She accepted the hookups by ignoring them. Ellis wasn’t a hookup. Ellis was a future. And a future with a white tech guy from Long Island was something she hadn’t prepared for.
“Why do you want to do this?” I asked.
“Because you love her. And because I love you. And those two things shouldn’t be at war with each other.”
I called Sierra that afternoon.
“Ellis wants to meet my mom.”
A pause. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Jett.”
“I know.”
“When?”
“He wants to go this weekend. Just… show up. Knock on her door.”
Another pause. Lauren murmured something in the background. Sierra and Lauren lived together now, had for a few weeks, in that little apartment with the exposed brick and the window that stuck. They were doing the domestic thing, the real thing, the one I’d watched Sierra build from scratch.
“Do you want my honest opinion?” Sierra asked.
“When haven’t you?”
“Go. Take him. Let her see what you’ve found.” A beat. “Your mom didn’t reject you, Jett. She rejected the idea of you. The actual you, with an actual person standing next to you who clearly adores you, that’s harder to turn away from than a phone call.”
“What if it’s not?”
“Then you’ll know. And you’ll stop carrying the maybe.”
A pause. Then, because I could hear it in the half-second lag before she spoke. That slight brightness, the voice she put on when she was holding something together.
“How are you, though? With Lauren. The apartment.”
“I’m fine.” Too quick. Sierra-speed.
“Sierra.”
A longer pause. Lauren said something in the background, and Sierra’s voice shifted, angled away from the phone. “Give me a sec.”
Then: “It’s good. She’s good. We’re…” She stopped. Started over. “I love her. I want this.”
“But.”
“I keep waiting for the moment I figure out how to ask for things. Like, I don’t know when I need space. I don’t know how to say I’m tired without it feeling like I’m criticizing them. Last week they reorganized the kitchen, and I said it was great, but then I cried in the shower because nothing was where it used to be and I never said anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a cabinet. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not the cabinet.”
Quiet.
“No,” she admitted. “It’s not the cabinet.”
