“Do what?”
“Tell your mom about Ellis.”
The room went very quiet. Salem purred against Sierra’s chest, oblivious.
“Sierra…”
“I’m serious. We’ve both been putting this off. You’ve been with Ellis for months now. You told me you love him. You told Hannah in a coffee shop. But your mom still doesn’t know his name.” She looked at me with those steady brown eyes that never let me hide. “How long are you going to keep him in a box?”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her it was different, that her parents were one kind of hard and mine was another. That her parents might be confused, but mine might be cruel. The truth ran blunter than that. I was scared, and being scared had become comfortable, and comfortable was the enemy of everything I claimed to believe about freedom.
“Thursday.” Sierra leaned forward. “I tell my parents. You call your mom. Same night. We debrief after.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s a pact. You and me. We jump together, or we don’t jump at all.”
I looked at her. My best friend since we were sixteen, the person who’dseen me at my worst, most ridiculous, and most afraid, who’d held my hand through every version of myself I’d ever tried on and discarded. She was asking me to be as brave as she was about to be.
“Fine.” The word came out like a surrender. “Thursday.”
“Thursday.”
We clinked imaginary glasses because I’d forgotten to open the wine, and Salem meowed his disapproval at the sudden movement, and for thirty seconds it almost felt manageable.
Thursday came too fast.
Ellis knew about the plan. He’d held my hand when I told him, and his face had split between relief and terror. He wanted my mom to know. He’d wanted it since the Sunday phone call, since hearing me call him “someone” and watching the word land between us like a grenade with the pin still in. But he also understood, in that quiet Ellis way, that this was mine to do and mine to survive.
“Text me when you’re done,” he’d said that morning. “Whatever happens. I’ll be there.”
I spent the day not calling my mom. I cleaned my apartment instead, which I only did when I was avoiding something. Scrubbed the bathroom. Reorganized my closet. Wiped down the kitchen counter three times. At 4 P.M. I ate half a sandwich and couldn’t finish it. At five I stared at my phone. At 6 P.M., I poured a glass of rum and didn’t drink it.
At 7 P.M., I called her.
She picked up on the second ring. “Mijo. It’s a Thursday. Did someone die?”
“Nobody died, Ma.”
“Then why do you sound like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like somebody died.”
I sat on the edge of my bed with my elbows on my knees and my free hand pressed against the Libre tattoo through my shirt, as if I could feel her handwriting through the fabric I could borrow whatever courage she’d meant to give me when she wrote it.
“Ma, I need to tell you something. About the person I’m seeing.”
Silence. The bachata in the background. A pot lid being set down.
“His name is Ellis. He’s, he’s amazing, Ma. He works in tech, he’s smart, he treats me like…” My voice cracked and I had to stop. Start over. “He treats me better than anyone I’ve ever been with. I love him. I’m in love with him, and it’s the first time I’ve ever said that about somebody and meant it all the way through.”
More silence. Longer this time. A silence with weight.
“Mijo.” Her voice had gone careful. New. “This boy. Is he…”
“He’s white, Ma. He’s from Long Island. His name is Ellis; he’s white and I love him.”
