Social Modelling #2
Dinner was warm and easy. Plates were cleared, the lingering scent of roast pork and gravy still hanging in the air, softened by the quiet clink of dishes in the kitchen as Leanne insisted Charlie help her with dessert.
Their voices carried faintly; light, familiar, threaded with the ease that she felt.
At the table, Tyler and Declan had slipped into conversation about the upcoming game, something about travel schedules and match-ups, their voices low but animated. Riley listened, but didn’t feel the need to join the discussion. Sports weren’t something she’d have any knowledge of.
Ebony nudged her lightly, her voice quiet enough to stay between them. “Do you like it here?”
Riley turned her head slightly, her expression softer than it had been earlier. “Yeah,” she said. “I do.”
Ebony nodded, then picked at the edge of her plate. “Sometimes I don’t,” she admitted after a moment. “When there’s too many people. Or when it’s loud.”
Riley’s attention shifted fully to her, steady and present. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “That makes sense.”
Ebony glanced at her. “Everyone says that’s fine.”
Riley let out a small breath, her fingers resting loosely against the table. “It is fine,” she said gently. “But you are allowed to still feel like it’s too much, that doesn’t change your feelings.”
Ebony watched her for a second, then tilted her head slightly. “What do you do when it gets too loud?”
Riley paused, her gaze dropping briefly to the table, her fingers shifting against the wood before she looked back at Ebony.
“It wasn’t always the loudness for me,” she said, quieter now.
“Sometimes that was… easier than the quiet.” Ebony frowned slightly.
Riley exhaled, slow and controlled, taking the time to process and think about what she was trying to say.
“I grew up outside Melbourne,” she continued. “On a property. It was… quiet most of the time.”
She paused again, choosing her words more carefully now: not to distance them, but to make them land properly. “When my dad was drinking, he’d get loud,” she said. “Shouting. Calling for me.”
Ebony’s hands stilled.
“I learned pretty quickly to stay in my room,” Riley added. “If I stayed there, I was usually okay.” A small pause. “But when it was quiet…” Her voice softened further, something more exposed in it now. “That was worse.”
Ebony looked at her more closely.
“Because I couldn’t tell what that meant,” Riley said. “If he’d passed out. Or if he was just… waiting for me to think it was safe.” The words sat between them, heavier now, but not sharp. “I didn’t know what being in a safe environment felt like,” she added, more simply.
Behind them, the conversation between Tyler and Declan quieted, not stopped entirely, just softened, as if they were aware Riley was telling something important.
Ebony didn’t look away. “What did you do?” she asked.
Riley shook her head slightly. “I stayed where I was. And waited until I could hear something again. That’s why I like knowing what to expect,” she added, her voice gentler now. “It makes things feel predictable. Predictability is my safety.”
Ebony absorbed that slowly, her gaze flicking briefly toward Tyler, then back. Riley followed it. “That’s not what you have here,” she said softly. “You’ve got people who check on you, who notice when life is too much, who love you. You don’t have to worry, when it’s too loud, they’ll help you.”
Ebony nodded, a little more certain now. “Okay.”
Riley gave a small nod in return. “Okay.”
The quiet that followed wasn’t empty, it felt more like the room had taken a breath.
Riley became aware of it a second later.
Leanne and Charlie returned, dessert in hand, their conversation fully faded as they stepped back into the room.
The shift in atmosphere was subtle, but immediate.
Leanne’s gaze moved across the table, reading it in a way that suggested she had heard what Riley had said. Her attention settled on her.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said softly, setting the dish down. “You were so brave to share that.”
Riley stilled. Her posture tightened slightly, instinctive. “I was just answering her question,” she said, her tone shifting back toward structure. “The example was relevant to the situation she described.”
Leanne’s expression didn’t change. If anything, it softened further. “I know you were, sweetheart,” she said gently. “And you did nothing wrong.”
Riley blinked. That… didn’t align with expectation. Charlie moved beside Leanne, placing the plates down, his presence quiet and steady. His hand brushed lightly at her back as he passed her a spoon, something she could hold to ground her from the current unexplained emotional reaction.
