Bobbi rested her chin on her hand and chewed her lip as she thought about it. “She says my brain notices lots of things at once. So sometimes it gets loud and I have to move around until it quiets down.”
She tapped the table with one finger.
“That’s when I start walking.”
“Hot feet,” I said.
She nodded immediately. “Exactly.”
Markie leaned forward. “HOT FEET.”
Bobbi grinned at him. “Contextually accurate.”
I leaned my head back against the couch cushion and stared at the ceiling. Bobbi talked about therapy like someone might talk about piano lessons or math tutoring. It was just another place she went each week to learn how her brain worked.
Meanwhile, my brain had spent the last several years pretending certain things didn’t exist.
My mom and her endless needs. The guilt that followed any attempt to say no. Moving here was the first real boundary I’d drawn in my life. Even now the idea of it still sat in the back of my mind like an unresolved argument.
Therapy probably had opinions about people who built entire lives around avoiding emotional landmines.
The thought slipped into my head before I could stop it.
Maybe therapy wouldn’t be the worst idea for me.
I wasn’t sure I liked that realization.
Still, the fact that it appeared at all probably meant something.
I lowered my gaze and slid lower on the couch.
My lunch was abandoned on the coffee table. My Slack notifications were multiplying. And somehow my living room now contained a runaway child and a parrot on behavioral probation.
Bobbi placed the final coaster on top of the tower, then she looked at me, very seriously. “You’re nicer than you think.”
The tower tipped sideways, and coasters scattered across the floor.
“CHAOS! CHAOS!”
I stared at the ceiling.
That felt accurate.
As I watched Bobbi play,I handled minor work tickets. Bobbi and I had reached a point in our afternoon where the game rules had dissolved entirely.
The coasters had been repurposed into fortifications. Markie had attempted three separate theft operations. One had been successful. Two had resulted in Bobbi lecturing him about ethical behavior. He’d listened to the lecture with visible patience.
An unexpected calm had settled over the apartment, and that was when the knock came.
Bobbi’s head lifted immediately. “Oh,” she said.
I opened the door.
Mei stepped inside with the confidence of someone who had already learned that asking permission in this apartment was largely ceremonial.
She was carrying a basket, which required two hands and visible effort to hold.
Bobbi stood and brushed the coaster crumbs from her legs. “Hi, Mom.”
