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But there’s only so much sunshine that a grump like me can take. And for three years, Ren has been pushing my limit.
I shove open the door, buoyed by the satisfied purpose of a woman whose life is ordered and predictable. Just how I like it.
Archaic male demonstrations of protectiveness are not sexy. Archaic male demonstrations of protectiveness are not sexy. Archaic—
I roll my eyes. “Forsooth, Wilhelmina, sometimes ‘I desire that we be better strangers.’ ”
“Interesting answer.” She sits back and opens her window, letting in a new gust of warm spring air. “Why was that interesting?” Ryder asks. Willa grins. “Because it really wasn’t an answer at all.”
“Ren Zenzero.”
“Sometimes I misread people,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you. It was a pleasant surprise. I thought the Shakespeare stuff was . . . an eccentricity. You telling me that this runs much deeper, I’ll respect that it’s private.”
I was thirteen when I was diagnosed with autism. The psychologist said I’d have been diagnosed sooner if not for my fantastic ability to follow rules, copy behaviors, and pretend I was “normal.”
It was only a matter of time before I’d have to stop pretending and get honest about my neurological difference.
“Maddox ruined your other one,” he says. “And I was pretty sure it looked like this. Is it a good match?”
“The buttons—” His voice cracks, and he clears his throat. “The buttons are adhered to a durable magnet. The panel around them holds the opposite magnetic pull and is reinforced so they can take a good tug.”
Buttons are a bit hard for my hands—especially early in the day or late in the evening, when they’re at their stiffest.
Clearly, he’s aware of my challenges, to the point he bought something for me out of consideration. Yet there’s no trace of that stifling, demeaning claustrophobia I’ve felt with just about everyone else I know. In this moment with Ren, I just feel . . . seen.
I fold my arms across my chest. “What are the rules of theater in this house?” Kris pouts. “Respect the story’s intent. Make your fellow actors look good. Foster a safe space for performance.”
There are these tiny moments when missing my dad is acute and unexpected. He died when I was twelve. I’m twenty-six. I’ve lived longer without him than with him, so why, so many years fatherless, do I feel like I would give anything right now to feel safe in his strong arms, to hear his gravelly voice comforting me?
but the brutal teasing I got for my name is like the last aching scar that just won’t fade. Nobody calls me Søren, except Axel when he’s looking for a fight. When Frankie says my name, it sounds warm, and when I let my imagination get carried away, I’d even say affectionate.
“The man who is worthy of your love is not going to treat you how your family did. You’re a bright woman, Frankie, but you seem to need the reminder that interabled coupledom can be mutually intimate, empowering, and reciprocal—”
“Talk about it with the therapist, please? It’s time to suit up for love. Because trust me, when love comes, you’re going to want to be ready. You haven’t felt those butterflies, that flip of your stomach, the sensation that your heart’s about to jump out of your chest. When you feel that, it changes everything.”
“Well, it says that we must accept, until we have reason otherwise, that the simplest explanation for your data is the most logical and thus likely one. It applies broadly, I think. To life. To feelings.” “Annie. I’m not a scientist. Ren and I aren’t an experiment.” “Well, you’re right, of course.” She steals a slice of my pizza and takes a bite. “But this is the simple truth: you and Ren like each other and feel comfortable around each other. Don’t you?”
“My little sister is on the spectrum. So, while everyone’s unique, and I’m no expert, I love someone who’s autistic. And I hope you know I’m a safe place for you to be you.”
“You okay?” “I’m not crying,” she says immediately. I squeeze her hand, rubbing my thumb in a gentle circle across her palm. “Of course not.” “It’s windy,” she says. “Very windy.”
You know the saying. ‘If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry.’ So, I crack jokes.”
“They don’t have to be amorous,” he says quietly. “They just have to be mine, for you . . . turtledove.”
All my hemming and hawing about my challenges’ potential pitfalls in a relationship and he never thought it would help for me to know he grew up seeing that kind of love firsthand?
“But then Axel was born, and I held him, those eyes just like mine staring up at me, and something clicked. I realized he loved me. Already, he loved me, just how I was. I’d made him with his mother, and he was my flesh and blood and not having most of my leg didn’t change that. Finally, I understood my life wasn’t over, only my idea of my life was.
“I’m tough,” I whisper. He nods. “I know you are.” “I can take care of myself.” “You have,” he says. “You still do. You always will. I’ve just joined in, too. Now we take care of each other.”
Frankie smiles and slips her legs between mine under the table. “I think you like me, Zenzero, conversational speed bumps and all.” God, if she only knew how much. “I more than like you, pumpkin patch. I love you, exactly as you are.”
“Good.” I lift my water in a toast to her. I’m not touching alcohol, not when I’ll be driving her home. “Congratulations on law school, sugarplum.” Her lips twitch as she lifts her root beer. “Thanks, pudding pop.”
“Because you have double-lung pneumonia,” Lo says, “and you’re one of mine. Because I love you, and when we’re healing, we need all the love we can get.”
“Frankie.” Scrubbing his face, he sighs. “I understood becoming a couple to mean that, among other things, when either of us was hurting, we were no longer alone in that. So, I have a relationship to your pain. It’s not mine, and I don’t get to tell you what to do with it, but I get to choose to love you through it. And if and when you need care and comfort—which, like it or not, the past forty-eight hours, you did—I get to be the person who gives it to you. That’s basically the point of a relationship. Isn’t it?”
Not a minute later, Lo reenters my room and looks straight from my tearstained face to Ren’s empty chair. “Okay. What level of self-sabotage did we just activate?”
“You reacted badly to being loved well.”
