Then she said, "I am going to find a way to have a conversation with Daniel about boundaries." "You can do that," Marcus said. "But first, I love you, too," she said. Quick, clear. Like something she'd been holding for a while and had finally decided to put down. I love you and it terrifies me and I need you to know that the terror is not about you.
The terror is just the last time I felt this. It ended in a way that made me stop believing the feeling was trustworthy. I know, he said, but I trust you, she said. Specifically, as a person, I trust you. I know.
Okay. She exhaled. Okay. Okay, he said. They stood in her doorway for a second and then she stepped back and opened it wider and he came inside.
He stayed for 2 hours. They talked about Sandra, about Daniel's call, about what came next, about nothing and everything. They ordered food from a tie place she liked. They ate on the floor because the coffee table was covered in paperwork she'd been sorting and neither of them moved it. Maya texted him twice, once asking if there was more of the leftover pasta and once asking when he'd be home.
And he replied to both and showed Olivia the pasta one and she laughed. When he left, she walked him to the door. "Marcus," she said. "Yeah, if this goes where I think it's going," she stopped, started again. "Maya needs to know, not as an introduction or an announcement, just she should know what this is.
She deserves that." He looked at her. This was one of the things, one of the specific things that she thought about Maya without being asked, that it was reflexive, that the child was already inside her consideration. "I'll talk to her," he said. "You don't have to do it tomorrow. I'll talk to her tonight," he said.
She shook her head slightly, and the look she gave him was the look he'd seen the first time at the kitchen table, that rec-calibrating look, like she was still, even now, slightly amazed by him, like she was waiting for the catch. And the catch was not arriving. He drove home. Maya was on the couch reading when he came in, which meant she'd finished her homework and was waiting for him. She looked up.
"Hey," she said. "Hey." He sat down next to her. She put her book down. "I want to talk to you about something." She waited with the patience of someone who had learned that adults needed a few seconds to find their words. "You know Olivia," he said.
"Yes, Maya said. She's not just my friend," he said. She he paused. I love her. We're together.
It's real and I wanted you to hear that from me before it just became obvious. Maya looked at him. Dad, she said, "Yeah, I figured that out at the ice cream place." He stared at her. She looked at you, Maya said patiently, like she was explaining something simple to someone who was being slow about it. "The way you look at things, you're not going to let go of like your truck.