Page 21 of Coming Home

"Of course you are. She's a tyrant, and the universe keeps rewarding her for it." He reached out, tapping his knuckles twice against the wood casing.

"Ten minutes. Wear something comfortable."

I jammed my legs back into the stiff, wrinkled jeans I pulled from my suitcase. And my hoodie. The one Ralph got back from James's apartment.

I gave myself two seconds in the bathroom mirror. One past my limit.

Ralph drove. He kept one hand loose on the wheel and let the quiet stay quiet, no radio, no careful small talk, none of the questions people aim at someone they've decided might break. It was how he used to drive me home from meets, back when winning still felt simple, and I remembered the ease of it before I understood why. Outside, Los Angeles was bathed in that post-rain California glare, where the sky looks brutally scrubbed and the sunlight cuts sideways through the clouds, turning the wet asphalt into a mirror.

He pulled up to a small, unassuming diner tucked into a steep side street in Silver Lake. Inside, the walls were an absolute riot—oil portraits squeezed against charcoal sketches and blown-up black-and-white photography, all fighting for territory, frames overlapping frames, nothing hung straight, none of it matching, like whoever owned the place had never once taken a single thing down, only ever found room for more.

I stopped just inside the door.

I knew this place.

It was the exact type of place Ralph used to drag us to when we were kids. Crammed to the corners, a little too loud and a little too bright. A cluttered mess, but it was warm, and it was our sanctuary. Whenever I broke a regional record, whenever I climbed out of the lane with a time that mattered to the papers, Ralph would steal Theo's keys, pack us into the car, and order me a chocolate milkshake while Theo pretended dairy was a violation of his high-performance diet.

Back then, Ralph would slide the heavy glass across the laminate table with that lazy, half-creased grin and murmur, "You earned the sugar, cereal girl."

And I'd beam so hard my jaw would ache, convinced that the universe was small, safe, and revolved strictly around the two boys sitting across from me.

We were ushered into a worn vinyl booth by the window. Ralph ordered black coffee and eggs. I ordered dry toast and hot tea—the absolute smallest real estate on the menu—because taking up space I hadn't explicitly earned felt like an act of theft.

The waitress returned two minutes later, her tray balancing a tall, sweating glass. She set it squarely in front of me.

A chocolate milkshake. The whipped cream was piled high, a perfect mountain drizzled with a dark spiral of syrup, a single red straw piercing the center at an angle.

Blood rushed to my ears. "I didn't order this."

I snapped my eyes up to Ralph. He was holding the laminated menu flat, studying the breakfast specials with intense, unblinking focus.

I stared back down at the glass. The heavy cream was just beginning to settle, a slow, graceful collapse under the heat of the restaurant. The chocolate syrup caught the gray morning light through the pane, and the memory hit me so hard I had to look away.

He remembered.

After three years of a blocked number, a kitchen fight, and the venomous things I'd shouted at his face. After watching me land on his doorstep drenched, hysterical, and several pounds heavier than the athletic girl he used to protect. He still kept that specific detail alive.

The sweetness of it lasted for a breath.

Then James's voice slid in under the noise of the restaurant and closed around me.

Are you seriously going to touch that, Em? Look at the density of it. I'm not trying to be cruel, honey, I'm trying to keep you on track. If you'd just try a little harder, you wouldn't have to look away when I touch your waist.

My fingers vibrated against the cool glass of the table. My eyes stung.

"Hey." Ralph's voice broke the frequency. Low, heavy, and anchored in the room. "What's happening in your head right now?"

I shook my head rapidly, pulling my hands back into the safe dark of my sleeves. "Nothing. I'm just... I'm not hungry."

His eyes dropped to the glass, his brow knitting slightly above his sunglasses. "You can't be too full for a milkshake, Em. We haven't even seen the eggs."

He said it lightly, the same easy way he'd talked to me at sixteen, back when the boundaries of my whole world were the lane lines of a pool and I was still a girl who deserved to sit at a table and be fed.

"I d-don't like milkshakes anymore."

The lie tasted like copper on my tongue. I said it while staring intently at the whipped cream, which was now melting into a messy, dark puddle, and I hated the words as they left my mouth. I hated James for planting the script in my skull, and I hated myself for still obeying a ghost I'd supposedly run away from.

Ralph didn't push. He watched me through those dark lenses. He was reading every bit of what I was trying to hide. He saw the lie—I knew he did. He knew the old Emma too well to miss the cavernous distance between the girl who used to inhale chocolate before a final and the woman currently shrinking away from a glass of milk.