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“Damn,” Tristan nodded. “That’s… intense. I get it though. Well, kinda. I was deployed, you know?Keptgetting sent back. And when you’re out in all these foreign places, enmeshed in real fucking combat, conflicts that “regular” people don’t even know about… it’s like, you come back to a whole different world. And it’s not that you can’t function, because you can, but it’s so damn…different.”
I thought he would say more –wantedhim to say more – but instead, he trailed off. He was talking about his own, very separate experience, but everything he’d said, I’d absolutely been feeling.
He was right.
It wasn’t that you couldn’t function, it was so damn…different.
“It sounds like you’ve seen a lot,” I said, prompting him to break away from whatever was happening in his head that had him staring off in the distance, to nod.
“Yeah. Too much for my years.” He took a sip from his cup, then smirked at me. “I swear I’m not trying to pry about your last job that didn’t exist, but… I feel like you probably can relate to that.”
“To what? Having seen too much?”
He nodded.
“Oh,” I laughed. “You have no idea.”
“Yeah I thought so,” he replied. “Hey, how old are you?”
My eyes went wide. “How old am I?”
“Yes. As in, when is your birthday?”
“Oh. I… uh—”
I was saved from that question – one I had no real answer for – by a sudden blaring of music, which I quickly realized was coming from the pocket of Tristan’s basketball shorts.
“Boyz II Men?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.“Seriously?”
He offered an embarrassed grin as he shrugged, retrieving his phone. “It’s my mother. She picked it,” he explained, his thumb hovering over the screen. “Hold on,” he said to me, then tapped the screen and lifted it to his here. “Good morning beautiful,” he greeted, which made me have to bite back a smile. “I’m a little occupied right now, can I call you back? I – no, I do not think you’re one of the regular women out here,” he said, putting a hand to his face. “No, I never doubted you, I said I didn’tbelieve –I… okay. Okay. Okay. I’m sorry. I love you.”
“Well… that was a really interesting conversation, fromthisend at least,” I said, watching as, instead of putting his phone away, he tapped a few more times on the screen.
“Because my mother is a complete mess,” he explained, holding up his phone to show me a picture on the screen, of a beautiful older black woman holding a large bouquet of flowers. She was wearing a tee shirt with “Unfuckwittable” printed across the front, and a facial expression that said… the same thing, honestly.
“I feel like this requires an explanation,” I said, meeting his gaze, which was brimming with amusement.
He chuckled as he slipped it back in his pocket. “Well, you know Mother’s Day was a couple weeks ago, right? Well, she loves getting flowers, so that’s what I did. I made a comment to her about not being sad when they wilted or whatever, since that’s what always happens to cut flowers, but she was like… nah, I’ma keep my shit alive. So I told her, mama, I don’t think it works like that. I believe you can keep them two weeks tops, atmax. So… basically she took it as a personal challenge, cause this is week three, and they still look really good. She was calling to rub it in my face.”
“Wow,” I laughed, when he finished. “Your mother sounds… amazing, to be frank.”
“You know… I would agree with that,” he nodded. “She’s always been good at bringing stuff back to life, keeping it alive. I don’t think we ever had a pet growing up that wasn’t half-dead when we got it, then thriving by the time she was through with it. She has this energy about her.”
“I feel like I could tell that from the picture. Like she’s really warm, and sweet, but also not to be played with.”
“And you would be exactly right,” he laughed. “Love that lady, man. What about you?” he asked, after we’d gone a little further, in silence. “What’s your mother like?”
“Oh! Um… I don’t know, actually.”
The smile he’d been wearing dissolved. “Shit. My bad. Were you… adopted?”
“Something like that,” I said, nodding. “I don’t have any family, nothing like that. So, besides my mentor and few others, I don’t… I don’t really have anyone.”
We walked in silence for a fewmoremoments, and then… “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, with a dry laugh. “It is.”
“But you can’t say it anymore.”
