My mom asked me to watch the rice so she could wrap the fish in foil and put it in the oven. I’m not sure why the rice needed watching. I think she just wanted me to keep her company and didn’t trust me with anything more complicated.

The men folk were “resting”—i.e., having a beer. Evidently, they’d expended a lot of energy pulling two dying fish out of the water and needed a break. After my mom was done prepping, and the rice no longer needed a babysitter, she suggested we go sit down with the men until it was all ready.

They stopped talking as soon as we came into the living room, which made me a little nervous. I sat next to Carson on the couch, and my mom took the chair across from my dad’s. They looked at each other, something passing between them that made my mom sit up a little straighter and take a deep breath.

I knew it. My dad hated my boyfriend. Carson’s normal charisma had failed, and now my parents were going to give me the we-don’t-approve talk. Then my mom and I would start crying, I’d start yelling at them for being so judgmental, and we’d spend the next twenty-four hours not speaking to each other. Maybe Carson could switch our plane tickets again—get us both out of here sooner.

“Laney, we need to talk.” Dad set his drink down on the coffee table, and I steeled myself for the impending argument. “I’m just going to come out and say it. Your mom and I have been having some problems for a while now and were headed toward a separation.”

Carson's “what” was even louder than mine, but that wasn't saying much considering how hard my throat had just clamped down.

They were headed toward a separation? What did that even mean? “You’re splitting up?”

“For future reference, sir,” Carson said. “That wasn’t a great way to come out and say it.”

I looked at him, eyes and mouth gaping. “You knew? You knew about this, and you didn’t fucking tell me?”

“Language, Laney!” my mom sputtered.

“Right, Mom. Me using a bad word is really the shit we should be focusing on right now.”

Carson looked at me.

My dad looked at me.

My mom looked at me.

And I broke. 

My eyes stung, and my lungs couldn’t fill with air. I looked around desperately before realizing that, for once, I couldn’t go to my parents for help. They wouldn’t be there for much longer.

“Laney,” my mom said softly, “wait. Let us explain.”

Explain what? My parents were in love and then they weren’t. Pretty sure that summed it up, didn’t it? Oh, except for the added bonus that the three of them had all been very careful not to tell me what was going on in my own family.

Without saying anything, I ran. I was halfway down the hall before realizing I didn't want to be in the room I’d grown up in, the one where I’d dreamt of having the kind of relationship my parents had. Pretending I couldn't hear sounds no kid ever wants to hear coming from their parents’ room.

I didn't want to be in the house where every day I came home and tossed my backpack onto the fourth kitchen chair and pulled out my homework while my mom cooked and my dad helped me. Except when I was doing math. 

I didn’t look at them as I went through the living room and out the front door, slamming it behind me without waiting to see if it actually closed or not. I jogged down the street, following the path I’d taken every day from kindergarten until high school. But this time, I didn’t know where I was going. How could something so pure, so comfortable and safe, suddenly feel so unrecognizable?

I didn't want to be here. I didn't want this to be happening. I didn't even want Carson to be near me. Because, suddenly, I wasn't sure people were meant to be together. Maybe it was psychologically impossible. 

“Bill, Jane,” I heard Carson yell and the door fly open and bang against the siding. “Start talking. Now!”

What was there to talk about? People grew and changed and decided they didn’t like each other anymore. And there was no way to stop it from happening. An inevitability.

“Lane! Lane! Damn it. Slow down.”

“I just want to be alone for a little while,” I said without turning.

“No, you don't. You want to hide and start thinking all sorts of unhealthy shit, and I'm not going to let you.”

I didn’t stop. Or look back. I couldn’t.

“I’ll tackle you if I have to, but I'd really rather not,” he said, easily catching up to me. “At least not until we get home, and I have a much better reason to. Don’t force me to do it, Lane. You know I will.”

I shrugged his hand off my shoulder.

“Come on, babe. Think of the neighborhood kids. Lots of permanent scarring would happen if I had you on the ground underneath me right now.”

I knew how awful I looked as soon as I saw his expression. Pity maybe? I didn’t know… anything anymore.

“Stop running away.” He spun in front of me and held both my shoulders. Then his hand moved to my face, my cheeks, gently wiping away my tears. “Why didn’t you let them explain?”

