He had decided not to walk in. He had decided a lot of things like that over 22 months. 2 hours he said less now hour and 45. And you want me to walk into a formal dinner and pretend to be your in front of your whole family? Just my parents and my grandmother and my aunt Patricia and possibly my cousin Dedra if she decided to come, which she usually does because she cannot resist my mother's cooking even when she claims to be on a cleanse.
Clare paused. And Ryan, the name landed differently than the others. Andre had heard the name Ryan exactly twice in 22 months. Once through the wall they shared during what had clearly been a phone call that ended badly. And once when Clare mentioned him in passing at their neighborhood block party last summer.
Just the name. No context with the practice casualness of someone who had trained themselves not to flinch. Ryan. Andre repeated. My ex.
She said it the way people say words they've worked very hard to make mean less than they do. He and my father stayed close after we broke up. They golf together, which I think is a form of psychological warfare, but I haven't been able to prove it. So, this dinner isn't just your parents' anniversary. It's an anniversary dinner that will somehow inevitably become a conversation about my life choices, my relationship status, and whether I'm making Ryan wait long enough to take me back.
Her jaw set. I'm not going back. I just I need to walk in there as someone who has moved on and I need whoever is standing next to me to look like the kind of man I would actually choose. Andre held eye contact with her for a moment that stretched just a little past comfortable. "What kind of man is that? " he asked.
She didn't look away. The kind who doesn't need to be the most important thing in the room. The silence that followed was the kind that had weight to it. Andre had been in a lot of silences with Clare over 22 months. Silences when she knocked to borrow his ladder and they ended up talking on his porch for an hour about nothing important.
Silences when they passed each other in the driveway on early mornings and just nodded. Both of them still half asleep. Something easy and unspoken passing between them. Silences that he had told himself meant nothing because he was a single father who didn't have the bandwidth for complications. And Clare Morgan was a complication the way a thunderstorm is a complication beautiful and dramatic and capable of rewiring everything.
"Okay," he said. She blinked. "Okay," I said. "Okay. " He was already moving toward the hallway. But I have a rule.
He heard her footsteps on his porch. As she leaned slightly forward, he could hear it in the sound. The shift in weight, the small increase in attention. "What rule? " He stopped in the hallway and turned back. Looked at her through the screen door.