The apartment is quiet. Too quiet, in the old way. Before Nolan, quiet was evidence that my life was orderly. Now quiet is a room asking where he is. There are clementines in the bowl because my mother believes citrus is a personality trait, but no ordinary evidence of him yet. That is exactly the problem. I want evidence before he has had time to decide whether he can survive leaving any.
I type:
The noun is complicated.
My mother takes longer to answer this time.
Soo-jin:
Maybe do not manage everything.
Unacceptable.
I set the phone down and stand because being personally attacked by a librarian from three states away requires movement. I take the mug to the sink. Rinse it. Dry it. Put it away. Then I notice I have organized the drying rack by item height, which is not a solution to anything.
Nolan would call that loud thinking.
Nolan has started noticing me back.
That is the thing I do not know how to manage.
I knew how to want him when wanting him was classified as a problem. I knew how to disclose the conflict, give up thefile, surrender influence, build the cleanest possible boundary around the messiest possible feeling. I knew how to sit beside him in the hotel room and ask him to be clear. I knew how to hold him when he stayed.
What I do not know is how to live inside the part after the emergency.
The part where there is no hotel hallway, no bag of ice, no pain forcing honesty into the open.
The part where he might choose to come toward me without crisis carrying him there.
The part where I want to ask what are we and already know the answer is less important than whether he can survive hearing the question.
The draft email waits in my work account like a fluorescent-lit trap.
Personal Relationship Disclosure.
A relationship. The word is accurate. It is also not mine to impose. Not yet. Nolan has given me pieces with both hands shaking. A kiss. His name. His sister's existence as a door he has not opened yet. A night in Tampa. A morning with bad toast. His hand on mine while he said he did not know what came after hockey.
I want to be careful with those pieces.
I also want more.
This is where I am least impressive as a person. I can make ethical decisions. I can make professional decisions. I can make hard decisions under time pressure with incomplete data and men older than me waiting for me to prove I belong in the room.
Wanting without moving too fast is apparently where my skill set becomes decorative.
The phone lights up.
Not Nolan.
Dani:
Need Detroit clips by sequence or player for tomorrow?
Me:
Sequence, please.
Dani:
