Chapter 24
AREK
The grocery list was on my phone, the dinner plan was in my head, and I was seventeen minutes behind schedule.
Monday had been long. Three walk-ins on top of a full book, a kid with a broken wrist who’d screamed through the splinting, Dave Stamoulis back again—his knee, this time—and a call from the school nurse about a student who needed follow-up that I’d promised to handle and then forgot about until Janine reminded me at four-thirty.
I’d stayed late to finish the referral paperwork, which put me behind on picking up groceries, which put me behind on dinner.
And now I was standing in Collins at five-twenty, trying to remember whether I needed basil or cilantro while my phone buzzed with a text from Kace asking when dinner was and another from Jules asking if I could get peanut butter.
Basil. It was basil. For the pasta. Which I was making from scratch because Mac was coming for dinner and staying the night. Apparently, my response to this milestone was to behave as if I were hosting a state dinner rather than feeding people who would’ve been perfectly happy with takeout.
I grabbed the basil, the peanut butter, a bottle of wine that was hopefully worth the exorbitant price, and checked out while responding to Kace’s text—6:30, be patient—Jules’s text—Got it—and a clinic email about tomorrow’s schedule that could’ve waited until morning, but I answered anyway.
That was what I did. I answered everything immediately. Always.
By the time I got home, it was almost six, and the kitchen was still a disaster from breakfast, which I hadn’t had time to clean before work because I’d been reviewing lab results while eating toast. And I should’ve asked the boys to clean it, should’ve asked them to do more a long time ago, since they were old enough to take on more responsibility, but I hadn’t.
Every time I thought about it, it seemed like too much effort, too much battle, and now it was too late.
I dropped the grocery bags on the counter and started cleaning and cooking, controlling the chaos that had become my baseline—multiple tasks running simultaneously, all of them managed, none of them done well.
Kace appeared. “Dad, can I have a—”
“Not before dinner.”
“I was going to ask if I can have a sleepover with Tyler this weekend.”
“We’ll discuss it later.”
“You always say that.”
“Because it’s always not the time.”
The edge in my voice surprised both of us. Kace’s face registered the hit—a flicker of confusion, then the quick recovery of a kid who’d learned to read adults’ moods in foster care. He disappeared without another word.
I stood at the stove with a wooden spoon in my hand as guilt flooded me. Snapping at Kace over nothing. Because I was tired and behind and trying to cook an elaborate meal that nobody had asked for.
“Sorry, buddy,” I called toward the stairs. “Yes to Tyler. We’ll figure out the details.”
“Okay!”
Instant forgiveness, cheerfully shouted. Kace’s superpower was the ability to absorb a hit and bounce back without holding a grudge. It was a gift. It was also, I knew with the clinical part of my brain, a survival strategy learned in homes where grudges were dangerous.
I turned back to the sauce and stirred, and told myself I was fine. Busy, but fine. Tired, but fine. Managing, but fine. Fine, fine, fine, the word I’d promised Mac I’d stop using and couldn’t seem to quit.
Mac arrived at six-fifteen. His knock was the same as always—two solid raps, unhurried—and Kace beat me to the door with the enthusiasm he now brought to every Mac visit. “Mr. Heald! Dad’s making pasta from scratch. He’s been stressed about it for an hour.”
“I have not been—”
“He snapped at me about a question and then apologized in the same breath. Classic stress, Dad.”
Mac looked at me over Kace’s head. A quick assessment, the kind he probably wasn’t even aware he did, the tactical scan that took in my posture, my expression, the set of my shoulders. Whatever he found made something flicker across his face. Not concern, exactly. Attention.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey. Ignore my son.”
“Never.” He stepped inside, and this time, when the house rearranged itself around him, it felt less like accommodation and more like recognition. Like the house knew he belonged here. He handed me a brown paper bag. Inside: a loaf of sourdough from Brianna’s and a bar of dark chocolate.
“The bread’s for dinner,” he said. “The chocolate’s for you. You look like you need it.”
“I’m—”
He raised an eyebrow. One. Just the left one. A gesture so minimal and so loaded that it stopped the word fine in my throat like a cork.
“Thank you,” I said instead.
Dinner was good. The pasta, despite my anxiety, turned out well.
The sauce was well-balanced, the basil was fragrant, and the bread Mac had brought was perfect alongside it.
