Bryan Washington

A Novel

Family Meal

Lindsay

I meant to ask Kai what he’d seen in me. What love looked like to him. It was a stupid fucking question and I never got around to it.

Why would I? Romance with qualifications is just a crush.

My family taught me the difference between acceptance, allowance, and understanding. Also: just being. Sometimes they overlap. Usually, they don’t.

Some people set the key of their lives inside you and simply turn.

There are bigger things to apologize for, I say. It’s hardly global warming.

Sometimes, says Emi, we think we’re doing the right thing because we’re told it’s the right thing. Or because it’s for someone that we care about. Or it’s for someone who’s cared for us. But it isn’t the thing that we need. Sometimes it even hurts us.

Emi takes a long sip from her beer. She stares at me like I should respond. Maybe we can only do what we can, I say. And we try to hurt as few people as possible.

There’s no way not to hurt anyone, says Emi. Even if you really try. You’ll only end up burning yourself.

Sure, I say. But I think it’s still worth trying.

I want you to do the things that you want to do, I say, but it has to be for you. Not because you feel like it’s something you should do.

I think when you’ve been in one place long enough, it starts to feel like that’s the whole world, you know? Seeing anything beyond it is hard. Like, it doesn’t even feel possible? And I think a part of me has been fighting to keep things that way in my life. Uncomplicated and easy. Which I guess is a kind of safety.

But that safety’s not real, I say. And you lose so much trying to keep it.

I’m saying that I want to stop being safe, I say. And I don’t know what that looks like. But I think it’s okay that I don’t know.

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