That’s the part I most want anyone reading this to actually understand, more than the car, more than the courtroom, more than any single dramatic moment on that front lawn. The dramatic moment was never the point. It was just the first time the ordinary moments finally got loud enough for everyone else to hear them too.
My last name is Reyes now. It says so on my driver’s license, my diploma, the lease I signed for my first apartment near campus that fall.
Marcus helped me move boxes into that apartment the same weekend, insisting on assembling a bookshelf that came with instructions neither of us could make sense of, both of us laughing at how little that had actually changed since chemistry projects and algebra homework.
Every single time I sign it, I think about a kitchen table, a volcano that finally worked, and a man who never once asked to be thanked for showing up.
