Page 51 of Angel
Angel makes coffee without asking and slides a mug into my hands like he knows exactly how much I need grounding. He doesn’t hover; study my face like I’m a forecast he’s trying topredict or ask how I’m feeling every five minutes. That might be the most miraculous thing of all.
We move around each other carefully, but not cautiously. There’s a difference. I don’t Google. That’s the rule. I catch myself reaching for my phone more than once, thumb hovering over search bars I know too well. I stop, breathe, and set the phone down. Information won’t give me control, only the illusion of it. I learned that the hard way.
Instead, I sit on the porch and listen to the cicadas buzzing like they’ve always done. The sound is steady. Ancient. Indifferent to my drama. The world is not holding its breath. I drink water because I’m thirsty, not because it’s part of a plan. I eat when my body asks, even when that means toast at noon and soup for dinner because anything else feels like too much.
Some days I’m ravenous. Some days the smell of coffee makes my stomach turn. My body is talking. I’m learning not to interrupt it.
The clubhouse feels different when I walk in again. Not because anyone knows. They don’t as we haven’t told them. But this isn’t something I want to perform yet. I feel different inside it. Less like I’m failing in a room full of mothers, like every child’s laugh is a reminder of something I don’t have.
Polly runs past me and nearly collides with my knees.
“Sorry, Auntie Stevie!” she chirps.
I laugh and crouch down, steadying her.
“You’re good, trouble,” I say.
And for the first time in a long time, her small hands on mine don’t twist something painful in my chest. They just feel warm. Angel watches from across the room. He doesn’t smile too big but that smile just for me is there on his handsome face.
When Tank makes some dumb joke about Angel hovering near me like I might disappear, Angel just grunts and throws a peanut at him. Normal.
At night, fear sneaks in. It always does. The dark is where imagination lives. I lie awake staring at the ceiling fan, watching the shadows spin slow circles above me. Every cramp is suspect. Every shift in pressure feels like a warning.
My mind tries to catalog everything. Angel feels it when my breathing changes. He always has. Even when I thought I was hiding it.
“Talk to me,” he murmurs into the dark.
“I’m scared,” I whisper.
I expect him to say something reassuring. Something confident, but he doesn’t.
“I know,” he says. That’s it. Not it’ll be okay, this one’s different. Just I know.
He pulls me closer until my back is pressed against his chest and his arm is draped heavy over my waist. His hand rests there, not gripping, warm, present. And somehow, that’s enough to get me through the night.
The next appointment looms like a quiet storm on the horizon. We don’t talk about it much. But it lives between us. In the careful way Angel checks his calendar. In the way I notice him filling up the gas tank earlier than usual, my pulse jumps every time my phone buzzes.
The night before, I pack my bag slowly. No rituals, lucky socks, or talismans. Just my wallet. My keys. A bottle of water. The notebook I use for therapy, filled with words that aren’t measurements. Angel stands in the doorway watching me.
“You ready?” he asks.
“No,” I say honestly. “But I’ll go anyway.”
He nods once. “I’ll be right there.”
I believe him. That’s new too. There was a time when I thought believing someone would protect me from pain. Now I understand belief is just choosing to trust despite it.
Sometimes I sit on the edge of the bed and press my palm to my stomach, not to claim, not to count, not to calculate. Just to connect.
“I’m not going to disappear again,” I whisper.
Angel finds me one afternoon sitting on the back steps, notebook open in my lap.
“You writing?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
He sits beside me but doesn’t ask what. I tilt the page toward him anyway.
