“Get through this, and I can go with you to the clinic, yeah?” he said. “You just need to make it to the morning, and we can walk in together.”
In that moment, my small offerings felt insufficient. I placed the tote bag of snacks gingerly on the table and walked toward Ricky, watching him gnaw at his thumbnail as he listened to his father’s exhausted rambling. The blinds cut harsh shadows across his face, the orange glow of the setting sun turning his eyes almost amber. He spoke to his father tenderly, like one would to a frightened child, listening to him describe his withdrawal symptoms with unending patience, offering words of encouragement, assurances of his support, and . . . God, how could I not love a man who loved like this? With his whole heart, even when choosing love was hard? Even when the only thing he could reliably expect in return was disappointment?
I roped my arms around his waist from behind and rested my head against his back. His voice vibrated into my cheek, and I let myself be lulled by the sensation, by the whooshing of my pulse in my ears and the thrum of his heartbeat against the flat of my palm. He twined his fingers through mine as he talked, running his thumb back and forth across my knuckles, and I hummed, content, as my mind formed the words that I already knew to be true. Because Tabatha was right. This . . . thing I felt for Ricky wasn’t just infatuation; it was something deeper, more fundamental than that. It was love, or at least something like it, and I was tired of trying to fool myself into thinking it was anything less.
Eventually, Ricky hung up. He turned around in my arms slowly, a chagrined expression on his face, like talking his dad through his withdrawal was a source of embarrassment.
“Sorry about that,” Ricky said. Then, with a small smile: “I know it’s probably bullshit. But he might actually be trying, so . . .”
In response, I grabbed ahold of Ricky’s collar and pulled his face to mine. It was a decisive kiss, a declarative press of my lips against his, and I hoped he knew what was in it—an apology, acceptance, a promise to myself to finally see him as more than a liability. When we broke away, his eyes were full of questions.
Before he could ask a single one, I jumped in with one of my own.
“Tabs and I are meeting up on Sunday to go over my presentation,” I asked. “Do you want to come?”
*
And this is how I found myself sitting at a long table in a private study room at our local library with Ricky and my very unamused younger sister.
Clearly all my newly awakened emotions had muddled my judgment. Introduce Ricky to your sister, he’ll like that, a voice in my head had said, somehow forgetting that my sister was the kind of Grade-A Mean Girl who had once made her eighth-grade teacher cry in the middle of class. I sent her a warning text in advance—Be nice—but, in her typical, boorish Tabatha way, she’d elected to ignore my request. If looks could kill, Tabatha would have burned Ricky to a crisp on sight.
“Hi,” Ricky said when we walked in through the glass door of the study room. “I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Tabatha said icily. In my peripheral vision, I could see Ricky flinch. Then she turned to me. “Your presentation?”
I pulled out my laptop and plugged it into the projector. My presentation, jazzed up by my personal graphic designer, flashed onto the screen, and I walked up to it as Tabatha hummed approvingly.
“It looks nice,” she said. “Eye-catching, but not overdone, you know.”
“Ricky designed the theme,” I offered, just to see how she would react.
Tabatha didn’t disappoint.
“Though, on second thought, those lines over there are a bit distracting,” she said matter-of-factly. “But that’s not important right now. We can get you something that looks better later.”
Ricky shifted in his seat.
“I think it looks plenty good now,” I said, already regretting my decision to put Ricky directly in the line of fire. Though, I reasoned, Tabatha was small fry next to my mother; if Ricky wanted to be involved with me, he might do well to get used to sitting in the Appiah family hot seat.
“You wanted my opinion, didn’t you?” Tabs said.
Then she proceeded to give it at every possible opportunity. I stood in front of my presentation, holding back a wince when Ricky offered a critique of one of my sentences only for Tabatha to outright tell me to pay him no mind, shooting her a warning look when she followed up his praise with criticism. Still, in between her swipes, Tabatha doled out useful advice, and I stopped several times during my practice presentation to jot down notes. After the first run-through, she even allowed Ricky to participate, once going as far as agreeing with him on a point about one of my figures. I was proud of my little sister. No matter how often I poo-pooed her “B-School preschool” degree, I recognized her shrewd judgment and her eye for marketing. With my loans in the way, Tabatha would make buckets more than me and soon.