~~~~ Emery’s Pov ~~~~~
We’d barely made it through the first ten minutes of my recounting before Priya interrupted for the third time, this time practically vibrating with the effort of not saying whatever was clearly building behind her teeth.
“Okay, but genuinely,” she said, leaning forward on the couch, tea forgotten, “when this becomes official — and it is going to become official, Emery, I’ve seen the way that girl looks at you — you have to let us plan something.
A little party.
Nothing big.
Just us, maybe Jordan’s roommate, some decorations that say ‘finally’ in big letters.”
“There’s nothing to make official.
We haven’t even—”
“You almost kissed in a parked car outside your house,” Jordan said, not looking up from where she was scrolling through her phone, entirely too smug about the whole situation.
“I think we’re past the point of pretending there’s nothing here.”
“If you two do finally become a couple,” Priya continued, undeterred, “you have to let us know immediately.
Like, mid-date, if that’s what it takes.
I refuse to hear about it secondhand from a gossip account again.”
I opened my mouth to argue, some tired, half-formed protest already forming, when I heard it — the soft, unmistakable creak of the hallway floorboard just outside the kitchen, the one that always gave my mother away no matter how quietly she tried to move through the apartment.
I froze.
Priya and Jordan noticed my expression shift and both went quiet almost instantly, twin looks of alarm crossing their faces as they followed my gaze toward the hallway.
But the creak didn’t repeat.
No footsteps came into view.
Just silence, and the distant sound of a cabinet closing gently in the kitchen, like someone had been standing there a moment too long and had decided, deliberately, not to make her presence known.
“Do you think she heard?” Jordan whispered, barely audible.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back, my stomach dropping somewhere near my shoes.
“Maybe.
Probably.
That floor only creaks when someone’s standing right at the edge of the hallway, listening.”
“Oh no.” Priya’s eyes went wide.
“Oh no, Emery, if your mom heard the word ‘couple’ and ‘kiss’ in the same conversation about a girl you’ve never mentioned to her—”
“I know.”
“Does she even know you’re—”
“I know, Priya.”
The three of us sat in a strange, tense silence for a moment, all of us straining to hear any further sound from the kitchen, but there was nothing else, just the ordinary hum of the refrigerator and, eventually, the sound of my mother’s bedroom door clicking shut down the hall, soft and unhurried, like she hadn’t heard a single word.
I didn’t believe that for a second.
I walked Priya and Jordan home a little while later, the three of us bundled against the cold, my mind only half in the conversation as we made our way down the quiet street toward their dorm.
“Tell me you’re not in trouble,” Priya said eventually, bumping her shoulder against mine.
“I don’t really know,” I admitted.
“My mom’s never really said anything about — any of it.
She’s never asked, and I’ve never really volunteered it, mostly because there’s never been anyone worth mentioning before now.”
“Do you think she’ll be upset?
About the girl thing, I mean, not the tutoring-turned-dating thing.”
“No.
I don’t think it’s that.” I turned the thought over as I said it, trying to find the actual shape of my worry instead of the vague dread sitting in my chest.
“My mom likes seeing me happy.
She’s just — she’s watched me go through some rough breakups.
Nothing that ever got serious, but enough that I think she worries more than she says.
If she heard Priya talking about us becoming official, I think she’s probably more worried about me getting hurt again than about who exactly might be doing the hurting.”
“That’s actually kind of sweet,” Jordan said.
“In a terrifying, overprotective-mom kind of way.”
“She just wants me to be okay.
She’s earned the right to worry a little, honestly, given everything she’s had to carry the last few years.” I said it lightly, but something in my chest tightened around the words anyway, the familiar mix of love and guilt that always came with thinking too hard about my mother and everything she’d quietly given up so that I could have things like scholarships and library shifts and, apparently now, secret almost-relationships with hockey captains.
We said our goodbyes outside their building, and I walked home alone, the cold doing nothing to clear the knot that had settled in my stomach since that floorboard creak.
By the time I got home, my mother was already in the kitchen, her sleeves was pushed up, something simmering on the stove that smelled like the kind of dinner she only made when she had extra time and wanted the apartment to feel like more than just a place we slept.
I hovered in the doorway for a second, watching her, trying to read anything at all in the set of her shoulders, but she just glanced up, gave me her usual small smile, and gestured toward the cutting board.
“Chop the peppers?”
I did, working beside her in a silence that felt heavier than our usual comfortable quiet, both of us moving through the familiar motions of dinner prep without either of us saying much of anything.
I kept waiting for her to bring it up — the kitchen creak, the overheard conversation, any of it.
But she didn’t, not once, not through the chopping or the simmering or the slow, deliberate way she set the table for two.
We ate in near silence, the kind that used to feel easy between us and now felt loaded with everything neither of us was saying.
“Mom,” I finally said, setting down my fork.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but she didn’t raise her head to glance at me, her eyes staying fixed on her plate in a way that told me everything her words weren’t.
“Talk to me if you want to say something.”
She finally looked up.
“What was it you wanted to tell me three weeks ago?” she asked.
“You started to, one night, and then you never finished.
I’ve been meaning to ask.”
I sat with that for a second, caught off guard, mentally scrambling back through three weeks when I texted her.
“Oh.” I actually slapped my own forehead, a little embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I really forgot.
I meant to tell you sooner.
I just — things got busy, and then it felt weird to bring up out of nowhere.”
“I got a tutoring job.”
“A tutoring job?” She set down her own fork, something like surprise crossing her face, gentler than I expected.
“Mm-hm.
It pays well — really well, actually, better than the library shifts.
I’ve been doing it twice a week for a few weeks now, on top of everything else.
It’s part of why rent’s been easier the last couple months.
I should’ve told you sooner, I just didn’t want you to worry about me taking on too much.”
My mother studied me for a long moment, something working behind her expression that I couldn’t fully read, and for a second I braced myself for the question I was sure was coming next.
Something like —
*and is this tutoring job also the reason you were talking about with Priya and Jordan about becoming someone’s girlfriend*
But instead she just reached across the table and squeezed my hand once, quick and warm.
“I’m proud of you,” she said simply.
“For carrying all of this.
I know it’s a lot.”
“Mom—”
“I heard some of what your friends said tonight,” she added, gently, before I could stop her.
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.
I just happened to be walking past.”
My whole body went still.
“I’m not going to pretend I understood everything,” she continued, her voice steady, careful in a way that felt deliberately kind, “but I heard enough to know there’s someone.
And I heard enough to know you’re happy, which is the only part that actually matters to me.”
She squeezed my hand again.
“Whoever she is, whatever this is — I just want you to be careful with your heart.
That’s all.
That’s the only thing I’ll ever ask.”
I didn’t have words for a moment, something thick and grateful lodged in my throat, and I thought about every version of this conversation I’d been dreading, every worst-case scenario I’d built up walking home in the cold, none of them anywhere close to the quiet, steady grace sitting across the table from me now.
“Her name’s Calloway,” I said finally, my voice smaller than I intended.
“It’s new.
I don’t really know what it is yet, honestly.”
“That’s okay,” my mother said, and for the first time all night, she smiled, real and unguarded.
“You don’t have to know yet.
Just don’t forget to tell me things, next time.
Even the scary ones.”
“I won’t,” I promised, and meant it, feeling something settle in my chest that had been braced tight since that floorboard creaked three hours ago.
Not relief exactly, but something close to it, the particular relief of being known, fully and gently, by someone who’d been carrying you your whole life and had absolutely no intention of ever setting you down.