Page 43 of Yours, Now and Always
Next to them, Colin’s insisting on holding Annalise so Maddie can eat with both hands. She looks at him suspiciously like he might drop her, but Colin lifts the baby with quiet confidence while saying, “I’m not just an uncle in name. I babysat Sarah enough to tank my dating life at one point. I’ve got this.” Annalise takes to him immediately and promptly starts drooling on his shirt. He barely notices. Or cares.
And Hayden. Poor Hayden is trapped between Tim and Marin, a position no man should have to endure unmedicated. Tim is mid-story about the time he accidentally got kicked out of a goat yoga class for “being too expressive with his breathing,” while Marin is spritzing the air with something she swears will calm his nervous system. Hayden’s nodding politely at both of them, but I’m pretty sure his soul has left the table. He hasn’t even noticed the tiny rose quartz Marin placed on his plate “for softening the masculine wound.”
There’s constant laughter. Not loud. Not forced. Just the kind that slips out when people feel safe together. Like it’s always been this way. Like we’ve always belonged to each other.
There’s a lull in the conversation. A brief, peaceful silence as people sip their drink, pass the last of the olives, and pretend they’re not all halfway lulled into a food haze.
And that’s when Tim stands like he’s about to deliver a TED talk no one asked for. “Okay,” he announces. “Before anyonetouches a single macaron or rustic tart, I need you to understand something.”
He holds up a plate of cookies with the seriousness of someone unveiling the Crown Jewels. “These are espresso cookies. Homemade. Hand-rolled. Triple-tested. Balanced for flavor, texture, and emotional catharsis. They are chewy. They are complex. They are, frankly, a spiritual experience.” A beat. “Which means they are not free.”
He sets the plate in the center of the table like it’s a ceremonial offering. “Price of entry is one soft truth. Vulnerability only. No lies, no deflection, and no surface-level shit like ‘I’m grateful for my family.’ I want depth. I want feelings. I want your damn soul on a platter.”
There’s a pause. Shifting in chairs. One of Gage’s brothers makes a noise that sounds like actual despair.
Tim grins. “You want the cookies? Show me the wound.”
No one moves and I stifle a grin. This is so Tim. So him in the way he tries to bond with people. And I’m pretty sure none of the Black family have ever met anyone like him.
Just when I think none of them are going to engage, Hayden reaches out and grabs a cookie. He looks at Gage and says, “Gage has always taken the hits for us so we wouldn’t have to. Amelia’s the first person outside our family who has taken hits for him.” His eyes find mine. “I’ve never seen my brother happier than he is with you.”
My throat goes tight.
It’s not the words he said, though those alone deeply affect me.
It’s that they came fromHayden.
Quiet, watchful, stoic Hayden. The one who sees everything and says almost none of it. And now he’s watching me like he’s already filed me underpermanent. Like I more than passedwhatever impossible checklist the Black brothers use to decide who they let in.
I swallow hard and give him a nod that feels too small for what he just gave me. But it’s all I’ve got right now, because if I try to speak, I might start sobbing.
Gage’s hand tightens on my thigh, and I exhale as I lean into him.
Tim gasps so dramatically you’d think someone just offered him designer boots and emotionally available men.
“Okay,” he says, eyes wide. “That? That is how you pay for a cookie.”
He gestures dramatically to Hayden, then looks around the table as if he’s waiting for applause. “Did you all see what just happened? That was raw. That wasreal. That was the emotional standard for the rest of this exercise. Don’t come in here with some watered-down gratitude journal bullshit after that.”
The table has gone quiet after Hayden’s truth bomb and I’m still emotionally reeling. Sarah is neither of those things. She’s locked onto one very specific violation.
“Language,” she says looking at Tim, eyebrows arched, channeling every stern librarian in existence.
“Anything I said was for passionate emphasis,” he says, eyes wide, looking at her like he just got caught swearing in front of the Pope. A tiny, judgmental Pope he’d throw himself in front of a bus for.
She’s not having a bar of his justification. “You saidshitandbullshit.”
“I was making a point,” he argues, gesturing wildly with both hands. “Adeeppoint.”
She puts her hand out, palm up. “You owe the swear jar.”
“Again? I’m already in for eighty-one dollars and a signed Taylor Swift vinyl,” Tim grumbles, as if she’s about to bankrupt him.
“Rules are rules,” Sarah says.
Gage chuckles next to me while Tim sighs and says, “I created a monster.”
“Icreated the monster,” I correct, deadpan.
