I knew my friends were still upset with me over the next few days, because our group text chat was oddly silent. Usually it was filled with random thoughts, pictures, or links that we came across throughout the day, but now half of what happened in there was from me.

See, I wanted to tell them, bitterness on the back of my tongue, this is why you’re not family. Family wouldn’t break apart over something so small as this. Because family loves you no matter what, because you’re bound by blood.

Well, no matter what, unless you’re gay and your parents are homophobes.

I was screwed.

Then I shared my concerns with Logan while he was chopping vegetables for dinner. I was spending most nights at his place, but I hadn’t raised the question about moving in together again. I wasn’t sure I could face his apathy. Or rejection.

“They’re probably busy with things,” he said.

“Too busy to text?”

“Didn’t you say Roe was freaking out over edits or something for that thing they wrote? And Rosa had a bad cold?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled beside him, prodding the steak on the skillet. “But they’ve all been busy before and it never stopped them.”

Logan sighed. “Or it did, but you weren’t concerned about it. Now you think there’s a reason, so it seems bigger than it is. I’m sure it’s nothing.”

It’s nothing became my mantra for the next week, and it got me through. By the following Thursday, the chat was back to being a bustle of conversation. Thank goodness. They weren’t mad; Logan was right and they’d been busy. I felt silly, but at least Logan was the only one who’d witnessed my anxiety.

Then Friday happened.

Jackson: In some sort of miracle, Rosa’s cold is all cleared up! Everyone want to come over for brunch on Saturday morning?

Jenna: Laura and I are in!

Roe: Sounds good. I’ll bring that french toast casserole.

Mark: Exactly what I need. I’ll be cliche and bring the mimosas.

I frowned at my phone, wishing this conversation had happened two days ago, although it couldn’t have as they’d been waiting for Rosa to feel better. But still. I typed, Sorry, I can’t make that. I promised to go into work and do overtime for this project. What about Sunday?

Jackson: Saturday is really better for us. We’ll see you next week, I guess.

I barely saw the flood of texts that followed, my phone pinging constantly in my hand, my screen flashing to life every five seconds.

“We’ll see you next week, I guess.”

I swallowed as the chat continued moving, and I had to scroll up again to read those words. Again and again. As if I might have misread how easily I’d been dropped. Nope. Every time the words were the same.

“We’ll see you next week, I guess.”

Eventually I silenced the conversation and opened my texts with Sue.

How are you doing?

It was Friday night, and she probably had plans with her own friends or her boyfriend, but that didn’t make the silence that answered me any easier to take.

It’s nothing, I tried to tell myself. But the mantra wasn’t working. I felt detached—not like an emotionless robot, but like a balloon that had slipped—no, that a child had let go of. I was drifting away on whatever currents wanted to take me, and the child was tearlessly watching me go. Or, worse yet, had already forgotten me.

I shuddered. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s nothing.

Yet it certainly felt like something.

I was still sitting on the couch when Logan got home. The mantra had become a faint buzzing in my head, white noise that lulled me into a Zen-like state. The click of the door closing snapped me out of it, and then Logan’s warm voice said, “Honey, I’m home.”

A dry chuckle escaped my chest as I stood and tried to shake off the malaise that weighted my limbs. I didn’t want him to know I’d been worrying about my friends again. It’s nothing. He understood how important friends were, but he also seemed to handle conflict—in general, everything—with a natural ease I couldn’t grasp. No need to bog him down with my fretting.

“It’s a little weird that I got here before you when you work from home,” I said, moving to greet him on the way to the kitchen. He had a bag of groceries in each hand, and I took advantage of his incapacitation to slide my hands up his chest and mold my body to his front. His strength seemed to seep into me. Not like I was stealing it, but like it overflowed from him. I smiled when he leaned down to meet my kiss.

“Good evening to you too. I finished up work early, so I decided to run out and get something special for dinner.”

“Oooh? Special?” I took one of the bags, because it was a nice thing to do, but also to peek inside. There was a head of lettuce, a clove of garlic, and a packet of shredded cheese.

“Well, not like super special. But my mom’s fish taco recipe.” He threw a smile at me over his shoulder as he headed to the kitchen, and the warmth there melted away the last of my earlier tensions.

“That sounds very special to me. I’m excited. Want a hand?” I followed him to the kitchen since I had half the ingredients.

“If you’d like. You can prep the veggies while I cook the fish.”

“I hope I don’t mess it up.”

He grinned as he started pulling out bowls and pans. “It’s pretty straightforward. I’m doing the hard part.”

“Frying fish?”

“Well,” he amended, “I’m doing the hardest part. This is a special recipe, but I didn’t say it was difficult.”

He stuck the recipe to the cabinet with a clip, so it was easy to access as he worked. I glanced over it. “It sounds delicious, and now I want to know why we haven’t had it before.”

