The rest of lunch went smoothly, no further interrogation, though I caught my mom glancing at my phone more than once with the particular restraint of a woman actively choosing not to ask something. By the time we finished, she’d already circled back to the "stay the whole weekend" campaign, mentioning it twice more before I finally gave in, mostly because arguing against it seemed like more effort than it was worth.
I checked my phone properly once I finally had a minute alone, having deliberately slipped off to my room just to go through it in peace.
Two texts, the ones that had come in at the table earlier.
Nicole: Did you get there safe?
The second was a photo, her lunch, something that actually looked like it belonged in a magazine, with a caption underneath: About to have lunch. You?
I smiled at the second one longer than I meant to, then typed back something short before setting the phone down and heading back out to join everyone.
By evening, I was parked on the couch next to my dad, some game neither of us had any real stake in beyond loyalty, the same team we’d both supported since I was old enough to understand what a scoreboard meant, mostly because Jackson had somehow convinced an entire generation of us that this particular rivalry mattered more than it probably did.
Chloe had disappeared into her room hours ago. My mom sat nearby, phone in hand, scrolling through something, clearly not watching the game, but not quite ready to leave the room either.
"Is she a blonde?" my mom asked out of nowhere.
I looked over. "What?"
"Brunette?"
I stared at her, genuinely lost, and mildly concerned about where this was headed.
"Your friend. Nicole." She said it with far too much enjoyment, like she’d been sitting on the question for hours, waiting for the right moment to deploy it. "What color’s her hair?"
I opened my mouth to answer, then froze for a second, genuinely thrown that this was apparently a real question my mom was asking out loud.
"It’s green."
My dad snorted, nearly choking on his drink.
My mom shot me a look, then, despite herself, laughed a little too, clearly unable to hold the frown once my dad had already cracked.
Then my phone buzzed on the armrest beside me.
Nicole.
I glanced at it. My dad, close enough to catch the screen too, raised an eyebrow.
"She calls you at night too. Good to know."
My mom’s smile spread slow and satisfied, saying nothing, which somehow felt louder than if she had.
The phone kept ringing. I let it go two full rings longer than necessary, weighing whether staying seated made this look worse or better, before deciding it really didn’t matter either way.
I stood up. "I’ll just—"
"Take your time," my mom said, entirely too pleased with herself.
I shot her a look and headed for my room, answering right as I shut the door behind me.
"Hey."
"Finally." A grin audible in her voice. "Took you long enough to pick up. Were you with a girl?"
"Actually, yeah. A very pretty one. Her name’s Mom."
She laughed, genuinely delighted, like the joke had landed better than I expected.
"Have you had dinner?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"And... the project? Almost done?"
"Almost."
"And... Chloe? Did she get her gummies?"
"Obviously."
"And... you don’t secretly have a wife and two kids hiding somewhere in that house?"
I laughed. "No, I don’t."
A brief silence settled between us, then her voice came through again, quieter this time.
"Can I be a little much for a minute?"
I paused, caught slightly off guard by the shift, before answering. "Yeah. Go ahead."
"I miss you."
That landed exactly where it always did, somewhere behind my ribs, before I could stop it, and I reached for humor instead of sitting in it, same as always.
"You say that like I’d be with you right now if I hadn’t come home this weekend."
A pause. I could practically hear her deciding whether to let it go or push back.
"I worked up actual courage to say that," she said, and her voice wavered slightly on the last word, quieter than usual. "Don’t make it a joke."
I went quiet for a second.
"I’m literally pouting right now," she added.
I sat with that for a second, actually feeling it, the specific guilt of knowing I’d taken something she’d clearly worked herself up to say and turned it into a punchline instead.
"I’m sorry. Genuinely."
A pause. Then: "Forgiven."
Another silence, shorter this time, before she spoke again.
"That was a little too much, wasn’t it?"
"Yes. Wow."
She laughed, and I kept talking right through it. "I didn’t know you could sound like that."
"All girls do that," she said, breezy and self-assured, like she hadn’t just been whining down the phone thirty seconds earlier.
A brief pause.
"Okay. I’m out of words," she said finally.
"You’re out of words."
"Yep. But I also don’t want to hang up yet, so how about we play a game?"
"Over the phone."
"Yes. You in?"
"...What do you have in mind?"
She thought for a second, then said, clearly making it up as she went. "Okay. New game. You give me two letters, I have to think of a word that starts with the first and ends with the second. Then we switch."
"That sounds impossibly hard."
"Only for people with weak vocabularies, Nathan."
"You’re just inventing this right now, aren’t you?"
"Obviously. Keep up."
I thought about it for a second. "Can it be the same letter twice?"
"Absolutely not. Nice try, though."
"Worth a shot."
"Alright. You first. Go."
I thought for a second, then landed on something I figured would actually give her trouble.
"Uhm... Y and... Z."
"Yutz," she said, almost instantly.
I blinked. "Is that even a word?"
"Of course. Look it up."
"Why do I feel like I’ve already lost."
She giggled. "No backing out now."
The game went about as badly for me as it could have.
I won a few rounds, mostly by luck, but Nicole seemed to have an endless supply of words I’d never heard of in my life. Every time I thought I’d finally caught her out, I’d look it up and discover that, annoyingly, she was right.
At some point, I stopped trying to question the validity of her vocabulary and started accepting that I was simply losing.
By the end, she’d beaten me badly enough that I decided not to ask for the final score. Some things were better left unknown.
We talked for a long time after that, nothing in particular, just easy, meandering conversation, the kind that didn’t need a direction to justify itself. By the time we finally said goodnight and I pulled the phone away from my ear, the call timer was still sitting there on the screen.
02:17:43.
I stared at it for a second, mildly stunned, then let myself smile anyway.