Chapter 32 | Cecilia

Chapter 32

Cecilia

T here’s always an ache in my chest after a trip back home. A longing for a life I might have had if things hadn’t turned so awful all those years ago. It’s why I don’t often return unless Liz beckons. Whether that makes me cold or a coward, I’m uncertain, but either way, in the week I’ve been home, I’ve talked to my mom more than I have in a long time. Evie’s used her key every night, and despite every principle I’ve followed since leaving the state of New Jersey, I’m already planning another trip.

I offered to cook for Evie tonight. Living alone, I’ve picked up quite a few skills in the kitchen. But I’m keeping it simple. Marinara from the Italian deli downtown simmers next to a pot of boiling water while the meatballs bake. Garlic bread waits on the counter for its turn in the oven. I stir the penne absently, glancing out the window to check for Evie’s car. Again. Whatever case she’s working has kept her at the office late all week. She can’t talk about it, a side effect of being a counselor for wayward children, but I don’t doubt she’s telling the truth. I can see the effects of it in the set of her shoulders and the tiredness dulling her eyes.

My phone buzzes, and I jump to answer like a little kid offered a fudge pop, but it’s not Evie. I need to get a grip.

“Hi, Mom.” I tuck the phone between my ear and shoulder.

“You got your sister’s invite, right? You’re coming? I told her you would come back for it.”

I laugh at my mom’s flustered excitement. She wants to see Liz’s place something awful. Almost as much as she wants to meet Evie, especially now that my girlfriend is sister-approved. “Yes, Mom. I’m figuring out the details now.”

“And Evie is coming.”

I smile. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my mother excited about anything like this. “I’m going to ask her tonight.”

The timer dings, signaling that the meatballs are ready for the gravy.

“What are you making?” Mom asks as I put her on speakerphone and slip a pot holder on. A wonderful blend of Italian spices greets me when I open the oven, and I breathe it in.

“Macaroni and meatballs,” I say, dropping each of the mini circles into the gravy pot.

“Oh, one of your best dishes,” she says approvingly. “Good thinking. I’ll let you get back to it. Let me know what she says.”

“Will do, Mom.” I’m almost enjoying her meddling.

Ten minutes later, the kitchen is full of a chorus of timers. I click on the first one—drain the macaroni—before turning to the rest of the tasks at hand. Plate the meatballs, toss the salad, put in the garlic bread. Have I even set the table yet? Take off the apron and fix my hair. A key sounds in the door. Too late. The sound is unfamiliar but exhilarating. I purposely locked the door behind me so that I could hear this smallest of sounds. It’s fast becoming one of my favorites.

Images pop into my mind uninvited. Simon, my college boyfriend, coming into my apartment with his boisterous laugh. Honey, I’m home. He said it every time he let himself in. Even the day he came in and found me sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room, tears streaming down my face as I stared at a photo of a certain two-year-old. He sank down next to me, the home dying on his lips. It was the beginning of the end for us, for me.

I shake the thought away, but another one opens, this one not a memory but a reenactment. Zoey, not the wan, heartbroken girl I know now but an excitable, vibrant teenager with a warm smile that I only recognize from photographs. In my mind, one of those awful teen soaps Liz loves to watch plays out. Zoey keys into her best friend’s room like she does every day, except on this day her life as she knows it is changed forever. Zoey’s features, a mirror to my own, crumple, and she morphs back into the ghost of a sister I've just met.

“Cee?”

Evie’s voice shakes me from the weird movie playing in my head, but the message has already seeped in—a key can be dangerous and comfort a hazard. But any relationship involves risk. Relationships don’t work if you don’t entrust your heart to another person. I’ve lived that truth for almost two decades now. Never trusting, never letting anyone in. It’s exhausting. Perhaps even more exhausting than letting Evie in, but I never got hurt. Sure, I’ve been left by partners who wanted more, but I’d never truly been hurt. Not like Liz, who seems to finally see in Julian what we all suspected long before, or Zoey, who can’t breathe without reopening a wound, or my mother, who lost a lifetime. For the first time in forever, my heart is opening. Behind the love and the lust and the growing sentimentality at normal, everyday sounds, fear is nesting, a memory of loss rising to the surface. Evie can hurt me.

“Cee, something’s burning.” Evie nudges me out of the way with her hip and throws open the oven door. She sounds exasperated, annoyed even.

“Sorry.” I stare at the burnt garlic bread, the sound of the final timer reaching me. I stare into Evie’s wide brown eyes as she jams a finger into the off button on the timer. Her eyes look different today. Less enamored and more steadfast. Evie’s burrowed in, and I have finally let her stay, but I can’t fight back the question that keeps bubbling to the surface. Now that Evie has me, will she still want me?

