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“Okay,” she says quietly, stepping across the living room and into the kitchen. She doesn’t stop until she reaches me, pressing up on her toes and leaving a kiss at my cheek. “Finish the food, and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
I wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her tight against me and pressing my nose to her hair just to breathe her in. “Okay,” I murmur. “Sounds good.”
She’s smiling when she pulls away, saying something about freshening up in the bathroom, and I watch her the entire time she goes, trying to piece together how to lay all my secrets bare to the one person I worry about disappointing the most. But she deserves to know, I resolve. Especially if there’s any hope to ensure this thing between us is lasting.
And I want it to be, I realize all at once.
Desperately.
Dinner is a quiet affair. I’m aware the entire time that Lila is giving me space, letting me approach on my own terms the subject of the phone call she heard; she’s always so careful with other people. It has always felt like Lila can sense what others need more than they know themselves. When we were kids, it was as simple as a cookie after a hard test, or maybe even a dumb joke after a bad day—I don’t think I ever fully realized the extent of how good she’s always been at reading people, most of all me.
It just makes me appreciate her more.
“That was good,” she says, dropping her fork onto her plate.
I can’t help but laugh. “It was your sauce. I just reheated it.”
“Hey, you didn’t burn it.”
I roll my eyes. “I rarely burn my food; you realize that, right?”
“Pics or it didn’t happen.”
“Right,” I snort. I push the last bite I’m avoiding around my own plate, my jaw working as I try to figure out just how to broach the conversation I’m mostly sure I need to have with her. I want to have it, even. “So, about that call…”
“If it’s difficult, we really don’t have to talk about it.”
She reaches across the table to place her hand over mine, and in that moment, I have a distant thought that it was inevitable that I end up here with her. How could I not, when she’s always been so sure in her blind faith in me? Has anyone in my life ever had that for me?
“I want to,” I say with confidence. “I do. It’s just…I don’t know where to start.”
“Wherever you want,” she tells me in a soothing tone. “I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me.”
“Well, you know why I left for Canada.”
“I know…as much as I can,” she says carefully.
“Meaning you know what you read.”
“I told you, I never believed that.”
“And I believe that,” I assure her. “But I know that you had nothing else to go on.”
“But they had it wrong, right? You didn’t cheat on Mei.”
There’s a certainty in her voice, but there’s a question there too. Like some part of her is desperate for confirmation that her rock-solid surety of who I am isn’t wrong. It’s that soft question in her tone that makes me more determined to tell her everything.
“I didn’t.” My tone is quiet, mostly because I’m realizing this is the first time in years I’ve talked about this with anyone who wasn’t directly involved. “Mei and I were already separated when those pictures came out. We had already figured out we didn’t love each other like that.”
“So that woman…” I watch her soft throat work with a swallow, her lips pressing together briefly. “Was that the same woman you were talking to on the phone?”
Even now, when her voice wavers, I don’t see any hint in her eyes that she doesn’t trust me. It makes me feel…whole. It makes me want to give her every bit of trust in return.
“It was,” I say honestly. And when her eyes dip to the table, her head bobbing with a soft nod, I feel the words I’ve been keeping from the world tumbling out right after in a rush. “She’s my sister.”
Lila’s gaze snaps up to meet mine, her mouth parting in surprise. “Your sister?”
“Half,” I correct.
