Page 127 of Bad Words

Kevin and Elena flanked my dad on the sofa, showing him something on the TV remote. Christi and Justin stood in the kitchen, heads bowed together in a serious way that I hadn’t seen since they were teenagers sneaking away to talk about our parents splitting up. And my mom was there, too, standing at the stove, cooking something that filled the air with the rich tang of soya.

Nothing about the sight felt real. I hadn’t seen my parents in the same room since I was twelve years old.

“Hey, there he is,” said Justin. His brash, hard voice felt bracing.

“Pijay,” my mom cried, dropping her ladle into the simmering pot on the stove and rushing to enfold me in her arms. I stood motionless, shaken, letting my head drop over her shoulder, as the others approached.

“You okay?” Christi said in that brisk older-sister way as she clamped me in a brief hug.

“Of course he’s not,” said Kevin. “Parker’s got a lot of feelings.”

“Can we not, with the dismissive attitude toward feelings?” said Elena.

“Elena,” said Justin, rolling his eyes, “nobody’s dismi—”

“Stop,” I said sharply. “Please, stop it.”

My whole family looked toward me, wide-eyed.

It took everything in me not to apologize immediately.

I drew a slow breath. “Thank you for coming,” I said quietly. “I love you guys. I also need you to … not to start anything. Please. Okay?”

Elena’s eyelids flickered quickly over her large, brightening eyes. Kevin’s feet performed a guilty little shuffle.

“Of course,” said my dad.

I looked his way. Guillermo Navarro was a tall, square-shouldered man with deep purple circles under his eyes, the ones I was slowly inheriting. “Your mother,” he said, “is making Pancit Canton. Should be done soon.”

“Yes.” Mom didn’t look at him, her voice as careful as his. “It’ll be ready in fifteen minutes or so.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I set a hand on her shoulder. “Need any help?”

“No! No, of course not. Sit, relax. Talk.”

And we did. My parents sat diagonally from each other at the dinner table and didn’t carry any conversation, but Arthur helped them loosen up, and eventually they passed dishes to each other without visible signs of dislike. I wouldn’t have wanted this to happen at any other time, but when, near the end of dinner, Christi finally said, “Can you explain, like, what this whole blowup means for the book? And for you?” I couldn’t have described how much it meant to see everybody’s faces turn toward me with concern and affection.

I thought of Selina. Do people know you the right way? And in that moment, it didn’t seem to matter if my family and I understood each other perfectly, because they were here, trying.

I explained what it meant that the book club selection had been canceled—the eleven thousand special-edition copies that would be destroyed—and what it might mean if my reputation tanked so hard that Bill couldn’t sell anything else I’d written. I told them that I might never publish another word, that I might have to sell my apartment and move out of the city, depending on where I could find work. I began to picture it as I spoke, quiet and monotone, a teaching post in a small town, and maybe that would be okay, to have an unobjectionable life in calm obscurity, writing for nobody but myself again.

But as I described these possibilities, I still thought of Selina’s eyes in the dark. And I wished she were here, looking at me the way she had just three days ago, with that unlikely tenderness, that fathomless understanding, as though when I spoke, she could identify every layer of meaning beneath my words, like a geologist tracing the strata of some compressed stone, all the way down to the core. She, more than anyone, would know what it meant for me to lose the life I’d built here.

I thought if I’d had her back, if I’d only had her here, I could have withstood all the rest.

That night I lay in bed, staring at my bedside table, at the limp end of my phone charger, and I wished I could have that horrible thing back in my hand, full of the world’s hatred for me, full of every reminder of every way I’d fallen short, because at least I could have visited the City website and read something in her voice. I could have looked her up on Venmo and seen that picture of her smiling on the pier. I could have looked back through the messages we’d sent, brushed hands with the ghost of what she’d felt for me.

When I arrived at Word that Tuesday night for my launch, Emily said, “Hey,” with visible strain. I couldn’t interpret the strain as sympathy or dislike, so decided to assume dislike until she gave me another indicator.

“Hi,” I said. “Thank you so much for still doing this, even without Tessa. I’m sorry, the past few days must have had some blowback on you guys.”

“It’s fine. I’m sure it’s been harder for you.”

This gave me nothing. I wondered what Emily wanted to hear. An admission of guilt? Was she being intentionally vague because she worried that I’d stake out some aggressive position on mental illness right in front of her? If I said something wrong, would she post it online and set off another wave of disgust?

“It was a weird weekend, yeah,” I said eventually. “My roommate took away my phone and laptop on Saturday, so I haven’t known what’s been going on the past couple of days.”

“It’s been okay today.” She offered a sympathetic smile and added, “I think it’s starting to die down.” And the fact that she didn’t hate me filled me with embarrassing relief.