Leanne glanced at him briefly, something warm passing between them before she looked back at Riley. “I left home myself when I was sixteen,” she said, her tone calm, like she was telling something that no longer held power over her. “My dad wasn’t… safe to be around.”
The room didn’t freeze this time the way it had with Riley, if anything they all just wanted to be there, quiet and supportive.
“I went straight to the police station,” she continued.
“Didn’t really have a plan beyond that.” A small pause.
“And he was there,” she added, tilting her head slightly toward Charlie.
Charlie huffed quietly, like he already knew where this was going.
“Brand new and one of his first days on the job,” Leanne said, a faint smile touching her mouth. “Had no idea what he was doing.”
“I had a general idea,” Charlie muttered.
She ignored him. “But he sat with me. Didn’t rush me, or tell me I had to go back. Even when the rest of the force gave up trying to get me somewhere safe, he found me a safe place to stay. He never let me be alone.”
Her fingers found his hand again, easy and unthinking. “That was the first time I realised what it felt like,” she added softly, “to be around someone who actually cared for you.”
Charlie squeezed her hand once, subtle and grounding. Leanne looked back at Riley, her expression soft but certain. “That’s why I fell in love with him,” she said simply. “Not because things were perfect, but because they were steady.”
Riley watched her, her attention fixed now, no longer splitting between the room and the conversation.
“I know what it’s like to live in that kind of unpredictability,” Leanne continued gently. “So I also know how much it matters when you find people who aren’t like that.”
Her voice didn’t waver, it didn’t soften into something fragile. She realised Leanne was trying to show her she wasn’t alone. “People who make things clearer instead of harder,” she said. “Who make you feel safe without you having to earn it.”
There was a small pause before she shifted her gaze, just briefly, toward her sons.
“And you two,” she added, pointing lightly between Tyler and Declan, “should be paying very close attention to that.”
Tyler let out a quiet huff of laughter, already shaking his head in easy dismissal. Declan didn’t react, he didn’t even look at her. His gaze hadn’t moved from Riley’s face. As she glanced at him, she could see the concern on his face.
Riley didn’t know how to respond to that, so her attention shifted back to Leanne instead, anchoring there almost immediately.
Leanne watched her with such complete focus that the rest of the room softened slightly around the edges, her attention steady enough to make everything else feel temporarily less overwhelming.
“That’s the most important thing you’ll ever find,” she said.
Almost unconsciously, Riley looked at Declan again. He was already watching her, steady and certain in a way that didn’t feel invasive, just present. And for the first time since stepping inside, Riley became aware of something she hadn’t expected to feel here at all.
Safe.
Tyler leaned back in his chair, letting the moment sit for exactly one second too long before shaking his head. “Wow,” he said. “That was… aggressively heartfelt.”
Leanne didn’t even look at him. “Watch your next words, kiddo.”
“I mean, sure,” he continued, reaching for dessert. “But could we maybe not have a life-changing revelation before cake?”
Declan huffed quietly under his breath. “You’re the worst.”
“I’m the only one keeping this family emotionally regulated,” Tyler shot back.
Leanne rolled her eyes, but she was smiling now, the warmth in the room returning to something lighter, easier, familiar. Conversation picked back up around them, threading in and out like it had before as if the conversation had never happened.
But Riley barely tracked any of it. Her attention remained fixed on Declan, on the fact that he still hadn’t looked away, and stranger still, that she didn’t want him to.
The realisation hadn’t left her mind. She felt safe with Declan.
Her brain tried instinctively to follow the thought to its conclusion, immediately searching for implications, for consequences, for what something like that could possibly mean for her long term.
The instinct to analyse rose almost automatically.
But for once, Riley stopped herself before she followed it all the way down. She didn’t need to answer it right now, didn’t need to define it or dissect it into something manageable.
For the moment, she could simply let it exist. And somewhere beneath that decision, her body softened quietly in response.