Hummingbird #3
I offered him a small smile, the kind that was meant to be enough.
He thought the stage was the destination, the final, public proof that the storm had passed and his daughter had survived it.
School has been hard, and it is an accomplishment, but my real hard work happened in the quiet hours of Tuesday afternoons in therapy, in the choice to keep breathing when the air felt like lead, and in the slow process of becoming someone I didn’t have to hide from.
The clinking of silverware against ceramic filled the brief silence until Zane reached across the table, his hand momentarily covering mine.
He knew what I was thinking, where my mind had gone.
And the way my body reacted to his touch was the same as it always is.
Like my cells stopped buzzing. Like my lungs grew.
“Speaking of next year,” Zane said, his voice bringing the conversation back to reality. “Have you thought about the lease on the apartment? The management office sent over the renewal papers this morning.”
“Of course we’re keeping the apartment,” I said quickly, looking at him like he had suggested giving away something made of gold. “We love it there.”
“You love it there,” he shook his head, but with a smile and a small laugh. “It’s… got some issues that I could live without.”
“Like what?” I asked him, though I already knew what he was about to list off.
“The radiator that sounds like a train at three in the morning,” Zane started, ticking it off on one finger with a grin. “The one that doesn’t seem to have an off switch, even in the middle of the summer.”
“It’s like white noise,” I countered, though even I knew that was a stretch. “Helps me sleep.”
“And the window in the kitchen that only stays open if you prop it up with a specific textbook,” he added, looking at my dad with a look that asked for some help.
“Sink doesn’t drain, the bathroom light flickers no matter how many new lightbulbs I put in.
Not to mention the neighbor’s cat that seems convinced our welcome mat is its personal scratching post.”
Dad laughed, warmly, which surprised me. He looked at Zane, and for a second, they were just two men commiserating over the stubbornness of the woman they both loved.
“I remember the first apartment your mother and I had,” dad said, leaning back in his chair, and I went still because he never talked about my mom. “The sink leaked so loudly I had to sleep with earplugs, but she wouldn’t let me call the super. She said the leak had a soothing rhythm.”
My mother was the constant silence that lived between my dad and I, a silence I had learned to leave alone years ago.
To hear my dad speak her title was like hearing thunder boom on a clear night.
I thought about the leaky sink and her soothing rhythm, and I wondered then if my stubborn love for the radiator’s clatter and the propped-up window was not just a preference.
Perhaps it was an inherited, cellular desire to find comfort in imperfect things and to make a home out of things that were trying to fall apart.
He looked at me, his eyes softening. “I get it, Seren. There is a certain pride in making a place work when it wants to fall apart. But if the landlord isn’t keeping up with the big stuff, you let me know. I don’t want you worrying about a draft in the middle of winter.”
“Zane handles the drafts,” I said, nudging Zane’s arm. “He’s a regular handyman now. He’s got a toolkit and everything.”
“I have a screwdriver and a prayer,” Zane corrected, though he looked proud of the title. He looked at my dad. “It’s a good spot, Tom. The neighborhood is quiet, and it’s close to the park where Seren likes to walk. We’ll make sure it stays in one piece for another year.”
“I’m glad,” Dad nodded. “As long as you’re happy there, that’s what matters. Just don’t let that radiator keep you up too late during finals.”
I recognized that a few years ago he would have insisted on paying for something better.
The theory of his parenting came from the idea that if he gave me everything materially, new clothes, new bags, shoes, trips—it would replace the fucked-up circumstances I began my life with.
A black hole of grief instead of a mother.
Clearly, he learned the hard way that some absences can’t be sufficiently filled with Gucci.
This was better, it didn’t feel like he was trying to buy my comfort or fix my life from a distance. He seemed glad I had a place where I felt I belonged.
The conversation drifted then, moving into safer, lighter waters.
We talked about the garden he wanted to start in the backyard, and the new coffee shop Zane had found near campus.
As the evening wound down, the house didn’t feel so bruised.
