“Is that what we're calling it?” Mom asked, settling into her own chair with the kind of satisfied sigh that meant she'd successfully fed her family and could now focus on the serious business of teasing them. “Strategic contemplation?”
“Among other things.”
“So,” Mom said, attention turning to me with the laser focus of someone who'd perfected the art of extracting information from reluctant teenage boys and never lost the skill. “Things seem to be going well with Evan.”
The observation was casual, conversational, completely innocent. It also made heat crawl up my neck like I was sixteen again and had just been caught sneaking in after curfew.
“Things are good,” I said carefully, because discussing my love life with my mother ranked somewhere between root canals and tax audits on my list of preferred activities.
“Good,” she repeated, and there was something in her voice that suggested she found my careful neutrality amusing. “He seems lovely. Very polite. Very handsome. Very much like someone who looks at you like you hung the moon and personally arranged all the stars.”
“Mom.”
“What? I'm just saying.” She took a delicate sip of coffee, but I could see the smile she was trying to hide behind the rim of hermug. “It's nice to see you happy. Both of you. There's something about the way you two fit together that reminds me of puzzle pieces clicking into place.”
Being with Evan did feel like finding the missing piece of something I hadn't even known was incomplete.
“He makes me laugh,” I said quietly, the admission slipping out before I could think better of it. “Even when everything else feels like it's falling apart, he makes me laugh.”
Mom's expression softened into something that looked suspiciously like maternal satisfaction. “That's important, sweetheart. Love should feel like coming home, not like walking on eggshells.”
“Is that how it felt with Dad?” I asked, genuine curiosity overriding my usual reluctance to discuss my parents' relationship in terms that acknowledged they were actual people with feelings and complicated histories.
“With your father?” Mom glanced at Dad, who had apparently abandoned all pretense of reading his newspaper in favor of eavesdropping on our conversation. “Your father made me feel like I could conquer the world, and then offered to help me figure out what to do with it once I had it.”
“Still do,” Dad said gruffly, but there was warmth in his voice that spoke of shared jokes and midnight conversations and the accumulated weight of choosing each other every day.
“Still do,” Mom agreed, reaching across the table to squeeze his hand. “Even when you leave coffee rings on my good furniture and track mud through the house after promising you'd use the back door.”
“I forgot about the back door.”
“You always forget about the back door.”
“It's a character flaw.”
“It's one of many.”
I watched them tease each other with the ease of people who'd learned to speak in shorthand, who could communicate entire conversations with nothing more than shared glances and the kind of comfortable silence that only came after lots of practice. This was what I wanted, I realized. Not just the passion or the intensity or the heart-stopping moments of connection, but this. The daily choice to find each other interesting, to build something lasting from the accumulated weight of small kindnesses and shared laughter.
“I love you both,” I said suddenly, the words surprising me with their vehemence. “I know I don't say it enough, but I do. I love you both so much it makes my chest hurt sometimes.”
The kitchen went quiet, the kind of silence that felt full rather than empty. Mom's eyes went bright with tears she was too proud to shed, and Dad cleared his throat like he was trying to dislodge something heavy that had taken up residence there.
“We know, sweetheart,” Mom said softly, voice thick with everything she wasn't saying. “We love you too. More than words can hold.”
“Even when you run away to Chicago and forget to call for weeks at a time,” Dad added, but there was no heat in it. “Even when you come back home with fancy ideas about photography and big city living.”
“Even then,” Mom agreed. “Especially then. Love doesn't have geography, Nathaniel. It doesn't have conditions or expiration dates. It just is.”
The simple truth of it settled into my bones like recognition, like coming home to something I'd been carrying without knowing it. This was what family meant. Not just the people who'd raised you, but the ones who saw you at your worst and decided you were worth keeping anyway. Who celebrated your victories and helped you survive your failures and never let youforget that you had a place in the world that belonged only to you.
“Besides,” Mom continued, apparently deciding that the moment needed lightening before we all dissolved into emotional puddles, “someone has to keep you from making terrible life choices. Like that haircut you had in college.”
“That haircut was artistic,” I protested weakly.
“That haircut was a cry for help.”
“It was trendy.”
