That one landed. Sat in the air between us, turning.
“She’ll come around,” I said. “When I tell her. She will.”
“When?”
“Eventually.”
“Eventually.” He repeated the word the way you’d hold up a cracked glass to check if it was still usable. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Your pace.” He picked his tablet back up. Settled back against the arm of the couch. But he didn’t put his legs across my lap again, and the three feet of cushion between us had teeth.
I wanted to explain. Wanted to tell him that my mom had held my hand at sixteen and said, “Mijo, you’re still mine, no matter what”, and that I was terrified, physically, gut-level terrified, that introducing him would be the thing that finally found the edge of her no matter what. That the acceptance she’d given me was real, but maybe not infinite. That I’d rather keep him in a sealed room than risk watching her face change when she met him.
But I didn’t say any of it. Because saying it would make it real, and I wasn’t ready for it to be real yet.
“I’m going to make coffee,” I said, got up, and left him on the couch with Jack and Diane and the silence I’d built between us.
I came back from the kitchen with two mugs and a steadier face than I’d left with. He hadn’t moved. Same end of the couch. Tablet face down now. The same late October light cutting across the floor.
“I made you coffee.”
He took it. Set it down on the side table. Patted the cushion next to him.
I sat.
He didn’t put his legs back across mine. Didn’t reach for me. Just stayed close enough our knees touched and let the silence do whatever it was going to do. Jack’s leaf in the corner trembled under the radiator’s hot exhale. Late-afternoon light filtered through the slatted blinds, casting stripes across the floor.
“I’m not going to push you,” he said, quiet. “About the name. About telling her.”
“Okay.”
“I just want you to know I’m not going to.”
“Okay.”
His knee pressed harder into mine. Not insistent. Anchoring. The careful Ellis tic translated into touch.
I leaned my head against his shoulder. His sweatshirt smelled like the laundry detergent he refused to switch and the rosemary plant on the windowsill he kept brushing past on his way to the kitchen. I closed my eyes.
“She used to braid my hair before church.” My voice came out rough. “When I was small. I had it long. She’d put coconut oil in her hands and warm it up first.”
He didn’t say anything. Just turned his head into my hair and waited.
“She’s not a bad person.”
“I never thought she was.”
“I think she thinks she’s protecting me. From you. From a version of you that doesn’t exist.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s the second-worst thing.”
“The worst is.”
“Disappointing her.”
