"Hello, George. I'm planning a family dinner for Saturday. Seven o'clock." A brief pause, and then, quieter, almost to herself: "She's been everywhere else with us these past few weeks. You should bring your girlfriend."
"You like her, then?" I ask. I mean it as a neutral inquiry, but I notice I'm genuinely curious about the answer in a way that feels slightly inconvenient.
"George, I'm not in the business of poking my nose in your life. I'm just scheduling my own. Come on Saturday."
She hangs up.
Then I open a new message to Tessa and type:Family dinner Saturday at 7. My girlfriend's presence has been requested. We'll probably need hand holding for this event.
I send it before I can examine the wording too carefully.
Three minutes pass. I watch the screen in a way I would categorize, if pressed, as not-watching.
Then:Got it. Try not to send a preparatory dossier this time.
I stare at the message until the screen dims, and I'm aware of something in my chest that resembles the early stages of amusement but sits slightly lower than that.
I put my phone face-down and return to my evening.
***
Somewhere between my shower and my bed, I realize I've started composing questions in my head. Not for my mother. Not for my sister. For her—for this woman who is, on paper, my girlfriend, and who texts me dry little remarks at nine in the evening like it costs her nothing.
I wonder if she's nervous about Saturday.
Then I wonder why I wondered that, and whether wondering that means something, and I decide not to pursue that particular line of inquiry.
Baxter jumps up onto the cushion beside my bed, turns three times with great ceremony, and collapses into a dense, satisfied heap. I close my eyes, willing sleep to arrive on schedule. After about five minutes of nothing, I sigh, reach for my phone, and open a new document. The cursor blinks at me in the dark. I type, at the top of an otherwise empty page:Questions for Saturday.
I get as far as question two before I understand that both of them are things I actually want to know rather than things I need to know. They are not logistical. Not strategic. Not useful in any operational sense.
I close the document without saving it.
I should be able to walk into Saturday with a clean framework. Clear expectations. The kind of structure I apply to everything else without effort.
Instead I lie in the dark next to my dog, awake and increasingly annoyed by the sense that somewhere between the correlation matrix, Noah’s stupid face, and that blinking cursor, I have missed something important.
