"Jay." Ivan's hand finds mine again, squeezes tight. "I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm sorry you had to—" He stops, shakes his head. "No one should have to defend themselves for just having a drink at a bar."
"I shouldn't have engaged," I say. "Mick told me—" I stop, realizing Ivan doesn't know who Mick is. "He bailed me out of jail. He told me I was on a path that only ends one way. He's right. I know he's right."
"Who's Mick?" Ivan asks.
"My boss. He owns the motorcycle shop where I work." Just saying Mick's name makes some of the tension in my shoulders ease. "He's a good guy. Gave me a chance when no one else would, when I had nothing to offer and no credentials. He's been teaching me the trade for a couple years now."
"Motorcycle shop?" Ivan's eyebrows rise, and I see genuine interest in his face. "You work on motorcycles?"
"Yeah. Repairs mostly, but also restorations. Taking old bikes that don't run anymore and bringing them back to life." I can hear the pride creeping into my voice despite everything, despite how pathetic the rest of my life is. "I'm good at it. Mick says I've got a gift for it, that I can hear what's wrong with an engine just by listening to it run. He says I've got the best diagnostic ear he's seen in thirty years."
"That's amazing," Ivan says, and he sounds like he means it. Like he's actually proud of me.
"It's just mechanical stuff. What do you do?"
"Electrician." Ivan smiles. "I'm an apprentice—just finished my first year. But I'm doing really well. Top of my class at trade school, and my boss, Frank says I'm the best first-year he's had in a decade. I work for a company that does residential and commercial. Mostly new construction right now, but some repairs and renovations too."
"Top of your class?" I stare at him, genuinely impressed. "That's—Ivan, that's incredible. You're only nineteen."
"I work hard. Study every night. I passed my first-year certification with the highest score they'd seen in years. Frank says if I keep this up, I could finish my apprenticeship early, maybe make journeyman by twenty-two instead of twenty-three. I wanted to build something, you know? Something stable. Something that couldn't be taken away from me. A real career."
"Sounds like you're building it."
"I'm trying." He looks down at his hands—electrician's hands, I notice now, with small scars from wire cuts and calluses from tools. "It feels good to have people believe in me."
I understand that more than he knows. The need for stability, for something solid to hold onto when everything else is quicksand. The difference is that he actually achieved it. He built something real. I just kept sinking.
"Tell me about your current family," I say, needing to change the subject away from my failures. "The ones you live with."
Ivan's whole face softens when I say their name, his expression going warm. "Rosalyn and Mitchell. They've been fostering kids for over fifteen years. When I got there, there were three other kids in the house already. There were twins, Destiny and Diana, they were four. And Caleb, who was just a toddler. He used to follow me around everywhere, like a little shadow."
"Sounds crowded."
"It was. It still is." Ivan laughs. "The house is always loud, always chaotic. There's always someone needing something, always some kind of drama or crisis or celebration. Rosalyn cooks these huge meals andeveryone has to help—there's a rotation for setting the table, clearing dishes, washing up. And Sunday dinners are an even bigger affair."
"How did you handle that?" I ask, trying to picture it. "You were always so quiet, so careful not to take up space."
"Badly, at first," Ivan admits. "I was uncomfortable. I was so used to being invisible, to staying quiet and not being noticed. And suddenly I was in this house where everyone noticed everything and wanted to talk about it. Rosalyn asks you about your day every single day. Mitchell wants to know what you're learning in school." He shakes his head. "I kept waiting for something bad to happen. For Rosalyn to stop smiling, for Mitchell to come home angry, for it to turn into another Henderson situation."
My chest tightens at the mention of Henderson's name. "But it never did?"
"Never. They were always good. Consistently, impossibly good. Even when I screwed up, even when I broke things or said the wrong thing or got in trouble at school. They helped me fix it. They didn't get angry. They didn't punish me. They just helped."
"And they let you stay? Even after you aged out of the system?"
"They sat me down when I aged out," Ivan says. "Rosalyn took my hand and she said, 'This is your home. For as long as you want it.' She said she didn't care what some piece of paper from the state said about my age. I was her kid now, and that didn't come with an expiration date."
Something in my chest aches—not jealousy, not exactly. More like grief for what I never had, mixed with profound relief that he did. Relief that someone saw Ivan and decided to keep him, to love him, to make him family.
"I'm glad," I say, and I mean it with every fiber of my being. "I'm so glad you found them. Or they found you. However, it happened."
"They saved me," Ivan says simply, like it's just a fact. "I mean, you saved my life first. You taught me how to survive, how to keep going. But they taught me how to trust people again. How to believe that not everyone was going to hurt me. How to let myself be happy without waiting for it to be taken away."
We sit in silence for a moment, the weight of his words settling over us.
"Jay?" Ivan's voice is hesitant now, careful. "Can I ask you something? And I need you to be honest with me."
My stomach tightens. "Anything."
