23
After
It’s after ten thirty but the humidity is still bearing down by the time I get to Sawyer’s parents’ house, and the weight of the air feels physical, something I’d like to throw off. It rained a couple of hours ago—it rains every single day, world without end—and the grass is slick under my feet.
I ring twice and worry he won’t even be there—or worse, that his parents will be—but when he finally opens the door, the house behind him is quiet save for the low hum of a radio somewhere. A pair of dark-rimmed glasses is perched on his nose. “When did you go blind?” I ask.
“Always have been.” Sawyer shrugs like he’s not even surprised to see me. “Couldn’t admit it.”
“Oh.” I nod once, curtly. “Do you still want to make me dinner?”
That makes him smile. “Yeah,” he says, and steps back to let me through. “Yeah, absolutely. Come in.”
I follow him through the living room, past the multitude of black-and-white family portraits on the dining room walls—Lydia’s work is all up and down the hallways. When I was a little girl she used to let me take pictures with her heavy 35mm, showed me how to develop them in the darkroom she’d set up in the downstairs bathroom. I remember feeling so nervous to screw up around her even then that my hands would shake as I tried to hold the camera, a whole roll full of blurry, focusless shots.
I know the LeGrandes’ house almost as well as I know my own: I’ve sat through a dozen Super Bowls on the leather couch in the den here, eaten king cake on the sun-porch every Fat Tuesday for years and years. I know where they keep the spoons and recycling and extra toilet paper, all the secrets and all the smells.
“You like risotto?” Sawyer asks.
“Um.” That is … not what I expected when he said dinner. I blink. “Sure.”
Sawyer flicks on the light in the kitchen and the room goes clinically bright, all pale-green tile and gleaming stainless-steel appliances. “So,” he says, lifting a pot off the hanging rack above the island, “how’s Aaron?”
I snort a little. “Can you stop saying his name like that?”
“How am I saying it?”
“I don’t know.” The snort turns into a laugh, a little hysterical. I feel like every organ in my body has lodged itself somewhere in the back of my throat. “However you’re saying it.”
“I’m not saying it any way.” Sawyer shrugs. “Aaron’s from the Bible.”
I hop up on the counter. “Aaron works on boats.”
Sawyer nods slowly, like he’s absorbing that information, like there’s an old-fashioned card catalog in his head and he just filed Aaron into the drawer for shit he’s frankly not crazy about but suspects he needs to live with for the time being. “Is he good with the baby?”
“I wouldn’t be with him if he wasn’t,” I say snottily, then: “Can we please not talk about Aaron?”
Sawyer grins like, As you wish. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Whatever normal people talk about. Baseball.”
“You want to talk about baseball?”
“No.” I raise my hands and drop them again, useless. “I don’t actually even know anything about baseball.”
“Me either.” He’s cutting up an onion now, quick and expert like Finch taught us all when we were kids. “Is this weird?” he asks once it’s in the pot, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “You have a look on your face like you think this is really, really weird.”
“Well,” I say, shrugging, picking at my ragged cuticles. “It’s a little weird.”
“Yeah,” he echoes. Then, after a beat: “She kept everything the same. Like, my bedroom and stuff.”
“Who?” I ask. “Your mother?” In truth I’m not really listening, instead watching him toast the rice, pour in a ladleful of stock. Clearly he’s comfortable doing it—clearly he’s done it before—but still it’s somehow unnatural, like a tree beginning to speak.
“Uh-huh. What?” he asks when he catches me staring. “This is how you make risotto.”
“I know how to make risotto,” I tell him. My heels kick softly at the cabinets. “I’m just surprised you do.”
“I know how to do lots of things I didn’t used to know how to do,” he answers, and we’re definitely not talking about dinner anymore. The air crackles: too many electrons, like you could reach out and grab them and feel them buzz inside your hand. I look away.
“Anyway,” I say, too loudly. “Your mom. Your bedroom. I guess she just … I don’t know. I guess she knew you’d be back.”
“I guess so.”
“She missed you.”
“Did she?” he asks. He stirs the rice one more time before he abandons the stove, and, oh God. He stops when he’s standing right between my knees.
“Yeah,” I tell him slowly, glancing down. His hands have landed on my thighs. “I think she kind of did.” When I look up at him we’re face-to-face like commuters on a packed train at rush hour, and I really need half a second to … “Just,” I say, “hold on.”
“Reena—” he begins, but I cut him off.
“Stop.” I shake my head. “Just don’t … I just need to—” and I’m going to say think a minute but instead there is the sudden press of lips and faces, tongues in each other’s mouths like every stunted love you is hidden in the wet darkness there. I could act surprised, but this is why I came here, isn’t it? This is what I’ve wanted since the morning he turned up. I get my arms around his neck, hard and clutching. After a moment, I hear him say my name.