Page 38 of The Apparent Trap

“And my sandwich is also purchased in New York City.”

“Okay, but there’s so many options of great places to eat near your office. You don’t always have to eat a BLT. Or you could make a better BLT.”

“Ah yes, when I wake up at five in the morning, the first thing I want to do is make myself a sandwich.”

“You could buy a good mayo, get bread twice a week, premake the bacon. It would literally just be assembly.”

“I’m aware that there are better BLTs in the world—case in point, the one you just made me,” I reply. “But there’s a lot of effort to be put into making a better one, and I’m perfectly fine with my mediocre BLT.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t settle for perfectly fine.”

I inhale like the words have knocked the breath out of me.

But he doesn’t say anything else. He just goes back to the counter and slowly makes another BLT, those sounds filling the room instead of the booming discordance of everything he’s shared tonight. Sizzling bacon in a pan. The slide of aioli on a biscuit. A knife running through a tomato. The crunch of lettuce.

He hands it over when he’s done. I take a bite. It’s as perfect as before.

He didn’t have to say anything. Eating this, made with care and affection—nothing could illustrate the point better. It’s the same point he made the night we first met.

I don’t need to settle for something just because it was fine before. Just because maybe I’m afraid to alter what’s easiest.

I sigh, wondering how he is so able to slip past who everyone else accepts as me.

I wonder if maybe holding back isn’t working.

“I know it looks like settling, but it’s not that,” I start, quietly. “I . . . I eat BLTs every day because my mom made them for me every day,” I let out, the words oozing through like they’re necessary to verbalize after letting them lie dormant for so long. “She used to make me different lunches, more variety. But then one time, in like sixth grade, I told her I didn’t want a different lunch. I just wanted BLTs all the time. My dad thought it was nuts, but my mom was always talking about finding your joy, and I think she felt like this was an easy way to give her kid some consistent joy in the middle of the drudgery of a school day. And it did give me joy. Every day I knew I would like what was in my lunch box. I didn’t have to think about it or worry. I just always had exactly what I wanted waiting for me.”

“I’m glad you had that,” he says.

I’m surprised that that’s his only response. “You’re not going to tell me that I should embrace change? That I shouldn’t be afraid to try new things?”

“Sounds like you already know all of that, so why would it be helpful for me to try and change something you’ve clearly thought through?”

I have no comeback. How is he so quippy with everyone else but so delicate with me?

I can’t help that my mom’s presence has now seeped into the moment, present in a way I hadn’t let her be all night. And as much as I want to know what she would’ve thought of this Thanksgiving, and of what’s happening now, I hate that I can’t pretend like I know what she would’ve thought. I was too young, too teenage, too in my own world to really learn her. I didn’t know her the way she knew me.

And that thought . . . accepting that it’s knew, instead of know, is what makes a tear finally fall.

“I’m afraid that if I change all the things she knew about me, then we won’t be connected anymore,” I whisper, wiping away the tear with force, as though I can teach that one a lesson and keep any others at bay. “I know change is good . . . inevitable. But I think some pieces of me crystallized when she died, like if I kept them frozen in amber, then she wouldn’t get further away. I’ve kept so much the same because it seemed like the right way to keep her close.”

Lee steps toward me again, and I hold my hand up—again—like we’re in a holding pattern of our own. I don’t want him to comfort me. I’m not even sure why I told him so much.

I guess I’m a sucker for anyone making me BLTs.

“I don’t think you should touch me,” I admit.

“I wasn’t . . .” He looks bewildered. “I wasn’t trying to touch you, I just . . . I hate that I made you sad, and I want to fix it.”

I shake my head. “You didn’t make me sad.” I can see him about to protest, and I wave it off. “I’m not going to pretend like you didn’t break my brain a little bit with everything you said earlier—”

“Please just forget—”

“No, I’m glad you said it.”

He leans forward. “You are?”

I take a deep breath, the thoughts coming to me as I’m saying them. “You got inside my head. That night, your words . . . it pushed me. Knowing that maybe I pushed you too . . .” I exhale, unsure. “I needed to know that, I guess.”