Puddin' (Dumplin', #2)

by Julie Murphy

Abuela chuckles. “No, but that movie got one thing right.” “What’s that?” I ask. She grins. “God created dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.”

“You’re a Lewis boy,” says Keith. “Theresa,” he calls over his shoulder, “didn’t we go to high school with a Lewis?” Mom steps out from the kitchen in a food-coloring-stained apron. “You know, I think your father was a few years ahead of us,” she says. “Class of eighty-nine, ma’am.” “Hey,” I say, interrupting their trip down memory lane.

How. How old are these parents? Are they all gen X? Does that change how I read these interactions as a millennial who is a kid of boomers and parent of zoomers?

“Hey, um, I don’t know what exactly happened today, and you don’t have to tell me. Unless you want to at some point,” he adds. “But, um, I know you don’t have a lot of people right now, and I just want you to know that I can be your person.” He coughs into his fist. I stare at him for a long moment. I can feel my whole body turning to mush. Like I could just nod and let this life with Mitch happen to me in the same way it did with Bryce. I like Mitch a lot. But I liked Millie, too, and look where that got me. “I need some time to think,” I tell him. “But thank you. Because I really don’t have any people at all. Not anymore. Can we just keep taking it slow?”

This is care.

He smells like boy deodorant and sour-cream chips. And somehow, I’m really into it. Boys are straight-up sorcery.

Mama says Austin was made to be a tiny-big city, but now it’s trying to be a big-big city in tiny-big-city pants, which actually makes some weird kind of sense.