“Listen, okay, and then we hung out there that whole afternoon, and after a while, you just, you started to feel so familiar to me. So often you meet people and they’re just cartoons. They might be entertaining or attractive, they might even be brilliant, but they don’t feel fully human. And that’s the only way I can explain it. From the very beginning, you just felt familiar. Like home.”
Waiters in colored vests whizzed past, balancing trays crowded with heavy white platters. A lobster, shell cracked open, meat chopped and sautéed, then reassembled so that it waved two crimson claws in the air; a mound of some fowl shingled with carrot slices carved like feathers; a parade of beasts she’d never dreamed of consuming. The whole menagerie of them now swam uneasily in her stomach.
She felt a soft, damp spot in her heart begin to open up. “Oh Leo. I know.”
“Like we were both people trying to figure out how to really be in the world.”
“Yeah. Yeah. We are that. We are people like that.”
“We’re the same kind of animal.”
They were quiet for a moment, and then Leo asked, “Do you think you’re going to come back to Helios?”
“Well, I kind of live there now.”
“Do you . . . well . . . what if we lived together?”
“Oh. What? No. I don’t know if that’s a very good idea.” Was Leo actually crazy?
“Look, I know what I did was a real betrayal, and I am really, deeply sorry. And I, Saina, I’m not just sorry to you, I’m also sorry to Kaya, you know. She deserves so much more than that. It was wrong of me not to hold her out as the most important thing. Look, I’m a beginner soul still. I get a lot of stuff wrong, but I care about getting it right. With you.”
Saina closed her eyes and knocked her head back against the wall. She could hear the sizzle and clang of the kitchen, the cooks shouting at each other as they sped through the dinner service, could smell the garlic and oil coming together.
A heat traveled through her hand from the back of her phone, probably irradiating her bones.
She sensed the desperation in his voice, and it scared her.
“Leo, I feel like I should break up with you, but I don’t want to.”
“Then don’t! Baby, that’s crazy. Don’t. Just come back, and I’ll show you how much I mean it, okay? I can . . . oh, I want to. I’ll show you.” They were quiet for a moment. “Is it . . . are you offended that I said that we should live together instead of asking you to marry me?”
“No! No. No, no, no. That’s not what I want right now. Everything’s crazy with my family, I have to figure out if I even have a career anymore. I just don’t know if I want to be that for anybody. I don’t want to have the kind of insane relationship where you would not see your daughter because of me.”
“Saina! Is that what you think?”
“That’s what I’m scared of.”
“No. I can’t stress that enough. It is amazing how much I would do for you, considering how briefly we’ve known each other, but you are not the reason why I haven’t seen her. I would never do that. You’re the reason I haven’t talked about her, at least to you, but I haven’t seen her because Leah really is a difficult person.”
“Leah and Leo?”
“I know.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me.”
“Honestly, Saina, I don’t get it either. It’s all I’ve been thinking about and I don’t have any answers yet. Fear, probably. I didn’t want to lose either of you. I still don’t.”
“I didn’t realize that I came across as some horrible person who would refuse to date a man with a child.”
“Not everyone wants to be a stepmother. But, listen, it wasn’t just that. Okay, this . . . god, I’m embarrassed to even say this.”
“What?”
“I think part of me didn’t want to come across as that guy, you know?”
“What guy?”
“Saina.”
“What?”
“You know, that guy. The black guy who’s a deadbeat dad. With a baby mama in every town.”
“Are you serious? Why would I even think that? You’re an organic farmer!”
“Okay, that’s not the only thing. I think I was also afraid, and to be honest, I still am, afraid—”
“Of what?”
“That you’ll convince me to sue for visitation or something and I’ll lose her forever. Leah’s family is in Quebec. If I piss her off, she could take Kaya up there and hide out from me.”
“You could have explained that to me!”
“I know.”
“Leo, you are so good, and so generous, and so caring, but I think that sometimes you don’t want to let anyone else be those things.” She waited. She listened to him breath and think. She willed herself not to speak in the long silence that followed, but in the end, she broke down. “Hey, so is your daughter the reason why you shut down when we were in the car before the Bard graduation thing?”
“You noticed that? Of course you did. Yeah. It didn’t seem like the best time to bring it up.”
“But you wanted to.”
“I did.”
“I thought you were just freaked-out that I talked about babies.”
“Oh no, no. I wasn’t. I wasn’t even thinking about that.”
“Do you know what I was thinking about?”
“Hmm?”
“How you lost your birth mom’s picture. How you didn’t know what your family looked like. And that if you had a baby, maybe you would.”
“Oh, Saina. Come home, will you?”
“Is Helios home?”
“No, but I am.”
“Leo.”