Chapter 31 The Woman Who Made Me

Chapter 31 The Woman Who Made Me


I told Chase about the dinner on Thursday morning. We were walking across campus, his hand in mine, when I said it casually like it wasn't a big deal which it absolutely was.

"My mom wants to meet you," I said. "She said I should invite over for dinner."

Chase stopped walking. I already took two more steps ahead before I realized and turned around.

He was looking at me with an expression I couldn't fully read — something between surprised and something warmer than surprised.

"Your mom?”  he said.

"Yeah, she heard about the PA announcement and she's been asking since. I'm sure Priya told her about it." I shrugged, going for casual. "You don't have to if it's—too much of a pressure on you "

"No babe, actually have been dying to meet her to see where you've got your sexy body and beauty from I bet you look just like her" he said.

"What? stop that you flattering me" I chuckled.

"When?"

I looked at him. "its on saturday."

"Okay," he said lookingat me softly and started walking again.

I fell back into step beside him. "Just like that?"

"Just like that." He glanced at me sideways. "Did you think I would say no?"

"I thought you might need more time to prepare."

"Prepare for what."

"For my mother," I said. "She's going to ask you a lot of questions Chase. My mother does not do small talk. Just so you know"

"Good," he said. "Neither do I."

I looked at him.

He looked back at me with that expression — steady, certain, completely unbothered — and something in my heart did what it always did around him which was completely ignore my instructions to behave. He took my face in his hands right there on the path and kissed me, pulled back and looked at me with those cute eyes at close range and I felt the blush move up my neck before I could stop it.

"Chase." My voice came out slightly unsteady.

"Yeah."

"You won't be the death of me." I pressed my hand flat against his chest. "Do you love me that much? You're just all over me."

The full smile. "You're complaining?"

"No, I'm just feeling loved and special and I wanted it to last," I said.

He kissed me again. Shorter this time but no less deliberate. Then he pulled back and looked at me steadily and said, "You are the most precious thing that has ever happened to me. You know that?"

I stared at him.

"I would burn the whole earth down before I let anything touch you," he said like a fact he was reporting. "That's how much I love you."

"Chase Hendricks," I said.

"Zara Owens," he said back.

"Stop saying things like that in public."

"Why."

"Because I don't know what to do with my face when you say things like that."

He looked at my face. "I think your face is doing fine."

I turned and started walking because if I stood there looking at him any longer I was going to say something embarrassing and I had a reputation to maintain.

He fell into step beside me laughing quietly and took my hand again and I let him and that was the whole of it.

Saturday arrived faster than I was ready for. My mom had been home since four, which was early for her, and I could tell she had been preparing because the apartment smelled like real cooking — not the quick weeknight meals she always threw together between shifts but the slow deliberate kind that meant she had been in the kitchen for hours.

I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched her stir something on the stove.

"Mom."

"He's not here yet," she said without turning around. She turned back to the stove. "Go get the door when he knocks."

Chase knocked at six exactly. I opened the door and he was standing there in dark jeans and a clean shirt, jacket over one arm, and he looked — good. Not the campus version of good. The kind of good that meant he had thought about it. He had a small bunch of flowers in his hand that he held out when I opened the door like it was the most natural thing.

"For your mom," he said.

I stared at the flowers.

"You brought flowers," I said.

"My mother raised me properly," he said.

I took the flowers and stepped back to let him in and he walked into our apartment and looked around with the quiet attentiveness he brought to everywhere new and I watched him take it in — the small kitchen, the photos on the wall, the bookshelf that had been mine since childhood, the evidence of a life that was modest and full and completely ours.

My mom appeared in the kitchen doorway, she looked at Chase and Chase looked at her.

For a moment nobody said anything. My mother was not a woman who lost her composure easily. She had worked doubles for years, raised me alone, survived things I only knew the edges of. She was steady and practical and not given to visible reactions but she looked at Chase Hendricks standing in her hallway and I watched her take a breath that was just slightly longer than her normal breath.

"Mrs. Owens," Chase said. "Thank you for having me." He held the flowers out. "These are for you."

My mom looked at the flowers, looked at him then at me.

Then she smiled — the full real one actually, the one I had not seen at full wattage in longer than I could remember and said "Well. Come in then."

Dinner was the best hour I had experienced in a long time.

My mom had made her jollof rice , the real African jollof rice,  the one that meant she was in a good mood and wanted to say something without saying it directly — and Chase ate two full plates which I watched her note with quiet approval because Linda Owens believed that eating someone's cooking properly was the most honest compliment you could pay them.

They talked.

My mom asked questions the way I had warned him she would — direct, specific, not cruel but not soft either. Where was he from. What was he studying. What did he want to do with it. How was his mother managing. She asked about Micah and Chase's face did the warm thing it always did when Micah came up and my mom watched his face do that thing and I watched her watching it.

And then she asked. "Why her," she said. Setting her fork down. Looking at him directly across the table. "Out of everyone at that university. Why my daughter."

The table was quiet and I looked at my hands. Chase was quiet for a moment, then he looked at my mother steadily and said "Because she walked into a room and was completely herself without asking anyone's permission and she's so honest in a way that most people are too afraid to be, she was kind to my little brother from the first minute and he chose her before I even knew I was going to." He paused. "And because she makes me want to be the kind of person who deserves to be around someone like her."

The kitchen was completely quiet and my mom looked at him for a long moment then she looked at me.

I was looking at the table because my eyes were just hiding because of shyness, something I had not authorized and I needed a moment.

"Hmm," my mother said. Which from Linda Owens was approximately equivalent to a standing ovation.

Chase picked up his fork and continued eating like he hadn't just dismantled my entire composure in one paragraph.

After dinner Chase stood up from the table and walked around to where I was sitting and I barely had time to process what was happening before he leaned down and kissed me — right there, in my mother's presence, in front of Linda Owens who had known me for eighteen years and had never once seen a boy kiss her daughter.

I heard my mother make a sound and I pulled back immediately. "Mom—"

"I am right here," she said. "I am sitting right here at this table. I can see everything that is happening."

"Sorry," I said, not entirely meaning it.

"It's fine but not when I'm still here.” She smiled.

Chase straightened up and looked at my mother with complete composure and said "I apologize Mrs. Owens. That was disrespectful."

My mother looked at him,looked at me then she looked back at him. "At least you have manners," she said. Then her mouth moved and she laughed, like she  really laughed, the kind that came from somewhere genuine and I laughed and Chase smiled the full smile and the dining table was filled up with the sound of it, warm and real and entirely unexpected.

My mom shook her head and picked up her glass. "Young people," she said, mostly to herself.

Chase sat back down and under the table, his hands found mine and I held on. And immediately that reminds me of myself, the girl who used to eat toast alone on her birthday and forget what day it was. Who folded cruel notes and put them in her bag and called it handling it. Who had spent years making herself invisible in rooms that should have been safe.

Sitting at the dining table with Chase Hendricks' hand in hers and her mom still laughing at something and the jollof rice demolished and the flowers in a glass of water on the counter.

This was what it felt like really, not the movie version but the real one. Warm, ordinary but special and completely enough. Not the movie version.