“Mostly because I couldn’t find the recipe. And once you’ve had Mama’s, no other recipe will compare.”

“Oooh, the challenge is on!”

Working side by side, we put dinner together without much fuss and only a small mess, laughing as the oil spit and hissed and we danced around trying not to get burned. For the first time in what felt like hours, the tension in my shoulders melted away, the knot in my stomach loosened, and I was able to breathe. Once everything was prepared, I set the table while he stacked the finished ingredients into the soft shells. I set out two beers as he brought the food to the table.

“It looks delicious,” I said, sitting down.

He bent over and kissed my temple. “It tastes good too. Thank you for your help.” He sat across from me, and we filled our plates with tacos.

They tasted even better than they looked. The fish was tender, flaking apart in my mouth and spilling the spiced juices across my tongue. The pico de gallo’s flavors accented the fish, and the lettuce added the perfect amount of crunch.

I swallowed the last bite of my third taco and leaned back with a sigh, resting my hand on my happily full stomach. “Thank you, that was exactly what I needed.” Later, I’d blame what came out of my mouth next on the immense satisfaction coursing through my veins. Or maybe I needed to feel wanted. Either way, I said, “I’m looking forward to moving in together so we can cook like this more often.”

Across the table, Logan stiffened, and guilt shot across his face. If I’d been eating, if I hadn’t been watching him, hoping to see warmth in those lovely dark-gray eyes, I would have missed it. But I was watching, and I saw.

That fragile peace I’d found in the past hour shattered.

“You do still want to move in together, right?”

Another hesitation that seemed to stretch between us like the gulf of a desert. That guilt lingered in his eyes. My heart plummeted to my stomach, where it lurched uneasily on the pile of food.

“Never mind.” I found myself standing up. The screech of the chair against the tile sent a shiver down my spine.

“Isaac, sit down, it’s not . . .” He wet his lips.

I waited and waited, but he didn’t finish that thought. Maybe he didn’t know how it ended either.

“It’s not?” I echoed, trying to gather up the pieces of myself and form them into something that wasn’t raw pain. The shape they took was anger. “You never really wanted to move in together, did you? I mean, sure, maybe at the beginning, but not now you’ve had time to think about it. You made that goddamn stupid rule about me telling my parents before we moved in together so that we wouldn’t ever do it. Because you didn’t think I’d come out, did you?”

I sucked in a noisy breath, and he reached out, opening his mouth, but I was faster.

“Well, joke’s on you.” My voice cracked, and I had to swallow down the revulsion swimming up my throat. “But don’t worry, I won’t demand anything from you that you don’t want to give.” I stepped away from the table, nearly tripping on the leg in my haste.

“Isaac, it’s not like that!”

Spinning toward him, I pinned him with a glare. “Not like what? Not like I lost my family for you because you said we couldn’t move in together until I told them? Not like you’ve been avoiding it ever since? I’ve seen you, Logan! I mention living together, and you act like you’d cut your leg off to get out of it. You say yes with the reluctance of a torture victim! I don’t need a goddamn diagram,” I spat. “You already drew me one.”

I saw the wincing guilt in his face, and I didn’t want to see any more. I didn’t think I could. My cobbled-together anger was already beginning to crumble, and I couldn’t let him think me pitiful. More pitiful. He’d done nothing but be my strength when I was weak, and he was obviously sick of it. I marched toward the front door.

He followed me to the small foyer. “Isaac, wait! C’mon, let’s sit down and talk.”

A paraphrase of the old favorite We need to talk right before he broke my heart. I shoved my trembling feet into my shoes, clinging to my scraps of anger. “About what? About how I gave up my family for you and I shouldn’t have?” Why was I saying that repeatedly? Did I enjoy the painful crevices of guilt on his face that deepened each time I said it? “You don’t want to move in together. That’s fine.” My voice cracked. It wasn’t fine at all. “I just need to go home now.”

I yanked my jacket on, and he grabbed my hand. I wanted to pull it away so he wouldn’t be able to tell my entire body was shaking with the earthquake currently happening, but he held tight. He kissed my knuckles, and I noticed, from some far-off distance, that his lips were dry. His breath whispered across my skin. “If you want to go, I won’t stop you. But we need to talk.”

Those words again. His grip had loosened, and I tore my hand free. “No, we don’t. I think it’s clear what you’re going to say. God, I can’t believe I thought you were worth losing my family over.”

Silence.

The door slammed behind me.

I hurried down the hall, not quite running, trying to get to the privacy of my car before the tears started falling. But I hoped this was one of those times when the love of my life would chase me down the hall and tell me it had all been a misunderstanding.

The door I’d left behind never opened.

As I cocooned myself in metal, my first tears fell.