Looked at the red dress and the gold earrings and the expression of a woman who had come to his door because she trusted him. Even if neither of them were using that word tonight, if I'm pretending to be your boyfriend, he said, "You don't get to lie about who you are. Not even to your family. " Clare opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. That's the rule, she said. That's the rule, Andre.
The entire premise of tonight is the premise of tonight, he said quietly, is that you walk in there and you don't shrink. You don't apologize for your life. You don't perform some version of yourself that makes other people comfortable. You walk in there exactly as you are. And I stand next to you.
He paused. I can wear a fake smile. I can hold your hand. I can call you baby in front of your grandmother without flinching. But I'm not going to stand next to a version of you that isn't real because that's not actually helping you.
That's just a nicer version of the problem you're already running from. The porch was very quiet. Somewhere down the street, someone's sprinkler came on. Clare Morgan looked at Andre Bennett through the screen door of his house in her red dress with her anniversary dinner in an hour and 40 minutes and she said, "I don't know if I like you. You knocked on my door. " He said, "Go get Maya. " She can stay with Mrs.
Patterson next door while we're out. The navy blazer was in fact the right choice. Maya had presented it to him with the confidence of a stylist who had been waiting her entire 12 years of life for this moment, holding it up against his undershirt with the critical eye of someone conducting a formal assessment. Not the brown one, she said. It makes you look like you're going to a church picnic.
I like church picnics. Dad," she said the word with an entire paragraph inside it. He took the navy blazer. While he changed, Maya sat on the edge of his bed with her arms folded across her knees, watching him in the mirror with an expression that was far too knowing for a 12-year-old. She had her mother's eyes dark, perceptive, and capable of locating exactly what you were trying to hide, and his stubbornness, which he considered both a gift and a burden depending on the day.
She's nervous, Maya said. She's fine. She texted me six times in the last hour. Andre paused with one sleeve half on. She texted you about this dinner.
She texted me because she wanted to make sure you would actually say yes. Maya tilted her head. I told her you would. You were very confident. I know you.
She said it simply. The way children say the truest things without ceremony, without hesitation, without any apparent awareness of how much they're revealing. You've been wanting to help her for months. You just needed her to ask. He finished putting the blazer on.