Shane didn’t sleep at all that night. By 6:30am she had already gathered all of the necessary documents to prove her identity, her relationship to Shay, and that she was employed. She dressed in black skinny jeans and a white button down. After that she sat on a chair and watched Carmen sleep.

Carmen’s alarm went off at 7:30 and she woke up to see Shane staring intently at her.

She groaned and said, “Babe why are you staring at me like that? That’s really creepy to wake up to.”

“Sorry, I just couldn’t sleep and I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Most people would just read a book.”

Shane just shrugged.

“So have you decided if you want to go alone or not? I’m fine either way, I just want to support you however I can,” Carmen said as she crawled out of bed and made her way to the bathroom to shower.

Shane scratched the back of her head and followed the Latina into the bathroom.

“Yeah, um actually I’ve been thinking about that. I want you to come. I could really use you’re support, but the thing is that I don’t know what will come up when I talk to the social worker. I mean I’m not trying to hide anything from you it’s just that—well there is some stuff about Gabe that I haven’t told you yet and I don’t want you to hear about it in some sterile meeting where I’m fighting for custody of my brother. So, um I was thinking maybe you could come but when it’s time for me to talk to the social worker, well maybe I could do that bit alone?” Shane expected Carmen to fly off the handle when she mentioned the bit about not having told her everything about Gabe, but Shane knew that a lot of stuff was about to come out and she wanted to be honest with Carmen about there being more to the story than she knew.

Carmen was upset that Shane hadn’t told her everything involving Gabe—they’ve been together for almost two years and still Carmen was learning about Shane’s past. She wanted to ask about the stuff that her lanky lover hadn’t told her, but again she held her tongue. After all she was just happy that Shane was going to at least let her ride with her.