Chapter 43
Harper
I’m in the middle of doing absolutely nothing productive, sitting cross-legged on the floor in my living room eating cereal for a late lunch when my phone rings. I look at the screen.
Mom.
I chew. Consider. Answer on the third ring because anything before two rings communicates too much availability and anything after four communicates avoidance, and with my mother, both are equally dangerous.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Harper.” The way she says my name—not warm, not cold, just efficient, like my name is an item on a checklist she’s moving through. “Your father and I are coming through the city tomorrow evening. We’ll be there at five. Sharp.”
Not can we come over?
Not would that work for you?
“Oh,” I say. “Tomorrow.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No.” That’s always the answer. “No, of course not. I’ll…yeah, that’s great.”
“Make that pasta dish your father loves. The one with the sausage.”
“The rigatoni.”
“Yes. That one.” A pause that has the texture of her looking at a list. “We just got back from the coast this morning. I picked up something for Collin while we were there—one of those specialty hot sauces he’s always going on about. I got it at the market in Jamaica, near the pier.”
My cereal spoon stops mid-lift.
“That’s—really thoughtful, Mom.”
“Well, I try to pay attention.” Another pause. “Is he coming to dinner? You can let him know we have a gift.”
I set the spoon down in the bowl.
The thing about hard conversations is that I have been putting this one off for a very specific reason: I knew exactly what my mother would say, and I have been quietly, deliberately not giving her the opportunity to say it.
I’m good at this. I’ve had years of practice building the particular skill of managing my mother’s expectations by controlling the information she receives.
I’ve been managing the Collin situation on a strictly need-to-know basis since February.
She does not, technically, need to know.
Except she has a hot sauce with his name on it.
“Mom.” I stand up from the floor. “Collin and I broke up.”
Silence.
The particular quality of my mother’s silence is its own form of communication. This one is twelve seconds long and feels like being held underwater.
“When,” she says. Not what happened or are you okay or I’m sorry, sweetheart. Just, when.
“February. A couple of months ago.”
“February.” She repeats. “And you’re just telling me now.”
“I didn’t want to…I was figuring things out. It’s been a process.”
“Harper.” There it is again. My name like a period at the end of a sentence that isn’t finished yet. “What did you do?”
And there it is.
The assumption already in place, already settled, that whatever went wrong went wrong because of me.
Because it always does. Because I’m the variable in the equation, always have been—the one who laughs too loud, talks too much, makes things messier than they need to be.
Collin was tidy and professional and he had a five-year plan, and of course something with that kind of structure couldn’t survive me for long.
“We just weren’t right for each other,” I say. My voice is steady. I have years of practice at this too. “It was mutual.”
“Collin was a very good man.”
“I know.”
“He had a plan. A future. He treated you well.”
“I know, Mom.”
“Men like that don’t grow on trees, Harper.”
The back of my eyes sting. I will not do this. I am a grown woman standing in my own apartment and I will not stand here and cry on the phone over a relationship I don’t even miss.
Especially when I have a new one that is way better.
I walk to the window. Stare at the street below. Take a breath.
And I say it before I chicken out.
“There’s someone new.”
Silence again. Shorter this time.
“Already?”
“It’s—yes.” I take a breath. “And Mom, he’s great. I really want you to meet him. I think…”
“Doubt it.”
The word lands flat and certain.
I close my eyes. “Mom.”
“I’ve met your exes, Harper. I know the kinds of men you’re drawn to.”
“This is different.”
“That’s what you always say.”
I don’t have an answer for that. Partly because she’s not entirely wrong about the pattern.
“Invite him tomorrow,” she says, and her tone has shifted back to logistics, which is how she closes conversations she’s finished having. “We’ll see.”
“Okay.”
“Five o’clock.”
The line clicks.
I stand at the window for a long moment, phone in my hand, watching a dog trot past on the sidewalk below.
I try Ivy first.
Voicemail.
I try Olivia.
She picks up, which is a minor miracle and a major complication, because Olivia has therapist instincts that activate in the presence of any emotional situation and I cannot afford a full therapeutic intervention right now, I need a best-friend intervention, and after thirty seconds of her saying okay, and how does that make you feel, I tell her I’ll call her back and hang up.
I pace my living room.
Okay. The situation is this: my parents are coming to dinner tomorrow at five. I have told my mother I am dating someone wonderful. The difference is that this time it’s true—I am dating someone wonderful.
He should know that she’s going to compare him to Collin, out loud, at the table, and probably not subtly.
I find his contact, look at his name on the screen for a moment, then press call.
It rings six times before it goes to voicemail.
You’ve reached Micah Sanders. Leave a message and I’ll call you back. Unless this is about the parking lot situation at church, in which case, that is out of my control.
The beep sounds and I just stand there for a second with my mouth open and nothing coming out, because even his voicemail has dad joke energy, and I have been dating this man for less time than it takes to grow a houseplant and I am already so completely gone for him that his voicemail greeting makes my chest feel warm, and I hang up without saying anything and throw myself facedown on the couch.
This is fine.
I am fine.
I’m just trying to prepare my actual boyfriend for dinner with my parents. And praying he can make it.
I pull a throw pillow over my head.
My phone rings.
I come up from under the pillow so fast I nearly tip off the couch.
It’s a FaceTime. From Micah. Not a call—a FaceTime, which means he wanted to see my face, which is a thing I have recently realized he prefers. I answer immediately.
He’s somewhere outdoors. I can see sky behind him, he’s slightly out of breath from something, glasses on, and the second the call connects his whole demeanor shifts. Whatever easy expression he answered with sharpens into something focused and alert.
