Tasha had spent 4 years telling him in ways both direct and quiet that his best effort was always just slightly insufficient. That voice didn't disappear overnight. One evening, he showed up to help Diane hang a set of shelves and spent 10 minutes measuring the same wall twice before she put her hand lightly on his arm and said, "You keep apologizing for things that don't need an apology." He looked at her. "I don't need you to be more than you are," she said.
"I just need you to be what you actually are." He nodded slowly. He didn't have a good answer for that, which probably meant it was true. Maya came to the shop on a Tuesday. She didn't call ahead, which wasn't unusual.
Maya rarely called ahead for anything, but she came in with her coffee and sat on the stool near the workbench and didn't start talking right away, which was unusual because Maya almost always started talking right away. Ethan kept working. He was routing the edge of a tabletop and he let her sit until she was ready. "So," she finally said. "You and my mother."
He set the router down and looked at her. "I'm not upset," she said quickly. "I want to say that first. I'm not upset." She turned her coffee cup in both hands.
"I just it's strange. You're my person, Ethan. You've been my person for 6 years and she's my mom and now you're each other's person and I don't know what that makes me." "It doesn't make you anything different," he said. "I know that logically."
She looked up at him. "But you know what happened with my dad. I watched her fall apart after we lost him and then I watched her put herself back together piece by piece for 3 years and she's she's good now. She's really good." She held his gaze.
"If you hurt her, you lose both of us. I need you to understand that's not a threat. It's just the truth." Ethan leaned back against the workbench and crossed his arms, not defensively, just thinking. The shop smelled like fresh sawdust and linseed oil.