Page 85 of Cut Off
I finish the cheese sauce and pour it over the pasta, and Eli sprinkles parmesan on top with gravity. We eat at the island, three stools in a row, our knees almost touching, and Jonah’s hand finds the small of my back when he reaches past me for the pepper.
I donotlook at him. I take a very large bite of mac and cheese and chew like my life depends on chewing.
After dinner, the Death Star comes down off the dining room shelf where it’s been mint-in-box, and we drag the whole operation onto the living room rug. Bags of pieces. The instruction book, which is the size of a novel. Eli appoints himself foreman and divides the labor.
“Zoe, you’re on grays. Jonah, you’re on large pieces.” He doesn’t look up. “Your fingers are too big for the small ones, sorry.”
“Fair. I do have big hands,” he says, eyes on me, and my stomach does a rollover.
We work. The rug becomes a jagged plastic surface of pieces. Eli reads the instructions out loud, and at one point, I put a piece in the wrong spot. He lifts my hand, removes it, and replaces it without comment.
Jonah laughs, and when I glance up, he’s staring at me over the top of Eli’s head. His expression is an entire conversation that heats my skin.
I look back down at my pile of gray pieces, my face growing hot.
Eli studies me for a beat, like there’s something he wants to say. Then he opens his mouth and closes it, so I say, “What’s on your mind, Blastman?”
Eli flashes me a look, his eyes shiny. “I don’t want to go in the pool or the lake,” he whispers. “Mom always said I’d learn to swim ‘next summer.’ Every year, ‘next summer.’ But then she—” His voice breaks. “And now there’s no more summers with her. And if I learn now, it means she’s really never coming back.”
The simple, devastating logic of a grieving child. I blink back my own tears, not wanting to add to his burden.
Jonah swallows so hard his Adam’s apple bobs.
I stand and step over to Eli, kneeling when I say, “Sweetie, I understand that. And it’s okay to not be ready. We won’tmake you go in the pool or the lake until you decide you want to learn how to swim and go.” I pull him into a hug. Before I know it, Jonah pulls us both into a hug, and we sit there, just like that, until Eli’s ready to let go.
It takes a while for Jonah and I to catch our breaths again, trying to act normally as soon as possible so Eli doesn’t know he just broke our hearts in two.
Then we build until the light through the windows dims and the lamp in the corner becomes our only light. Eli yawns and tries to disguise it as a sneeze, which makes me yawn. Jonah catches both of us and stretches, his whole body cracking. “Bedtime.”
Eli’s face collapses. “One more section. Please.”
I shake my head. “Bedtime. Death Star isn’t going anywhere. It’s a space station.”
“Ugh, good point.” Eli stands, shoulders slumped.
The bedtime routine is, as always, a negotiation. Two stories. Closet door cracked exactly six inches. Galaxy squishy on the nightstand at a forty-five-degree angle from the lamp. Flash on the pillow. Hallway light on. Bathroom light off. Window cracked one inch for fresh air.
Jonah reads. He’s gotten better at it—he does the voices now, and Eli laughs at the troll without trying to hide that he’s laughing. I sit on the edge of the bed near Eli’s feet, my hand resting on the comforter, close enough that he can bump it with his foot if he wants. Halfway through the second story, he does. He nudges his sock against my fingers, and I curl mine around his foot.
By the end of the chapter, his eyes are gone. His breathing deepens and slows, and Flash slips sideways on the pillow. Jonah closes the book without a sound and sets it on the nightstand. Doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
We just sit, the two of us, watching this kid sleep, and the room is so quiet I hear the furnace click on.
After a long minute, I stand, careful not to creak the bed, and Jonah stands too. We tiptoe out, and Jonah pulls the door closed without a sound. We pause in the hallway.
This is where we usually say goodnight or make a joke to fill the silence. Sex in the house when Eli’s here has been off-limits in an unspoken agreement.
He looks at me. I look at him. The hallway light is yellow and weak but shows the perfect angles of his face.
“Night,” I whisper.
“Night.”
I turn, walk downstairs and across the house to my room, and close the door behind me. Then I stand in the dark with my hand on the doorknob, listening to my own rapid breathing.
I don’t turn on the light. I just walk to my bed and sit on the edge, trying to think about anything other than how Jonah and I justworktogether. In a ballroom with people. At home with Eli. In a tense car ride home the day Gwen took Eli.