It felt like a momentary breath between the life I used to have and the one I was building two hours away.
A glimpse of what could be. A glimpse of what should have been.
“I should probably get the coffee started,” dad said, standing up. “Unless you two need to head back now? I know the drive is long.”
“We can stay for a cup, Dad,” I said, and the way Zane settled back into his chair told me he was more than happy to wait.
The look on my dad’s face wasn’t desperate this time.
It was just contentment. He headed into the kitchen, humming a low tune, leaving Zane and me in the yellow glow of the dining room.
Zane leaned in, his voice a low murmur near my ear. “One more year in the blue apartment?”
“One more year,” I promised. Maybe in a year I would be ready to leave it. But for now, it felt safe. It felt like the first place that had ever been my home. I would be sad to say goodbye to it.
“Are you okay?” he asked me, his eyes evaluating me like they usually do. He had gotten less obvious about it since we met. Less intense. Maybe because there was less to evaluate, maybe because he had just gotten better at reading me.
“Yeah,” I told him, “I’m good.”
“Good as in actually good, or good in Seren’s world?” Zane asked me, one of his eyebrows shooting up.
I let a small sigh out of my mouth, and I watched the way he was trying to read me.
He was always looking, looking for the things I wasn’t saying.
It didn’t bother me, anymore. I had come to understand that when Zane said things like this, he wasn’t accusing me of lying.
He just knew that I never really learned the difference between what was manageable and what was real.
“I’m actually good, Zane,” I said, the words didn’t feel like I was trying to convince myself. I reached out, tracing the line of his cheek above the beard. “I’m here. I ate my favorite potatoes. I’m tolerating the ghost. I’m not self-sabotaging. Those are all good things.”
Zane caught my hand, pressing a lingering kiss to my palm before letting go as my dad walked back in from the kitchen.
Dad carried the mugs with focus, the steam from the coffee veiling his face for a split second.
We sat and drank coffee. We did not talk about the upcoming graduation anymore, or the lease, or the memories that lived here.
Instead, we talked about the mundane logistics of the drive back, the construction on the freeway and the price of gas.
The coffee was bitter, the way dad always made it, but I drank it anyway.
I watched the way the light from the kitchen ceiling caught the dust motes dancing in the air, a slow, chaotic dance that did not need to mean anything.
There was no grand epiphany waiting at the bottom of the cup.
There was just the quiet realization that being actually good didn’t mean the absence of the gray; it just meant I was finally learning how to sit in it without feeling like I was drowning.
My dad was trying. That mattered. I glanced at him, wondering if it mattered as much to him that I was trying, too.
Sometimes, I felt guilty that he was all alone in this house that was too big for him.
I felt bad that he had all this money, and he had no one to share it with.
And I felt worse when I realized he never really did, even when I lived with him.
Petty privileged thoughts, trust me, I know.
But I had them anyway. The bleak understanding that after my mom died, he spent his life with two ghosts, not just one.
That’s probably why he bought so many shiny things.
When I stood up to clear the table, I noticed the way his watch slid an inch down his wrist as he reached for a napkin, a luxury brand he’d worn for a decade. It seemed too big for him, now.
The final goodbye was inevitable, but the way it happened was not.
Zane was the first to extend his hand, gripping my dad’s hand in a firm, respectful shake.
I waited for my dad to simply nod at me.
The usual, safe sign-off that needed no touch and no risk.
Instead, my dad turned to me, and before I could move away, his arms came around me.
It was quick, awkward, and smelled faintly of the expensive cologne he reserved for work, even on a Saturday.
His body was stiff against mine, his arms barely settling around my shoulders, like a borrowed jacket he wasn’t sure how to wear.
I couldn’t remember the last time he had held me.
Maybe in a grainy photo from my first birthday, maybe not since before the silence became the loudest sound in the house.
Even when I was small, needing comfort, he had always defaulted to a pat on the head or a hand on my back, never a full embrace.
“Drive safe, kiddo,” he said the words delicately. “Love you.”