My mom laughed from her stool and poured her tea.
While the first batch was in the oven my dad leaned against the counter with his arms crossed and looked at me in the direct way he had when he was done being funny and had switched over to paying attention.
“Talk,” he said.
“About what.”
“About whatever's got you sitting in our driveway for four minutes before you come in.”
I hadn't known he'd been watching. I should have. He always watched. “I found Soren,” I said.
The air in the kitchen changed immediately. Not in a bad way, just in the way it did when you dropped information that mattered and everyone had to recalibrate around it. My mom set her mug down carefully, and my dad stopped where he was and looked at me.
“Soren Vale?” my mom asked quietly. “Your friend from high school?”
“Yeah.” I tried to figure out how to explain this without making it sound as messy as it felt. “I hired a private investigator a few years ago to look for him. They finally found a lead. He's been here in Toronto the whole time, playing drums in a band. I went to see him last night.”
My dad stared at me. “You saw him? Like, in person saw him?”
“Yeah. I talked to him. Gave him my number.” I pulled out my phone and set it on the counter like evidence. “He hasn't called or texted yet.”
My mom crossed the kitchen and covered my hand with hers, her expression careful and full of the kind of love that made my throat tight. “How do you feel about seeing him again?”
“I don't know,” I said honestly. “It was good to see him. But it was also really hard. He didn't apologize or explain anything. He just acted like it was no big deal that he'd vanished for over a decade.”
“That must have been frustrating,” she said gently.
“It was.” I ran a hand through my hair and tried to organize the mess in my head into something coherent. “And now I'm just waiting to see if he'll reach out or if that was the last time I'll ever talk to him.”
My dad leaned forward with his elbows on the counter, his expression serious in a way I didn't see from him often. “Can I be honest for a second?”
“Yeah.”
“I'm glad you found him. I know how much it messed you up when he disappeared, and I think getting answers will be good for you.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “But I don't want you building a whole future in your head based on one conversation. You don't know what his life looks like now. You don't know if he wants the same things you do. And you definitely don't know if reaching out again is going to make things better or just reopen old wounds.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “I'm trying not to get my hopes up. It's just hard when I've been looking for him for so long and he's finally here.”
My mom squeezed my hand. “We're not saying don't hope, sweetheart. We're just saying be careful with your heart while you figure out what this is.”
I nodded and tried to swallow past the tightness in my throat. They were being kind, trying to protect me from getting hurt again, and I loved them for it even though part of me wanted to ignore the caution and just dive headfirst into whatever this was with Soren.
The oven timer went off, and my dad grabbed the mitt and pulled the tray out, and for a few minutes the kitchen just smelled like warm chocolate and butter, and nobody said anything, and it was enough.
CHAPTER SEVEN
tea with complications
SOREN
Iwoke up at four-thirty in the morning for no good reason except that my brain had apparently decided sleep was optional. The apartment was still dark, quiet in that fragile way it only got before dawn when everyone else was still asleep and I was the only one awake to feel the weight of it.
I lay there for a while staring at the ceiling, trying to talk myself into going back to sleep, but my chest had that familiar heaviness sitting on it and my thoughts were already spinning through the list of things I needed to handle today. Rent. Groceries. The gig Luca had lined up. The phone number sitting in my wallet that I still hadn't used.
Eventually I gave up on sleep and dragged myself out of bed, padding into the kitchen in sweatpants and a t-shirt that had seen better days. The floor was cold under my bare feet, and I flipped on the light above the stove to cut through the darkness without waking anyone up.
Coffee. I needed coffee before I could think about anything else.
I went through the motions on autopilot, filling the pot with water, measuring out grounds, hitting the button and listening to the machine sputter to life. While it brewed, I leaned against the counter and stared out the window at the city still mostly dark except for streetlights and the occasional car passing below.
