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“When your mom meets my family, she’s going to tell them you’re living at home,” he said.

Oh, crap. I hadn’t thought about that.

“We could always tell her the truth,” I said. “Like, the actual truth. That we’re not dating.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I don’t like that. It’s going to get out.”

I sighed. “Okay. Let me think on this. I’ll figure something out.” I rubbed my eyes. “I have to go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night.”

But then we didn’t hang up.

I waited for the moment of disconnect. I wanted him to do it. It couldn’t be me, at least not tonight. But it never happened.

We stayed on the phone in silence. Thirty seconds. A minute. Two.

He’d probably just forgotten to hang up. His phone was probably sitting on his desk and he was back to scribbling in his journal and he didn’t even notice the call hadn’t ended. Only I didn’t hear scribbling. I could only hear the soft trickling of the fountain in his plant room.

Maybe he’d set the phone down and left? But for a moment, I allowed myself to believe that he was doing what I was doing. He was keeping me for a few extra precious moments.

I let myself reach across the silence. I was looking at him now in my mind. His soft, tender eyes, the curve of his lips. The tic in his jaw when he was giving me one of his quiets. The one I didn’t know.

I could feel him through the line. I could smell him. He was becoming 3-D, shaped by my memory of the constant study of his face and his movements and his moods. He floated in front of me like a ghost, coming through the thin connection of our phones.

I wanted to run to him. To walk out of this place and get in my car and go straight to his house. Burst into his plant room while he sat at that desk and throw myself at him and take whatever he was willing to give me, no matter how small, or temporary, or insignificant. I could feel my body and my heart and my mind wrestling with one another. One screaming for him, the other one too afraid to act, and the last one arguing rationally that this would be a terrible, terrible idea.

And he probably wasn’t even there. Just a phone, abandoned on a desk. And me, making things up.

I pulled the cell away from my ear and looked at the screen. Then I pressed the End Call button.

Hanging up with him and going to bed alone felt like the saddest thing I’d ever done in my life.

I waited until dinner after work the next day to talk to Mom and Benny. Mom had made pollo encebollado, chicken thighs in a tomato onion base. It was my favorite dish. Of course she’d made ten times more than we could ever eat and it was all going into the quickly filling deep freezer in the garage. Oh well. At least I wouldn’t keep wasting money on DoorDash.

I’d given this situation with Jacob a lot of thought. I’d decided to move in with him, just for a few months.

He was right. My mom would definitely blow our cover to his family if I was still living here. Moving in with him was the only way to make sure his family didn’t catch us in this lie I’d told. It was so stupid. I should never have done it. Amy just made me so mad and I wanted to rub it in her stupid face.

Anyway.

I’d promised Jacob that I would make this fake relationship believable. And I was the one who’d made the claim we were living together. He was obviously stressed about it or he wouldn’t be insisting on it so much. Plus, this house was officially crowded with Mom and Benny in it. Mom could do Benny’s dialysis; I didn’t have to be here. So I was going to Jacob’s after dinner.

We were finishing up eating and I wiped my mouth with a napkin.

“So I have something I need to tell you guys,” I said.

Mom paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Are you pregnant?”

“No, I am not pregnant.”

I couldn’t help but note that she looked disappointed.

Mom was extremely traditional. If I were pregnant and unmarried, she would not be happy. But apparently me being childless and unmarried at my age was even worse.

I let out a long breath. Then I looked at my brother. “Benny, Jacob is your kidney donor.”

I heard Mom’s fork hit the plate.