Page 112 of Everything But Mine

It’s another group session. We’re all slouched in chairs, nursing coffee or picking at lint. I lean forward, really listening in. Kayla shares that she stared at the scar on her cheek today. For the first time, she didn’t rush to look away in disgust, but held her eyes on it. Dania gives her a soft, “Hell yes.” Samir gives a single loud clap. It’s my turn next.

“I’ve talked about Amanda before,” I say. “Used to think she’d be better off with someone else. Then she found someone and…” I exhale. “It couldn’t fucking stand it.” I drag my hands down my face. “I grew up thinking I wasn’t worth the effort. You can’t give what you never got, right?”

A couple of heads nod. No one jumps in.

I shift in my seat. “I don’t want to keep blaming my dad or my history. I don’t want my kid believing love is conditional.”

Samir leans forward a little. “So what do you want?”

I exhale through my nose. “I want to show up. Always. No matter how hard.”

It’s not life-changing. It doesn’t earn applause. But Dania gives me a look that says, there you go. And Kayla offers a little half-smile. For the first time, I don’t believe I’m faking recovery, but working on it. And for being here feels doable, and the outside feels unpredictable.

It’s my third Saturday here, and Diego’s turn to visit. We hike through damp pine trails slick with mud from Thursday’s drizzle. Fallen branches crowd the path until the trees finally open to the natural wall tucked deeper in the woods. It’s steeper than the ones we’re kept on during movement therapy, rough stone split with narrow cracks and jutting shelves.

Diego and I have been climbing together since we were kids. We know each other’s rhythm instinctively by now—when to push, when to pause, when the other is about to slip before it even happens. Years of ropes, harnesses, and near falls turned us into something almost mechanical together, two bodies moving through the same language.

My muscles remember before my mind does.

I hit the first break in the wall just before Diego reaches it below me.

“You look…” Diego squints up at me from the ledge, one hand hooked into the rock. “Not miserable. Contemplative. Walden Pond-style.”

“Not my thing. But I’m getting better at belaying. Giving people the right amount of rope, and letting them help me.”

“Progress.”

I close my eyes and focus on the chirping birds above us. “She okay?” I ask finally.

Diego lifts himself up and stands next to me. “I read some baby book about an owl so she’d sit down. I cried, man. That was some deep shit.” He squeezes right above my collarbone. “She’s good. I promise.”

I want more. I need to know everything she’s eating and if she’s sleeping in my bed.

“She’s seen a lawyer,” Diego adds. “Wants Daray to sign some kind of declaration.”

I let go of the rope as my chest tightens. “He hasn’t?”

“He hasn’t, last we talked about it.”

I palm the center of my chest, thumb digging into my left pec to loosen the pressure building inside me—under the regrets and hopes inked on my skin.

“And the cabin trip?”

“She’s going.” He tips his chin. “I offered to stay back with her.”

“Keith and my father⁠—”

Diego nods. “Keith and fucking Robert can suck my dick.”

“I’ll… Still be here.”

“You’re doing the right thing, man.” He clips my shoulder. “Anytime Robert or Keith are in the picture, there’ll be a Camacho stuck to her side.”

“It should be me.” I trace the A tattooed over my heart. “It fucking sucks.”

Cicadas shrieked nearby, their sharp call ricocheting through the trees. “I was ready to move her out of your place.”

I arch a brow. That would have never happened.