For a moment, I thought she was going to end things. Instead, she told me she wasn’t breaking up with me in Jess’s kitchen, and the precise reassurance almost made us both smile. But she wasn’t willing to keep pushing me to claim a relationship I might not be ready to acknowledge. When I said I was ready, she held my eyes and answered, “Then stop making me ask.”
I left the barbecue early after telling Maya I needed to think. She said okay, and I couldn’t decide whether the gentleness of her voice was hopeful or exhausted. The following morning, Sunday breakfast simply didn’t happen; no dramatic cancellation arrived, and neither of us pretended the silence was accidental. I stood in my kitchen with two clean mugs on the counter and understood how much of my supposedly stable life depended on somebody choosing to come through the door.
