“He’s … he’s complicated,” I admitted. “But in a good way. Mostly.”
Mom hummed. “How did you meet?”
“Overseas,” I said. “On assignment. He was working with a joint intel unit I was embedded with. We … got close.”
There was a pause that wasn’t really a pause—it was the two of them exchanging one of their telepathic conversations.
“And now?” Dad asked gently.
“And now,” I said, voice softer than intended, “we’re … trying again.”
Silence, but warm this time.
Mom spoke first. “Are you happy?”
The question hit me like it always did—straight to the center of me, no shortcuts, no hedging.
I thought of Levi.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I am.”
There was a rustling sound on their end—Mom’s hand, probably, covering Dad’s in pure parental relief.
“Well, then,” Dad said matter-of-factly, “we’d like to meet him.”
A laugh bubbled up—surprised, shaky, real. “I … actually thought maybe I’d bring him up. Soon. If things keep … if things go the way they’re going.”
“We’d like that very much,” Mom said warmly. “Bring him when he’s ready.”
A knot I didn’t know I’d been carrying loosened a little.
We talked for twenty more minutes—about the garden, about the neighbor’s new grandson, about my mother’s ongoing war with the sourdough starter. They didn’t ask for details I couldn’t give. They didn’t tiptoe. They just existed with me in the tiny, ordinary corners of life I’d always come home to.
By the time I hung up, my chest felt less like a clenched fist and more like an open hand.
I lay back against the pillows, staring at the ceiling, letting the quiet settle.
Reflection came slow at first, like someone easing open a heavy door.
In the span of two days, I’d crossed invisible lines. Ethical lines. Emotional ones. The kind I used to treat as bright red boundaries but now saw as gradients, messy and human.
My mother’s question echoed:Are you happy?
I was. Terrifyingly so.
And underneath that happiness was the deeper truth I was only beginning to face:
It wasn’t just that I loved him.
It was that I was all-in. For him. For whatever this became. For however the truth unfolded between us.
And maybe that was reckless.
But it didn’t feel reckless.
It felt inevitable.
I must’ve drifted, because the next thing I registered was the faint buzz of my phone on the nightstand.
