will eat more than just one slice.