Page 110 of What We Brave
I miss them.This having scheduled vacations and regular schedule has really messed with my family time.
"You should go," Blake says simply. "They're your parents. And it sounds like you miss them."
He's right. I didn't even realize how much until he said it.
"We'll be here when you get back," he adds.
We.Not "I'll be here."We.Both of them. Waiting for me to come home.
"What do you think they'll say?" Blake asks. "About... this. Us."
I set down my fork. "You mean about me dating two men?"
"Yeah."
I've thought about this. Late at night, staring at my ceiling, imagining the conversation. "They'll be surprised. Probably confused atfirst. They're missionaries — pretty traditional Christian values." I take a breath. "But they've also spent their entire lives serving people most churches ignore. They've seen every kind of family, every kind of love. I think... I think they'll want me to be happy more than they'll want me to be conventional."
Okay, so maybe that's not the totally honest answer. But it's the rosier outcome I'm hoping for. Because losing my parents over this? I don't know if I could survive that.
"That's good."
"What about you? What would your grandpa have thought?"
Blake goes still. For a long moment, he doesn't answer.
"He would have worried about me," he finally says. "Asked if I was sure, if I'd thought it through."
He turns the wine glass again. Slow circles.
"But he also..." His voice roughens. "He loved my grandmother for forty-three years. Said she was the only person who ever saw all of him and stayed anyway."
He stops. The glass goes still.
"I think he would have understood wanting that. Even if —" He shakes his head slightly. "I don't know. He was a traditional guy. Church on Sundays, one woman, one life. But he also spent forty-three years being grateful that someone chose to stay. So maybe he'd get it. Or maybe he'd just worry." A pause. "He worried a lot."
"Sounds like someone I know."
The corner of his mouth lifts.
We finish dessert. Blake pays, playfully glaring at me when I reach for my purse, and then we're back in his truck, driving through the dark streets to my apartment.
The drive home is quieter. Not awkward — just full. Like we used up all the easy words at dinner and what's left is the stuff that lives underneath language.
Blake's hand rests on the gearshift between us. His thumb taps a slow rhythm against the leather. No coat, because of course not. He runs hot, thank god, and the late February chill that has me burrowing into my jacket like a small burrowing animal — a mole, maybe, or one of those hairless cats that's always cold and vaguely upset — doesn'tseem to register for him. Which means there's nothing covering those rolled sleeves. Nothing between me and the forearms I've been trying not to stare at all night.
I lose that battle now.
The streetlights slide across his skin in slow pulses. Tendons shift when he turns the wheel. There's a faded scar near his wrist I've never noticed before, and I want to trace it with my thumb. Want to ask him where he got it. Want to press my mouth to it.
So that's where we are. That's the level of composure I'm operating at. Wanting to kiss a man's wrist scar like I'm in a BBC period drama and he just offered me his hand stepping out of a carriage.
He glances at me. Catches me looking. His jaw tightens — not in a bad way. In a way that says he knows exactly where my eyes just were.
Neither of us says anything.
The silence hums between us, and I let it.
I've kissed Blake twice now. Both times soft, careful — me reaching for him like he might shatter if I pressed too hard. And both times he let me set the pace, held himself so still, like one wrong move would scare me off.
