Chapter Text
“How do you know if someone likes you?” Langa asks over the stove, a week after the move is settled and done and the two of them are starting to pick up all the pieces of their new life and set them in place. The question is so far out of left field that she assumes she’s misunderstood for the time it takes her to run the words back over. His Japanese is good, but it doesn’t have the nuance of someone who was raised there yet.
“Likes you?” she asks.
He turns, and she hides her wince at the new bruise on his cheek she hadn't noticed when she walked in. That boy. "Yeah. How do I know if someone likes me?" he repeats.
And something twists in her chest. This is a problem uniquely Langa, since he hit thirteen and all the baby fat started to go out of his features, and he gained inches on her and everyone else in his class in one summer. He went from friendless to a revolving door of confessions and indifferent dates he hadn’t seemed to quite realize were just that.
You don't have to go out with anyone who asks, Oliver told him in the end, and she was glad. He understood Langa in a way she didn't, with all Langa’s little peculiarities, all the little acts he felt obligated to that she never noticed. She’s noticing now, for the first time.
But then how do I know when to say yes? Langa had asked.
If you care about them. Oliver had shot her a look. If you want to spend time with them.
If you think they're cute, she’d added. That's why I went out with your Dad.
Really? That was why?
And she’d laughed. What else?
Good then. Langa will be fine. He’s got all my good looks.
Mine, you mean.
And that was enough. He didn’t bring home word of anyone new after that— friend or otherwise. It was bittersweet for a time, and then Oliver got sick, and it wasn’t anything, because everything was the same mess of the three of them, doing their best.
And then the two of them, doing what they could.
She shakes herself when Langa’s phone dings. He picks it up with the hand not occupied with a spatula and smiles that new smile of his. For a time, she didn’t think he would smile again at all. For a time, she didn’t think she would either, but she feels her lips tug up at the corners. “Who’s that?” she asks.
“Oh… It’s Reki.”
And that’s the first time she hears it, that name. “Are you going out again tonight?”
“Mm, yeah. Is that okay?”
They never had a curfew for him. Never needed one. Of course, it’s only now biting her in the ass, but if it keeps him smiling that, it’s worth it. He’s almost too old to listen even if she tried. “Of course, but Langa.” He turns to her. “Be safe.”
“I will.”
He’s lying, of course, but it’s a white lie, and one she appreciates. A few bruises won’t kill him. When he sits to eat, he puts his phone on the table beside his plate; it dings again a bite in, and he smiles. From upside-down she can see a heart, a thumbs up, a snowboarder.
“...Did someone ask you out?” she ventures. It’s a safe bet. Reki is the safe bet.
His ears tint. “Yeah.”
“And do you like them?”
He nods. The blush spreads.
“Is she cute?”
“He is.”
Oh. They never had this conversation. But somehow, it isn’t unexpected. Something unravels in her at the revelation, as if she knew somehow. Maybe Oliver did. Maybe Langa told him.
His brow is still furrowed. “But how do I tell if it’s a date and not hanging out?”
She sets her meal to the side and thinks of how to put it in terms that will make sense to him. “It depends on where you’re going. Is it somewhere romantic? The beach at sunset,” she starts listing off, “or maybe a park? Oh! A nice restaurant. Your father loved Italian. Sometimes I think he used date nights as an excuse to get pasta. That man.” She shakes her head and twirls one of the noodles around her chopsticks, the way Oliver taught her to a dozen times with a fork and spoon, as if she hadn’t learned the first time, and needed his hand on hers to remember how. It was sweet.
When she looks up, Langa is smiling, and it’s the closest thing to shy she’s seen since she started having to up at him when they talked. “But we’ve been to those places already.”
She chokes on nothing. “Can I see a picture of Reki?” she asks when she can form words again.
Langa picks his phone up, taps at it for a moment, and then pushes it toward her without hesitation.
The photo is taken on a roof somewhere in the city, Reki glowing in the sun, skateboard in hand. He’s as bruised as Langa, and his hair is dyed a shade that would look ridiculous on any teenage boy, but somehow doesn't on him. And oh, is he cute, all boyish charm and a smile it looks like he was born wearing.
She thumbs over by habit. The next picture is a selfie, not taken by Langa's hand, and probably meant more to be a picture of the board Reki is holding up between them than a selfie at all. The board is blue with a monster painted in white. The part that jumps out is the look Langa is darting, not to the board or the camera but Reki. It’s familiar. It’s a look she saw on his father’s face a thousand times.
They make a handsome pair. "Can you send this to me?" she asks, turning the phone so he can see. He nods.
She pulls it up later in her room in the quiet alone and looks, and thinks of Oliver, and tries not to cry.
It doesn’t work, but for once, the tears aren’t all sad. This was never the plan. The trajectory of their lives was never this. Moving countries, finding a new job, dragging Langa with her, restarting both their lives from square one. She's had time to regret the decision, but the Langa in the photo looks relaxed the way he rarely did anywhere but on the slope back home, and happy the way he never was around anyone but them.
Now the only real regret in her is that she's the only one there to see it.
It isn’t all perfect. Langa’s performance in school tanks. They have a serious talk about it; he swears he’ll do better; she settles for him passing. He’s almost never home at night, and in the morning, he’s always beat up and raccoon-eyed over the breakfast table. She wonders what it says about her that she doesn’t quite have it in her to be scared or mad about any of it. The board he carries around with him has twice as many scrapes, but when she asks him about it, he holds it that bit closer and tells her Reki made it for him.
Once, she calls. Curiosity gets the better of her, so she conjures up some question about breakfast and dials his number while he’s out past midnight. It goes through, which is a surprise, and then someone with a voice nothing like Langa’s answers it, and that’s another.
“Hi, Langa’s mom!” the voice says brightly. She gives herself three guesses as to who it is and the first two don’t count. The sound in the background is deafening—cheering, screaming, what might be airhorns—the sound muffles and Reki says, “Sorry, we’re uh. Watching a loud movie. Langa is in the bathroom.”
It’s such a bad lie she has to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. She really has gone nuts. What would Oliver say? “Is this Reki?” she asks, only to be sure.
“Yes!” he says, and, “Wait—Langa told you about me?”
It’s hard to tell through the static fuzz of background noise, and his voice is a little rough anyway, but she imagines he sounds surprised, and well. It’s not as if Langa is gushing with emotion. There are a dozen things she wants to tell him, but she settles for a light, “Once or twice,” she says, and that isn’t technically a lie, but it is a stretch of the truth if the friend Langa talks about at every meal is anyone but him.
“Did you need me to tell him anything?”
She contemplates it, and then decides on a light, “No, it’s nothing.” And then, because she can, adds lightly, “I’m sure it’s troublesome, but watch out for him for me, will you?”
He’s quiet a moment, and then he says with all the conviction of the young, “Of course. I won’t let anything happen to him.”
It’s as good as she’s going to get out of either of them, and a little better than she was looking for, honestly.
It occurs to her after to send Langa a quick text. