The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together Chapter 25

The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together Chapter 25: Where She Stands Now
Six months after the divorce was final, I had a Sunday morning to myself.
Theo was at Priya’s. He and her daughter had become friends over the summer in a way that was goodfor him, normal in a way nothing in his life had been normal. He had slept over the night before so they could finish a marathon of a show I refused to watch with him because he insisted I was too old for it.
I made coffee. I sat in the patch of sun by my window with my laptop open and a draft of the third chapter of my book on the screen.
The book was almost done. The working title was the same as the podcast.
*The Day I Stopped Holding This Family Together.*
My phone buzzed.
*Ryker: Brunch?*
*Sienna: Where?*
*Ryker: I’ll come to you. There’s a new place on the corner. They have biscuits.*
*Sienna: I don’t need to be sold on a biscuit, Ryker.*
*Ryker: Half hour?*
*Sienna: Half hour.*
I closed my laptop. I made the bed. I put on jeans and a soft sweater. I put on a small amount of mascara. I did not lie to myself about why.
He had been very good for six months. He had been my friend. He had been my business partner. He had not, once, asked for anything else. He had let me show up to weekly investor meetings without ever finding excuses to sit too close. He had let me grow a company beside him without ever once putting his hand on my back. He had let me figure out who I was on my own terms.
And in those six months, I had figured something out.
I knocked on his apartment door at the agreed time, because he had texted *change of plans, biscuits are bad, come up.* He opened it in a sweater and old jeans. His hair was wet. He had clearly just gotten out of the shower.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You said biscuits were bad.”
“Biscuits were a pretext.”
“For what.”
He stepped aside. The kitchen table was set for two. There was a stack of pancakes. Bacon. Fresh fruit cut up the way someone who has watched my refrigerator does it. A cup of oat milk cortado, the exact right temperature.
“Sit,” he said. “Eat.”
I sat. I ate.
We did not talk much.
When I finished, he reached across the table.
He did not take my hand. He moved my plate aside, gently.
“Sienna.”
“Yeah.”
“It has been six months. The book is almost done. The fund is profitable. Theo is happy. Your divorce is final.”
“Yes.”
“I told you, that night six months ago, that I was not going anywhere. I have not gone anywhere. I am still here. I am asking now.”
“Asking what.”
“If you would like to begin.”
I looked at him.
“Begin what, Ryker.”
“Whatever this is. Slowly. On your timeline. With your son’s blessing, which by the way I will earn myself. I am asking if you would like to begin.”
I sat very still for a long moment.
I thought about the kitchen I had walked out of. I thought about the carrots on the cutting board and the sticky note and the school portal alert. I thought about Donna and the bulldog and the word *finally.* I thought about a man in a Lucid Air who had been waiting six years to drive me away from a building, and who had then waited six more months to ask me to drive *toward* anything.
I thought about how he had asked.
He had said *begin.* Not *be with me.* Not *marry me.* Not *belong to me.*
*Begin.*
“Yes,” I said.
His face changed. I had not realized he had been bracing.
“Yes?”
“Slowly. On my timeline. With my son’s blessing, which I think you already have, although please don’t tell him I told you that.”
“Sienna.”
“Yes.”
“Can I kiss you.”
“Yes.”
He stood up and came around the table.
He did not move fast. He did not move like a man claiming. He moved like a man who had spent six years drafting eighty-four emails and not sending them, and who was now going to be very careful about how he opened the door he had been waiting in front of.
He cupped my face with both hands.
The first time he kissed me, it was soft. Brief. A question.
The second time, I answered.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine for a long moment.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi.”
He sat back down. He picked up his coffee. He looked at me across the table with an expression I had never seen on a man’s face before, in my whole life.
It was attention.
Just that.
He was paying attention.
And I, finally, was the only thing he was paying attention to.
After a while, my phone buzzed. I checked it.
It was Theo.
*Theo: Priya wants to know if you’re coming for dinner. Also I told her about brunch. She says you owe me ten bucks. I told her I would take five.*
I started laughing.
I turned the phone toward Ryker.
He read it. He smiled. It was the rare full one, the one that softened his whole face.
“What do I owe you,” he said.
“For what.”
“Whatever the wager was.”
I shook my head.
“It’s not your wager to settle. He’s mine.”
He nodded.
“For now.”
“For a long time.”
“For a long time,” he agreed.
I leaned back in my chair. The sun was coming through his big windows. The coffee was still warm in my hands. Out beyond the glass, the city of Austin was doing what it did on a Sunday morning — slow, hot, golden, alive.
I thought back to the night in Cade’s kitchen.
The pasta water. The blue flame. The sticky note. The phone with the alert. The moment I had reached out and turned the burner off and listened, for the first time in six years, to my own house in the silence.
I had thought it was the end of something.
It was not an ending.
It was the moment the foundation finally held.
Now I lived on top of it.
I had built it myself.