You have Linda. You have Deshawn when you need backup. She held his gaze. And you have me. The words were simple.
Practical on the surface, but the thing underneath them was not practical at all, and they both knew it, and neither of them looked away from it. "Clare," he started. "I'm not making a declaration," she said. And her voice was careful, but not retreating. "I'm telling you the truth of your current situation.
You are not as alone as you have been operating as though you are. That's a fact and it's relevant to the decision," she paused. But if I'm overstepping, she held his gaze. Okay, the word again. That same word.
Carrying everything neither of them was quite ready to say directly, but were done pretending they weren't feeling. Jaylen appeared in the kitchen doorway in his soccer cleat, which he had apparently put on to eat dinner for reasons that were entirely his own. He looked at both of them. He looked at the space between them. He looked at their faces with the cleareyed assessment of a 9-year-old who has been watching adults for long enough to know when something has changed.
"Are you guys fighting? " he asked. "No," Marcus said. "You look like you're not fighting in the way that's actually a lot of feelings. " Clare made a sound that was almost a laugh. Your son, she said to Marcus, is extremely perceptive. "I'm aware," Marcus said.
Jallen looked satisfied and went to the refrigerator. Is Clare staying for dinner? Marcus looked at Clare. Clare looked at Marcus. Yeah, Marcus said.
She's staying for dinner. Jaylen pumped his fist once, retrieved his juice box, and disappeared back toward the living room. Cleats clicking on the hardwood, already onto the next thing. Marcus looked at Clare across the kitchen and they were both smiling and the kitchen felt the way it had been trying to feel for years full in the right way of the right things. The dinner was simple.
Pasta, salad, garlic bread from the freezer because Marcus hadn't planned for company, and Clare had insisted on joining the making of it, which had resulted in the two of them working in his small kitchen in a proximity that required a certain amount of coordination, and produced a certain amount of quiet laughter over the bread, being slightly too dark on one side. Jallen ate with his cleats still on and talked about his soccer team's upcoming with the focused intensity of a child for whom this was the most significant event in the near future. Clare asked questions with genuine interest and remembered details from earlier conversations in a way that made Jallen look up at her with a particular expression of a child who has been seen. After dinner, after Jallen was in bed, they sat at the table again with tea, not coffee. This time because it was too late for coffee and they both knew it, which meant they were both choosing to stay and the conversation went somewhere it hadn't gone before.
"Can I ask you something? " Marcus said. "Yes. What made you leave? " "Really? Not the version you tell at professional events. " She was quiet for a moment. She wrapped both hands around her mug.