Page 129 of IRL: In Real Life
My parents’ house looked like they had been missing us all week.
Too much food already happening. Television going in the den with Pops watching loud enough for the rest of us to know the Pirates game had reached the part where he believed his commentary mattered. Mama was at the sink, moving between rinsing greens and checking something on the stove like she had eight hands and no intention of asking for help until somebody got in her way. Ciara was in the kitchen too, a dish towel over her shoulder and that look she got when she felt ownership over every room she stepped in, even rooms she had technically moved out of years ago.
Ari sat on the floor with markers everywhere, looking like the smallest person in the room and somehow the one running it.
Usually, the place settled me on contact.
Tonight, I was there and somewhere else too.
“Look who decided he still got a family,” Ciara said when I came through the kitchen.
“You always this loud before seven?”
“You always this late when a woman got you smiling at your phone?”
Mama laughed low from the sink.
From the den, Pops called, “Leave that boy alone. Let him come in the house first.”
“Thank you,” I called back.
“He ain’t defending you,” Ciara said. “He nosey too.”
“I heard that,” Pops said.
I set the wine I brought on the counter and kissed Mama’s cheek. “Good evening to you too.”
She looked me over once, the way mothers did when they already knew something was different and were waiting to see if you planned to volunteer it or make them work.
“You eating?” she asked.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“That’s not why,” Ciara said.
I ignored her because sometimes starving a thing was the only way to make it die.
It did not die.
Dinner moved around me in pieces. Greens. Chicken. Too much cornbread. Pops coming in and out of the den with updates nobody asked for, plate already in his hand before Mama told him everything was ready. Marcus, Ciara’s longtime partner, came in ten minutes later with Ari wrapped around his leg like she had appointed herself his manager. Ciara talked about one of the parents at school like she was trying to stay saved and needed us all to know it. Mama listened and said very little, which was always more dangerous than if she had just joined in.
The house was loud, warm, familiar.
Forks against plates. Ari asking three questions in a row without waiting for answers. Marcus laughing at something Pops said from the den. Ciara telling me I looked “entirely toorested and suspicious” for somebody who claimed he had been working all week.
And still, Talia stayed with me.
Not in the distracting way from those first few days, when wanting her had been all heat and interruption. This was different. Deeper. She sat somewhere under everything now, part of the quiet in me even when the room was full.
I thought about her Facebook story. The little corner of my living room she had shared without making a declaration out of it. Her wine glass beside mine. Maxwell in the background. Nothing loud, nothing performative, but enough to say she had been there.
Enough for somebody like Candace to notice.
Enough for me to understand that whatever Talia and I were building had started leaving fingerprints outside the rooms we kept to ourselves.
Ciara’s foot bumped mine under the table.
I looked up.
