Alicia didn’t even turn around. “Oh, she’s definitely getting dicked down.”
Aaron looked up from his phone, beer paused halfway to his mouth. “Wait, what? Harper’s dating? Since when?”
“Since never. I’m not dating, and will you three shut up before Mom comes in here? We are in our childhood home.”
“This is the most interesting thing that’s happened in this family since Aaron’s divorce,” said Naomi.
“Hey!” Aaron protested.
“It’s true.” Naomi perched on the edge of the table, clearly settling in. “Okay, so…what’s his name? Does he know you’re a workaholic who hasn’t been on a real date in forever?”
My jaw dropped open. “Excuse you? I date.”
“You don’t,” Naomi said, shaking her head. “You know guys that take you out. You don’t have any boo thangs. No boyfriend material. When’s the last real romantic date you went on?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Tried to remember the last time I’d gone somewhere with a man that wasn’t a convenient conduit to sex.
Well…Friday night. With Cole.
But that wasn’t a date. That was dinner. Between colleagues.
Colleagues who’d kissed in a parking lot.
Colleagues who’d kissed like they were trying to breathe each other in.
A colleague I hadn’t heard from in two days.
My mother’s voice cut through the noise from the doorway. “Alright, everybody. Come and help carry this food to the table so we can eat!”
We gathered around the table with my parents at either end and the rest of us—Alicia and her partner Devon, Aaron and Mia, Naomi, her boyfriend, and me—squeezed in between.
The table was loaded. Pot roast in the center, juice from the slow cooker pooling around tender chunks of beef, carrots, and potatoes. A casserole dish of macaroni and cheese, the top golden and crispy. Cornbread in a cast iron skillet. Sweet tea in a pitcher, already sweating condensation onto the tablecloth.
My father said grace, then the sound of serving spoons hitting plates, forks scraping, and voices overlapping in requests to pass the salt or the butter or the hot sauce that Naomi always drowned her food in filled the room.
This was the rhythm I’d grown up with, the background noise of my childhood. Comfortable and overwhelming at the same time. I felt silly for skipping weeks at a time—these people were annoying, but I loved them. They loved me. And I loved this weekly ritual to reconnect with my siblings, my folks, to narrow my life down to what really mattered.
Most of the time.
“So, Harper.” My mother’s voice carried across the table, cutting through the chatter. “Anything interesting going on at RMC?”
“Uhm…I mean, always. We’re dealing with a complicated case right now.”
“You’re always dealing with a complicated case.” Alicia didn’t look up from her plate. “Every time I text you, you’re late for a meeting. When was the last time you had a day off?”
“I take days off, Licia. Why are you on my ass today?”
“Language,” my mother lobbed gently from the end of the table.
“‘Cause I don’t want you to die in your office at RMC,” Alicia said.
“Harper is ambitious,” said Dad, cutting into his pot roast. “Doing big things up at RMC. She’s a director—that ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at. Nothing wrong with it.”
“Right,” I agreed. “What Daddy said. Nothing wrong with that.”
“Sweetheart, you don’t have a life outside that hospital,” my mother argued. “You’re nearly forty and you deserve to have someone special. A partner. Someone who comes home to you at the end of the day.”
“I don’t disagree, Mom. I just think it’ll happen when it’s meant to happen.”