Kace talked about school, about the upcoming summer break, about Tyler’s increasingly ambitious construction projects.
Jules ate and contributed the occasional observation that made Mac’s mouth twitch.
Mac was different at this table than he’d been at the first dinner.
His shoulders weren’t braced, his eyes weren’t tracking the room.
He sat in his chair—the same chair every time, the one with its back to the wall—and he ate and listened and occasionally said something that made Kace laugh or Jules respond with interest.
Under the table, his knee pressed against mine, warm, steady, constant—a point of contact that grounded me in a way I hadn’t realized I needed until I felt the tension in my spine release a single degree.
At eight-thirty, the boys went upstairs. Kace’s music started, muffled by his closed door. Jules’s light turned on. I’d check on him at ten, the way I always did, and find him asleep with the book on his chest.
Mac and I cleaned the kitchen. The routine we’d built had become its own language, a conversation conducted in soap, water, and the quiet clink of dishes. His arm brushed mine at the sink and I leaned into the contact, brief and warm.
“Long day?” he asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
“You cooked a three-course meal on a Monday after a full day of work.”
“It wasn’t three courses.”
“Salad, pasta, bread. That’s three.”
“The bread was yours.”
“Arek.” He set down the dish towel and turned to me. His eyes, blue and direct, held the steady focus that I’d learned meant he was about to say something honest. “You don’t have to cook like that for me. You know that.”
“I wanted to.”
“Did you? Or did you feel like you had to?”
The question was quiet and precise, and it landed hard. I opened my mouth to deflect—a joke, a redirection, the usual sleight of hand—and found that Mac’s gaze made deflection feel pointless. ”Both. I wanted to, and I felt like I had to, and I don’t always know the difference.”
He nodded. He didn’t push further, but his hand found the small of my back as he reached past me for a glass. The touch lingered like an acknowledgment that he saw me.
We finished the dishes. I wiped the counters, checked the stove, and started a mental list for tomorrow—lunches for the boys, the follow-up call I’d forgotten, the lab results I needed to review—and Mac’s hand on my wrist stopped me mid-reach for my phone. “Hey, you’re off the clock.”
“I was just going to—”
“Tomorrow.” He took the phone from my hand and set it face down on the counter.
Then he cupped my face in both hands, the rough palms warm against my jaw, and kissed me.
Slow. Thorough. The kind of kiss that dismantled agendas and to-do lists and the relentless forward momentum that I couldn’t seem to stop.
I melted into it. His mouth on mine, his hands holding me, the solid wall of his chest against mine.
The kitchen faded. The list faded. The tiredness faded, or rather, it didn’t fade, but it stopped mattering, replaced by the warmth of being held by someone who wanted nothing from me except my presence.
We spent two hours sitting in my living room, talking quietly.
Mac told me about his first therapy session, about the texts he’d exchanged with Boden, and I shared what I could about my work day without breaking doctor-patient confidentiality.
And as our silences grew longer, we cuddled on the couch, sipping from our wine.
It was quiet and peaceful, and the tension that had been my companion all day seeped out of me.
At ten, we headed upstairs, where I checked on the boys.
Kace was still awake, though barely, and I kissed his forehead and told him I loved him.
His sleepy “I love you too, Dad,” made me smile, as always.
Jules was out like a light, and I carefully removed the book from his chest and put it on his nightstand, then turned off his lamp.
My bedroom was different from Mac’s—smaller, less spare, with the accumulated clutter of a single parent’s life.
Books on the nightstand, a laundry basket that needed emptying, photos of the boys on the dresser.
Mac looked around, taking it all in, and I felt a flicker of self-consciousness that I batted away.
He’d seen my porch before he painted it. He could handle a laundry basket.
We undressed with the lights low, all too aware of the two teenagers down the hall.
Mac sat on the edge of my bed—the left side, his side, the side that faced the door—and pulled me down next to him, and we kissed in the dark of my room, in my bed, and the domesticity of it was so profound that it took my breath away.
This wasn’t the mountain. This wasn’t the charged, wild, first-time intensity of Saturday night. This was a Monday. A school night. And I had a man in my bed after dinner with my kids, his boots by the door, his jacket on my chair, and his toothbrush next to mine in the bathroom.