The family tree printout was still on her bed where she’d left it, a tangle of names she half-recognized from holidays she’d half-remembered.
Jess sat cross-legged on the comforter with a glass of wine she’d poured twenty minutes ago and taken exactly two sips from, and she stared at the paper like it might rearrange itself into a clearer answer.
A Pollack and a McFerrin.
Married in 1962 in a small Ohio county that Jess had never heard of.
The marriage certificate had been scanned from a county records office, the ink faded to a pale brown, the signatures barely legible after six decades.
The website had flagged the connection as “unverified,” algorithmic speculation, not a confirmed match, but it was there, and she couldn’t stop looking at it.
The strangest part wasn’t the potential relation.
The strangest part was how she felt about the person on the other side of it.
She’d started the week evaluating a very weird first date, and somewhere in the middle of the waiting, she’d stopped evaluating and started wanting.
She was already choosing him, test result or not.
Robby McFerrin.
The DNA-test guy.
The guy who’d looked at her across a coffee-shop table with a cowlick and a calm delivery and asked if she wanted to verify their shared ancestry before they got attached.
The guy who’d eaten Schmidt’s doom casserole like it was a normal Tuesday dinner.
The guy who’d spent the whole week being steady so she didn’t have to be, sending texts that said you don’t have to have an answer tonight instead of are we okay?
She could still hear the bell over the coffee-shop door, still see the specific scrape of his chair when he’d pulled it out for her before she could do it herself, the half-second pause before he’d said the word Pollack like he was testing whether the floor would hold.
It had held.
She’d laughed.
He’d looked relieved in a way that had nothing to do with the joke landing and everything to do with her still being there after it did.
She reached for the closest thing with edges, a pen off the nightstand, not because she needed it but because her hands wanted a task while the rest of her caught up.
That was the tell, if anyone had been watching.
Give Jess a feeling too big to hold, and she’d find something small to hold instead.
She should be terrified.
The sensible part of her brain: the part that had been burned by nice guys before, the part that Cece had spent a decade sharpening, was telling her to slow down, protect herself, wait for the lab result before she let herself feel anything real.
But she’d already let herself feel something real.
She’d done it at the coffee shop, in the moment after he said the word Pollack, when she’d looked at his face and seen not a strange guy making a strange joke but a person who was genuinely, absurdly, tenderly trying to do the right thing before either of them got hurt.
A knock on the doorframe.
Cece.
“You’ve been in here for an hour with that printout and two sips of wine.
I’m intervening.”
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re spiraling.
There’s a difference.”
Cece walked in without waiting for an invitation.
Cece never waited for invitations, and sat on the end of the bed, tucking her legs under her.
She picked up the printout, scanned it, set it back down on the comforter.
“It’s an unverified algorithm link.
It could be nothing.
Your grandmother had a lot of cousins, Jess.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you sitting in the dark with it?”
Jess looked at the printout again.
The names.
The thin gray line.
The marriage license from a county she’d never visited.
“Because I like him.
I really like him.
And I don’t know if I like him because he’s actually great, or because the uncertainty is making everything feel more intense than it would be otherwise.”
Cece considered this.
Her face was unreadable: the face she used when she was doing the math before she spoke.
“Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“I know.
But I can’t tell which one is driving the bus.”
“Okay.
Let me ask you a question.
Forget the test.
Forget the Pollack name.
If you met Robby at a bar, normal circumstances, no genealogy involved — would you still be interested?”
Jess thought about it.
She thought about the coffee shop, yes, but also about the moments since: the dry line he’d landed at the loft dinner, the way he’d held her hand at Nick’s bar and not let go, the way he’d said terrifying and good can be the same thing like it was the most obvious sentence in the world.
“Yes.”
“Then you have your answer.”
“But what if the test —”
“The test is Tuesday.
You’ll know then.
But you don’t have to wait until Tuesday to admit you’re already in this.”
Jess picked up her wine.
Took a sip.
It was warmer than she liked, but she drank it anyway.
“When did you get so good at this?”
“I’ve been watching you fall for guys for over a decade.
I’ve picked up a few things.”
“This one’s different.”
“They’re all different until they’re not.”
“This one is actually different.
He asked for the test before the coffee, Cece.
Who does that?”
“A guy who’s either very thoughtful or very good at seeming thoughtful.”
“He ate the casserole.”
“Anyone can eat a casserole.”
“He ate the casserole and said it was good and asked for seconds.
He told Schmidt the cheese selection was inspired.”
Cece was quiet for a moment.
Then, reluctantly: “Okay, that’s a data point.”
“It’s a good data point.”
“It’s not a bad data point.”
“Also he complimented the cheese selection.
Specifically.
He named which cheese.”
“Which cheese?”
“I don’t remember, that’s not the point.
The point is he had opinions about cheese at a stress dinner, Cece.
That’s a whole personality trait I didn’t know I needed until I had it.”
“You’re building an entire case out of dairy.”
“I contain multitudes.
Some of them are apparently about dairy.”
They sat in the quiet.
The wine was definitely too warm now, but Jess kept holding the glass, because holding it gave her hands something to do while the rest of her processed what she’d just admitted out loud.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand.
She picked it up.
Hey.
Just wanted you to know, you don’t have to have an answer tonight.
The test will give us one on Tuesday.
Until then, I’m still here.
She read it twice.
Then a third time, slower.
“He just texted me.”
“What does it say?”
She read it out loud.
Cece’s eyebrows moved a fraction of an inch.
“That’s a very good text.”
“It’s a very good text.”
“It’s the kind of text a guy sends when he’s not trying to win you.
He’s just trying to be present.”
“I know.”
“That’s rare.”
“I know.”
“You’re already in it, aren’t you?”
Jess looked at Cece.
Cece already knew the answer: she’d known before she walked through the door.
“Yeah.
I’m already in it.”
“Before the test.
Before you know.”
“I know it’s dumb.”
“It’s not dumb.
It’s scary.
But it’s not dumb.”
Jess set the phone down next to the printout, screen-down, like putting away something she planned to come back to.
Cece was still sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, not moving to leave yet, and neither of them mentioned that the wine had gone from too-warm to completely abandoned, and neither of them minded.
The thin gray line connecting a Pollack to a McFerrin felt less heavy than it had an hour ago.
She still didn’t have an answer about the genealogy.
But she had a text she’d keep, whatever Tuesday brought, and she had the admission she’d made to Cece: she was already in this, test result or not.
The printout could wait until morning.