“I owe the game to her,” I said. “She passed before I went pro, but she knew. She always knew.”
I stared down at the table, jaw flexing. It still got me, sometimes. How she never got to see the jersey, the headlines, the crowd chanting my name.
But she’d believed in it before anyone else did.
When I looked up, Daphne was leaning against the counter, arms crossed, the wooden spoon forgotten in her hand.
She didn’t speak. Just… looked at me.
And somehow, that meant more.
Not pity. Not admiration.
Just presence.
That was harder to find than most people realized.
The sauce bubbled on the stove. Her apartment smelled like butter and basil and something warmer underneath it all. Something like home.
And I wasn’t sure what scared me more—the fact that I told her all of that, or how badly I wanted to tell her more.
She drained the pasta with practiced ease, steam curling up around her face as she leaned over the sink. A moment later, she was spooning sauce—creamy and rich, flecked with herbs—onto two mismatched plates. No pretense. No garnish. Just real food.
She slid one plate in front of me, then settled across the table, legs folded beneath her. We ate in silence for a few minutes, forks clinking, the occasional low murmur of appreciation from me. It was good—better than good. It tasted like comfort. Like someone who’d figured out how to feed herself on hard days and hadn’t stopped since.
When I scraped up the last bit of sauce, I leaned back in my chair and looked at her. She was focused on her food, but I caught the tension in her shoulders. Like she was waiting for the night to shift.
So I shifted it.
“What about you?” I asked. “Family?”
She froze mid-bite. Her fork hovered for a beat before she set it down gently. There was a pause. Not uncomfortable—just careful.
“Raised by my mom,” she said finally, tone neutral. “Just us.”
I waited, gave her the space.
“She loved me. A lot. But she was always tired. Worked two jobs, sometimes three. We didn’t do the whole storybook thing—no bedtime tales, no talks about Prince Charming.” She picked at the edge of her plate, not quite looking at me. “Love, in our house, looked like sacrifice. Grocery bags on aching arms. Crying behind the bathroom door. Fixing broken shit alone because there was no one else and we couldn't afford to hire a professional." She took a deep breath, then met my eyes. “So, no—I don’t really believe in the whole forever thing.”
Her voice wasn’t bitter. Just… honest. Like she’d said it to herself enough times that it didn’t sting anymore.
I studied her then. The sharp edges she wore like armor. The softness buried so deep most people probably never saw it. The way she told the truth and didn’t ask for sympathy.
“Someone broke your heart,” I said quietly.
Daphne let out a snort. “Nah. I broke it myself. People just helped.”
It wasn’t a joke, not really. But it wore the mask of one.
I didn’t push. I could’ve asked what she meant. Who helped. What happened.
But I didn’t.
Because I knew that tone. I’d worn it myself.
So I let her steer.
She stood up, gathering plates. “You want tea or something? I’ve got boring flavors. Mint, chamomile, sad-writer lemon balm…”
