23. Cyaire #3
She asks after Malik first, leaning forward and listening closely while Julian describes their life together in the kind of particular, fond detail that makes it clear they are genuinely, deeply in love and enamored with one another.
The upcoming joint album. Their apartment in Germany.
The place that changed everything for the both of them.
Momma listens to all of it with careful attention, her hands folded in her lap, and when the subject eventually turns to me she approaches it with the same deliberateness.
“Your father tells me Jamie plays hockey,” she says, keeping her hands occupied by straightening her fork and spoon against the tablecloth.
“He does. He’s with the Vipers.”
A small, genuine smile moves across her mouth. “I would like to meet him.”
The answer comes without effort, without the hesitation I might have braced for. “I think he’d like to meet you too. His parents are in Seattle, so there’ll be plenty of chances to get everyone in the same room.”
Dad looks up from his plate immediately, sharp and pleased in the way he gets when he’s already understood the thing no one has technically said yet.
“I’m moving to Seattle,” I say. May as well put it on the table alongside everything else.
For a beat, the room goes quiet.
Then Dad lets out a cheer loud enough that Momma’s hand flies to her pearls, his fork points at me like he’s crowning me with it, his face broken open into pure delight. “You tell Jamie I expect a seat behind the glass, son. Behind the glass.”
Laughter breaks around the table, immediate and warm and genuine, and it moves through me in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
“I’m sure he has one with your name on it,” I manage, laughing through it and surprised to find that my eyes are stinging with something.
I don’t know why I braced for resistance.
Old wounds do that, make you carry armor into rooms that no longer require it.
All I can feel in this moment, sitting at this table, is happiness.
The specific, unexpected happiness of your parents being simply, uncomplicatedly proud of you.
“That’s my boy,” Dad says, already returning to his dinner, clapping the table once for emphasis.
The words feel differently than they would have once.
There’s no weight hidden inside them, no expectation waiting underneath, no performance required to earn them.
He is happy for me. Already constructing the version of himself who sits behind the glass at Climate Pledge Arena, yelling at officials and conducting himself as though the Vipers organization personally recruited him.
By the time the dishes are cleared and the evening has begun to cool, the light outside has shifted to that deep, slanted gold that southern California does at the end of a long day.
Momma hugs us both again at the door, holding on longer this time, her arms tighter than before, as though the first embrace was practice for the real thing.
Dad wraps us each in one of his broad, back-slapping hugs, and then holds me by the shoulders for a moment before he lets go, and reminds me, with complete seriousness, that he expects a call about those tickets.
Julian walks with me out to the driveway, and we stand between our vehicles for a moment beneath the California sky, which has gone deep blue and streaked with the last of the pink at its edges.
“You good?” he asks again, and this time he’s smiling when he says it.
I look back at the house. Through the open front doorway, Momma and Dad are still standing side by side, watching us go, my mother’s hand resting in the crook of my father’s arm.
“Better than I expected,” I say, and I rest my hand on my brother’s shoulder and ask him the same question without using a single word.
Julian nods, reading it the way he always does. He pulls me into another hug, and I hold on a second longer than I normally would before we separate.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” I call out, already at my door, throwing a wave toward Julian and my parents still framed in the doorway.
“You better,” he says, pulling his keys from his pocket and climbing back into his truck.
I reverse out of the driveway and wait for Julian to pull ahead before following him down the street for the last time tonight.
The drive back toward Los Angeles feels lighter than the one that brought me here, the car quieter and easier somehow, the highway less like something I’m enduring and more like something I’m simply passing through.
I know one Sunday dinner doesn’t undo years of silence or repair what was broken between us cleanly and completely.
The first step has been taken, and more than that, it was taken willingly, on all sides.
For the first time in a long time, I can genuinely imagine coming back to this house without spending the drive steeling myself for what’s waiting inside.
As the city lights appear ahead of me, rising out of the dark in their familiar sprawling pattern, my thoughts move north to a city I’ve been quietly calling home in my head for months now, and to the man waiting in it, even if he doesn’t yet know the full shape of what I’ve decided.
I have plans to make.