Hervoice wasn’t judgmental. It wasn’t smug. It was a platform under me—I could fall back into it without fear. I sat on the toilet lid, hands flat on my thighs, trying to breathe through the swell of panic. My body felt strange, like the center of gravity had shifted and nothing would balance the same again.
“Rae,” Shawna said, crouching so she was level with me, her brown eyes kind. “You don’t have to decide today. Or tomorrow. You just found out.”
But time had already started moving differently—too long between heartbeats and then too short. I could feel a cliff edge where there used to be street. Every second stretched and snapped.
Shawna stayed. She made tea I could barely swallow. She plopped a movie on that made enough noise and color to drown the thunder inside my head. We didn’t say the word again. She didn’t press. She kept her company like a lighthouse standing through fog—there but not forcing my eyes toward it.
The next days blurred. Shawna showed up after work with ginger tea, crackers, soup she’d pretend I had to eat. “Don’t act like I don’t know you’re not eating,” she said once, eye-roll sharp enough to crack me into a laugh even while nausea twisted me inside out.
She tried to pull me out from under my anxiety with jokes. “Girl, you always said Quentin had you hooked. Now look—maybe too literal.” I growled at her and then smiled because that is what she does. She makes me remember I am still me, even when my world feels upside down.
Daddy didn’t push when I called off from work. He sounded weirdly relieved, like he’d been waitingfor me to slow down. “About time you listen to me,” he said. “Take the days you need.”
His voice held worry just under the surface—the kind a father gets when he knows something’s wrong but can’t pry it out. Each time he called I promised rest, food, water. Lies slid easier than truth when your throat was raw with secrets. I hated the lying. How do you tell the person who taught you how to hold a ladder and a life that you might be about to change both?
Quentin. God.
He’d been steady since day one. Even when I went cold, dodged his calls, cut short texts. His patience wasn’t distance; it was care. He gave me space but somehow never let me think I was alone.
Every time his name lit my phone I wanted to tell him—wanted to blurt it so loud the ground would stop moving. But then what? He’d ask what I wanted. I didn’t know. That terrified me. The practical voice in my head said the obvious things: keep the rhythm, don’t create detours, don’t implode a life you barely built for yourself.
But the traitor-heart kept interrupting;this could be ours. A spark with a name. The idea felt less like logic and more like hunger.
On Friday he turned up with a bag of pad thai and spring rolls, the smell usually a homecoming. My stomach pitched like the world had tilted again. He noticed before the bag hit the counter. He always notices.
“You don’t want it?” he asked. No push. No drama. Just that even weight of his voice.
I shook my head, guilt burning harder than the nausea.“Not tonight.”
He nodded, filing the detail away the way he did when a student answers in a way that needs follow-up—kind, patient, not shaming. He watched me the way you watch something fragile and precious.
When my father called, I kept my answers clipped. “Yeah, I’ve been home all week. Resting.” I knew as the words left my mouth that Quentin was listening, cataloging.
When I hung up, he was still watching me.
“You been off all week?” His voice wasn’t accusing. Just steady. Careful. But that almost made it worse.
My throat went dry. “Stomach flu. Knocked me out.”
He nodded again, slow, quiet. But behind those lenses, his eyes said everything:I don’t believe you.
And I hated myself in that moment, because I could see how much it cost him not to push.
His restraint pressed on me more than if he’d demanded the truth. I hated him for holding back and loved him for the same reason. So I reached for him. If I couldn’t give him facts, I could give him everything else. I crawled into his lap, kissed him like I could scorch questions off the map. He came in around me—arms solid, present. We moved like that old language we know well, heat, need, refuge. For a spell, the world narrowed to breath and skin and the lit in his eyes when he looked at me.
But after he left the house felt too small. The walls had been keeping my secret for days and I’d had enough. My tea sat cold. The TV’s laugh track sounded too bright. I grabbed my keys and drove with the windows down, air yanking my hair from its tie, wanting the sting.
I cruised streets that held childhood maps—parks,corner stores, the places my brother and I learned to turn our backs on boredom—and without planning it I pulled up in front of my mother’s house.
The porch light was on like a quiet invitation. My chest cramped. I hadn’t knocked on this door in longer than I wanted to admit and the distance between us wasn’t only about miles. It was about the divorce and the months of silence that had followed, the sharp way we both learned to protect ourselves.
I killed the engine and sat for a minute gripping the wheel. Maybe I needed her. Maybe I needed someone who had known me before almost everything unspooled. Maybe I needed an answer that wasn’t my own fear reflected back at me.
I stepped up and knocked.
The door opened before I could decide to back out. My mother stood there—bob cut, gold hoops, a sweater that fit like a memory. Her face softened, and for a second the old ache I’d carried for years was raw and hopeful at the same time.
“Mommy,” I said. My voice did something I hadn’t let it do in a long time—it trembled.