W hile the garlic bread wasn’t salvageable, the rest of dinner turned out well and seemed to lift Evie’s mood. Or at least halfway through her first glass of wine, the scowl dissolved into a general look of discontent. There might have even been a smile when I brought out dessert. I’m pretty sure the mood has nothing to do with me, but I’ve also rarely seen Evie like this before. Everyone has moods, but we’ve kept our lives separate for so long that it’s easy to mask the bad ones. How many times had “not in the mood” texts passed between us? How often had I ignored the signs and Evie buried her feelings?

“Liz sent proof of existence,” I say, trying to get my girlfriend engaged in something that isn’t the awful reality television that she acquiesced to watch.

She shifts on the couch, tucking her legs under her. A spark of interest lights her features. “Oh?”

I hand over my phone with the photo my sister sent pulled up of her and the guy she’d met—or re-met, as the case may be—at speed dating with the message, He does exist!

“A second date.” Evie nods approvingly. “Speed dating for the win.”

I glance down at the photo again. Seeing my sister with someone who isn’t Julian is weird. Something stirs in my stomach at the painful nostalgia, as if I’m in an alternate universe where everything is slightly off. But her smile, cheesy and toothy and quintessentially Liz, is the first real smile I’ve seen on her this summer.

“She invited us to an apartment-warming dinner in a few weeks. I was thinking maybe we could fly back out? My mom will be there, and thought... I know it’s soon, but I feel like I need to be there to support my sister in this decision.”

Evie’s gaze drifts to her lap. “I don’t think me going with you is a good idea.”

I consider playing it off but take her hand instead. “I thought you’d want to meet my mom.”

“I do,” she says. “But it’s a housewarming, right? Zoey will be there?”

“Probably.” I shrug, though there’s no doubt she’ll be there. It’s a fact I’ve come to terms with these past few weeks.

“Probably? Doesn’t she live with your sister?”

“She does not live there. It’s a temporary arrangement for the summer.”

“As is Liz’s apartment.”

Wow. I take a breath and swallow my annoyance. It’s a good thing that my girlfriend finally feels comfortable enough to be bitchy, I think. “Okay, fine, Zoey will be there. Why does that mean you can’t come?”

“I think it might be good for you, Cee, to spend time with your family, together. It might help you move forward if you make an effort to wade through the awkwardness.”

“You could’ve just said you didn’t want to go.”

“It’s not that. I want to meet your mom in a situation that’s going to be less stressful for you.” Evie pulls at her cuticles, something I’ve never seen her do. “Zoey. Your mom. Liz’s new life. And me. It seems like a lot.”

“Okay.” Her reasoning sort of makes sense, but it still feels like she’s stalling. “Well, my mom’s been pestering me to come for a visit. What if I can get her to fly out for the weekend?”

I’m not sure why I say it or where this sudden urge to push comes from. But Liz’s invite was addressed to the both of us, and in that moment, I decided. On Evie. On letting her all the way in. On introducing her to my mom. All of it.

“I’m going home this weekend,” Evie says, still not looking at me.

I swallow my pride and nudge Evie’s chin until her eyes meet mine. “Do you want me to come with you?”

Evie’s eyes widen, and her shoulders stiffen. I’ve surprised her. Good. We’re in uncharted territory, and now she knows it for certain. There’s a joy in this moment but also turbulence. She didn’t expect me to offer to go with her. She didn’t even mention it, and I realize, maybe too late, that Evie might never have told me about her trip home if not for this conversation. We don’t spend every weekend together. In fact, with my open-house schedule, we don’t spend most weekends together. How often has she gone home without me knowing? Her family knows about me, in the same way that my mother and Liz knew of my girlfriend, but Evie’s never invited me home. Not once. A fact that I appreciated since we never had to have that conversation, but now, it seems intentional.

“I...” Evie swallows and then starts again. “I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

The words sit in the space between us, heavy and suspicious and laden with doubts. I take a breath to steel my nerves. I’ve been here before, and this tentative distance only ever leads to one outcome. Foolishly, I never expected it from Evie.

“What’s going on here?”

She looks at me then, her eyes bright and wide, searching. I barely blink as the seconds drag on. What is she deciding?

“My grandmother is going to be there,” Evie says finally. “And she doesn’t know...”

I straighten. We’ve had this conversation. We have to have had this conversation. There’s no way we got past the first date without being clear that we were both far from closeted.

“Your grandmother doesn’t know or your whole family?”

“My grandmother. She’s like ridiculously religious and old, and my mom didn’t want me to tell her when I first came out.” She reaches for my hand, and I let her take it. Her touch is gentle, tentative, and the vulnerability in it sends a shiver up my arm. “It sucked after getting up the courage to tell my parents, but it never mattered because I never had someone I wanted to bring home. And then I did, but you would never have come. I wasn’t expecting... It can’t be this weekend but soon, I promise. Okay?”

I cup her face with both hands and bring my lips down to hers. Understanding and compassion and love mingle in my veins. This is real. This is love .

“Yes,” I whisper. “That’s more than okay.”