She was watching me over her glass with entirely too much satisfaction.
“You heard anything I just said?”
“No.”
Pops laughed from the doorway. “At least he honest.”
Ciara pointed her fork at me. “I know exactly what this is.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know a man who’s gone when I see one.”
Mama’s eyes moved to me then, softer and more careful than Ciara’s, like she wasn’t interested in the gossip of it so much as the truth underneath. I reached for my water and took a sip just to buy myself a second, but my phone buzzed again on the table before I could settle. I didn’t have to look to know it wasn’t Candace.
Talia had her own text vibration now.
That probably said enough all by itself.
Ciara caught my face before I could do anything about it.
“Oh, he sick,” she said.
Mama’s smile came slow.
Pops looked between all of us, then at my phone. “Who got him smiling like that?”
“Nobody,” I said.
“Lying at the dinner table,” Mama murmured. “That’s new.”
Ciara laughed so hard she almost choked on her water.
I picked up my phone anyway.
Talia: You surviving family dinner?
And there I was, sitting in my parents’ kitchen with greens on my plate, my sister reading me for sport, Ari coloring on the floor, and my whole mood shifting because Talia Vaughn had thought about me in the middle of her evening.
I typed back before I could talk myself into acting cooler than I felt.
Me: Barely. Ciara already diagnosed me.
Talia: With what?
I glanced up at my sister, who was still watching me like she had been waiting her whole life for this moment.
Me: According to her? I’m gone.
The dots appeared fast.
Talia: Is she wrong?
I stared at that for one second too long.
Then I smiled down at my phone like a man with no defense left.
Me: No.