“Harper.” His voice is different. The easy tone gone, something more direct underneath it. “What’s wrong? Where are you? I can be on my way right now.”
I stare at him.
And then, despite everything—I laugh. It comes out real and slightly startled and I press my hand over my mouth.
“What,” he says.
“You answered a FaceTime and immediately offered to be on your way somewhere. You don’t even know what I’m about to say.”
“You called and hung up without leaving a message, which means something’s wrong. And you look all frazzled.” He motions toward the screen. “Are you okay? Where are you?”
“I’m on my couch.”
He exhales slightly. Some of the sharpness comes down. “Okay. Good.” He adjusts his glasses. “What happened?”
“My parents are coming to dinner tomorrow night.” I sit up and pull my knees to my chest. “They called this afternoon. That’s just how they operate—they don’t really ask, they just tell you when they’ll be there and what you should cook.”
“Okay,” he says.
“And she called to tell me she got Collin something on their trip.” I watch his face. “So I had to tell her. About the breakup. And she was…” I stop. Reorganize. “She was my mom about it. Which is a specific thing.”
“The what did you do assumption,” he says.
I blink. “How did you—”
“You told me. Burgers, after the shower. You said she always assumes you’re the variable.”
He remembered that. Of course he remembered that.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “That one.”
He nods, just once. Not trying to fix it. Just acknowledging it landed the way it always does.
“So I told her there was someone new,” I continue. “And she said…” I hesitate, because this is the part that still stings even though it shouldn’t, even though I know who he is and she doesn’t yet. “She said doubt it. Before she even knew anything about you. Just flat out, doubt it.”
Something moves through his expression. Calm, but with something steady underneath it.
“And then she said she wants to meet you tomorrow,” I finish. “Which is, I know it’s fast. I know we’ve only been…” I gesture vaguely. “This. For a minute. And I would completely understand if—”
“Harper.”
“—you wanted more time before doing the whole meet-the-parents thing because it is a lot and my parents are specifically a lot—”
“Harper.”
“—and my mom is going to compare you to Collin at the table and not even try to be subtle about it, and my dad communicates primarily through silence which reads as disapproval even when it isn’t, and the pasta has to be exactly right or—”
“Harper.” His voice is patient but firm, the same tone he uses when he’s redirecting a five-year-old who is very committed to a bad decision. “Take a breath.”
I take a breath.
He waits.
“I want to meet your parents,” he says. Simply. Like it’s not even a complicated sentence. “That’s not a question for me.”
Something in my chest does the folding thing. “You don’t have to if it is too soon.”
“I know I don’t have to.” He looks at me directly through the small screen. “I want to. They’re important to you—even when it’s complicated, they’re important to you. Which makes them important to me.”
I look at the ceiling for a second to get my face in order.
“Besides,” he adds, and I can hear the shift into that dry, quiet humor that I have grown to love, “any opportunity to outshine Collin, and I’m in.”
The laugh that comes out of me is surprised and genuine and slightly embarrassing. “You barely even knew him.”
“I know enough,” he says. He’s smiling now, the screen highlighting his dimple. “What time?”
“Dinner at five. But could you come a little early?” I pause, because what I actually want to say is I want to tell you things about them so you’re not walking in blind, I want you to understand what you’re stepping into so you don’t have to figure it out alone in the middle of it.
“I want to make sure you have context. About them.”
“I’ll be there at four-thirty,” he says. “So you’re not alone when they get there.”
I press my lips together. Look at him through the small screen. The glasses slightly crooked, the evening sky behind him, this man who remembered something I said over burgers at a diner weeks ago and is now offering to show up early to stand next to me at my own dinner table.
“Micah,” I say. “I’m nervous.”
He looks at me for a moment.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know, but we’ve got this.”
He doesn’t say she’s wrong or I’ll prove her wrong or any of the things that would make this about him. Which is something Collin would have done.
“Does your mom do that thing,” he asks then, shifting slightly, “where she asks rapid-fire questions and makes eye contact like she’s looking for inconsistencies?”
“She made my prom date write a formal itinerary. With timestamps.”
He stares at me. “For prom.”
“She wanted to know where we’d be at 9:15 specifically.”
“Where were you at 9:15?”
“Micah, that is not the point—”
He’s already grinning. “I’m going to make a very good impression on this woman.”
He says it with the particular confidence of someone who has already decided how this goes, and something about the certainty of it loosens something in my chest I didn’t realize was still wound tight.
“Four-thirty,” he says again.
“Four-thirty,” I confirm.
“And Harper.” His voice settles back into something more even. The something that’s always underneath the jokes. “You okay? Everything you didn’t say just now—you okay?”
I look at him through the small screen. The glasses slightly crooked. The sky behind him going golden at the edges.
“Yes.”
He holds my gaze.
“I love you Harper.”
“Love you too,” I smile, still not used to the words but overwhelmed with the fact that they feel so right. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow.”
I hang up. Set my phone face-down on the cushion beside me. Sit there for a moment in the quiet of my apartment, the early evening light doing something nice through the blinds.
Tomorrow my mother is going to walk into this apartment already skeptical. She’s going to compare him to Collin, out loud, probably by dessert. She’s going to look for cracks.
And Micah is going to show up at four-thirty so I’m not alone when they arrive.
Doubt it, she said. The words hanging heavy over me.
So I do the thing I’ve been trying to do more of; I take my fears and lay them at the feet of Jesus.