Dev didn’t push it further, which I appreciated more than he probably knew.
A few other kids asked in the days that followed, most of them more careful about it than Dev had been, sensing correctly that this wasn’t the kind of thing you joked about at a locker between classes. My English teacher, Mrs. Falcone, pulled me aside after class one day, no explanation needed on either side.
“I heard something happened at your house,” she said. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I just wanted you to know I’m around, if you ever need an extension on something, or just a quiet room during lunch.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I think I’m actually okay. Better than okay, honestly.”
She studied my face for a second, like she was checking the claim against the evidence, then nodded and let it go.
I sat with that small kindness longer than the moment itself probably warranted, surprised by how much it mattered, a teacher noticing something was different without demanding to know exactly what.
Marcus didn’t sign anything that week. Or the next.
I told myself it was fine, that he’d meant what he said about doing it right, in his own time, and I believed him. Some nights, though, doubt crept in anyway, the old kind, the kind that used to make me quietly reorganize my whole personality around whoever might be about to leave.
Three weeks after the birthday, my father called the house phone, a number he hadn’t used in over a year.
Mom answered first, then handed it to me without a word, her jaw tight.
I could tell she wanted to say something to him herself, the way her knuckles went white around the phone before she passed it over. She’d told me once, years earlier, about the year after he left, how she’d waited by that same phone some nights, certain he’d call and explain everything, certain the explanation would somehow make it make sense. He never had, not really, not until this call, three weeks too late by about fourteen years.
