Page 47 of What We Burn

Micah’s eye twitches at the word “pretty.” But he recovers and tips his head politely, playing along.

She turns to Eli, whose expression is somewhere between exhausted and wary, his whole body angled away from the table, like he wants to fold himself up and vanish. “And you must be the teacher. Milo talks about you a lot, Eli. He really looks up to you.” She lets the words hang there, as if expecting a response. “He never mentioned you were clumsy, though.”

Eli smiles slightly and touches near the cut on his cheek. “Walked straight into a closed fist,” he says.

Gloria laughs with a musical trill, sharp and bright. “Well, I hope you taught the fist a lesson or two. Nobody ever got smarter getting punched, but plenty have gotten less pretty.” She picks up her wine glass and holds it up like a toast. “To family. Milo thinks the world of all of you. He’s never brought anyone home before.” Gloria’s gaze turns laser sharp. “Especially not a woman.” She smiles at Sage, who’s sitting to her right, across from Milo. She reaches over and squeezes Milo’s arm. “I was starting to think he’d invented you all.”

“Mom.”

“What? A mother worries. And you did have that invisible friend until you were sixteen. What was his name? Gene, do you remember?”

Coffee Table Dad—now introduced as Gene—brings a fresh pitcher of lemonade to the table. “Arthur.”

“That’s right! Oh, he and Arthur used to go on such adventures together.”

“Mom . . . ” Milo sinks down in his chair. “Stop. Please.”

As Gene makes his way around the table refilling our glasses, I notice the turtleneck is oddly bulky around the collar.

“What’s with the turtlenecks?” I ask, gesturing to my own neck and looking between the “dads.” “Some kind of uniform or . . . ”

“We like turtlenecks.” Gene sets the pitcher down and his hand trembles. Just a hair. Just enough for me to notice the way the sweat beads on his upper lip when his gaze flicks to Gloria.

“They really do,” Gloria says. “We have them in every color imaginable.” Her voice is warm, smile fixed in place. “Gene, sit down and eat something, dear.” Gene sits down so fast the chair legs scrape.

“Sorry. I’ll make sure that didn’t leave a scratch.”

Gloria laughs and waves him off. “No need. We’re enjoying our visitors right now. Dennis, come join us.”

Hawaiian Shirt—Dennis—takes the seat at the far end of the table. He’s the chattiest of the three, asking us about what sports we like, if any of us have seen the new season of whatever’s streaming, normal suburban barbecue talk. But he keeps glancing at Gloria before he speaks. A quick flick of the eyes, checking her face, making sure whatever he’s saying is acceptable.

Interesting.

“So how long have you all been together?” Sage asks Gloria.

I get it. She’s a woman in a multi-partner relationship sitting across from another woman in a multi-partner relationship, and she wants to know how it works. How the math shakes out over decades instead of months.

Gloria’s face softens. “Dennis and I go back thirty-two years. High school sweethearts, if you can believe it.”

“Oh,” Sage says, her eyes lighting with interest. “Is Dennis Milo’s dad?”

Gloria’s eyes cloud over for just a second, the smile on her face falling before the whole thing resets. The dads exchange panicked glances.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. Gene came along about eight years in, when Dennis and I were going through a rough patch. He was . . . ” She pauses. Smiles. “He was exactly what we needed. Brought a stability that Dennis and I couldn’t create on our own. Isn’t that right, dear?”

Dennis swallows, rapidly nodding. “Absolutely!”

“Ray joined us about four years ago. He was working at the local auto shop and things just . . . developed.”

“It’s nice,” Sage says carefully, clearly not missing the way Gloria reacted at the mention of Milo’s father. “That it works between you all.”

“It works because we work at it,” Gloria says. Her eyes sweep the table—Ray, Gene, and Dennis—like a general surveying her forces. “Relationships don’t survive on love alone. They survive on commitment. On understanding that this”—she gestures at the table, the food, the house—“is worth more than any one person’s ego.” Her expression hardens, her voice dipping. “Or their wandering eye.”

The table gets quiet. Not the comfortable kind.

Dennis clears his throat. “To be fair, Gloria, relationships are also about⁠—”

His whole body jerks. A sharp, full-torso spasm—shoulders snapping back, hands flying to the edge of the table, a strangled sound escaping through clenched teeth. It lasts maybe half a second. Then he’s still again, blinking, straightening his turtleneck with fingers that are trembling harder than before.