“It’s been a few months, and it’s not serious?” Her voice shifted. Still warm, but with that edge underneath, the one she used when she was deciding whether to push. “Jett, mijo, you know I love you. You know Idon’t care who you date.”
That was the line. She’d been saying some version of it since I was sixteen. I don’t care who you date. And she meant it. Mostly. She didn’t care that I dated men. She cared about what other people thought about her son dating men. She cared about what Abuela thought, what the neighbors thought, what Father Muñoz at St. Michael’s thought. She loved me without conditions but she worried about me with plenty of them.
“I know, Ma.”
“I just want you to be happy. And safe. And eating enough vegetables.”
“I’m eating vegetables.”
“Fried plantains don’t count.”
“They absolutely count. They’re a plant.”
She laughed, and the sound caught me sideways. That particular ache of loving someone who loved you back but might not love every version of you equally. She was my favorite person on the planet. She’d held me together through every hard thing I’d ever survived. The tattoo on my ribs was her handwriting, for God’s sake. Libre, in the cursive she used for birthday cards and letters sent back home, because she’d been the first person to tell me I could be free.
But free had meant something specific to her. Free to be gay, sure. Free to live in Brooklyn, fine. Free to throw events and make his own money and have his little friend group. But free to bring home a white man from Long Island who had never eaten mangú? Free to be serious about someone her mother would side-eye? Free to build a life that looked nothing like the one she’d imagined when she’d written that word on the back of an envelope for her son to tattoo on his body?
I wasn’t sure.
“I gotta go, Ma. I have work stuff.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Events don’t take weekends off.”
“Bring me some of that pad thai next time you come. If it doesn’t haveroaches.”
“Bye, Ma. Love you.”
“Te quiero, mijo. Call me before Wednesday, or I’m coming to your apartment.”
I hung up and set the phone face down on the couch cushion. Stared at the ceiling for a second. Ellis’ fiddle-leaf fig painted shadows across the plaster, and somewhere in the bathroom Jack the fern was existing peacefully, unbothered by mothers or pronouns or the weight of being someone’s only son.
Ellis let the silence settle. “She sounds nice.”
“She’s incredible.”
“You didn’t tell her about me.”
The observation landed with precision. He said it the way he said most difficult things, with care, like he was checking the depth before stepping in. But I heard the question underneath: Why?
“I told her I’m seeing someone.”
“You told her you’re seeing someone whose name she can’t know yet.” He set the tablet down. Looked at me fully. “A few weeks ago, you were frustrated I couldn’t say ‘boyfriend’ at work. And you just called me ‘someone’ to your mom.”
The accuracy of that hit me in the sternum.
“It’s different,” I said.
“How?”
I sat up. His legs slid off my lap, and the loss of contact cut sharper than it should have. “Because your coworkers are people you see eight hours a day and then go home. My mom is, she’s my mom, Ellis. If she reacts badly, I can’t just transfer to a different department.”
“I know that.”
“Do you? Because the way you’re looking at me right now feels a lot like the way I looked at you in your hallway that night.”
He was quiet for a beat. Then, “Maybe that’s because I finallyunderstand what you were feeling.”