“Because I don't need to hear why, after twenty-eight years of marriage, they're giving up.” Then I told him what I feared the most. “Why would it be different for anyone else, Carson?”

“Don't do this, Lane.” His eyes intensified, his jaw clenched, his grip on my arms tightened. “Please don't do this.”

“I'm not breaking up with you. I just… Would you ever give up on me, Carson?”

“You? No, never. Do you have any idea what I went through to get you?”

“Yeah, it was hell,” I teased. “All those innuendos and obvious hints? You poor thing.”

“I know. And then I had to deal with your insane libido. Still do, actually.” His voice softened. “Believe me, that’s something I will never, ever give up.”

“Your sacrifice is remarkable.” I wiped my eyes. “But what about the rest? Like when we fight? We’re going to fight, and we suck at it.”

He stared at me for a minute, long enough for me to understand where his head was. He had the same faraway expression every time he thought about his father.

“I’ve seen fights,” he said. “I’ve been in fights. But I’ve never known someone so completely that I could ignore anything they say.”

“You consider that a good thing?”

He nodded. “If you ever say something to be hurtful, then I’d know you’re hurting. You’re a beautiful person, babe, so when you’re not, I know something else is going on, something deeper. And, after some poor reaction time, I remember I know that and try to figure out what’s really going on.

“That’s why I’ve never worried about us fighting. Yeah, it’ll happen. But ultimately, I know you don’t really want to hurt me. Just like I never want to hurt you. So as long as we don’t forget that, five minutes of yelling at each other now and then won’t change how much I love you.”

“You’re a good man, Carson Bennett.”

“Plus, I’ve mapped out a contingency plan for every possible reason you might want to get rid of me, and why I might wanna get rid of you. Your list of reasons is a lot longer. Mine only has one.”

“What’s the one?”

He hesitated, looking at the ground a few feet away. “If you ever get dumped in toxic waste and become a super-villain.” He stopped laughing when I smacked him in the chest. “Okay, truth?”

“No, I want you to lie to me,” I grumbled.

“If you ever come to your senses and realize how much better you are than I am. If you ever decide you would be happier without me. Then I would let you go. I’d be a miserable wreck, but I’d let you go if I knew it would make you happy.”

“It wouldn’t.”

“Then we don’t have to worry about it. Right?” He paused. “Now, I think you owe it to your parents to hear them out. They’re both good people who would never give up on you, right? So don’t give up on them.”

I nodded slowly. “I’m still mad at you for not telling me.”

“In my defense, I have very little experience caring about what families think or do, and we haven’t exactly had a lot of alone time to chat since I found out an hour ago. Plus, there’s a lot more to the story, but you need to hear it from them. Not from me. I’m just an innocent bystander in all this. An innocent, fantastic-looking bystander.”

I wasn’t ready to open my mouth and smile yet, so my laugh went through my nose and tickled.

“I won’t lie to you, babe.” He kissed my cheeks, smacked his lips together, and said, “Salty. Like the ocean your dad and I never actually made it onto. The fish is fraudulent.” He slipped the cuff of his shirt over his hand and gently wiped away the rest of my tears.

“Fish can be fraudulent?” I asked quietly, still fighting off my smile. Going to a strip club was his default excuse for everything. He never went to work or meetings or the store to pick me up my favorite ice cream. I was just lucky they happened to carry mint chocolate swirl at the local nonexistent strip club.

I might’ve bought the lie once or twice, but one, he’s a terrible liar, two, our neighborhood would never allow a strip club to operate there and three, in San Francisco, almost all the strippers are men.

“You’re going to tell me you went to a strip club instead, aren’t you?”

“Sure am. Where do you think we got the fish?”

“Ugh.” Instead of smacking him, I burrowed my head into his chest and squeezed him as tightly as I could, wishing I could live right there forever and never have to move again.

Unfortunately, a car would eventually come and kill us both if we didn’t get out of the middle of the street.

“I’m not quite ready to talk to them yet.”

“Then, come on.” He pulled me away from the house. “You can show me where you scraped your knee when you were ten, or the park where you and your friends used to get loaded late at night, or the woods you had to walk through on your way to school where lots of spooky shit happened. Assuming these suburbs are anything like the suburbs in almost every supernatural movie ever made.”

“If you want to see the neighborhood’s haunted house”— I yanked him across the street by the hand—“it’s this way.”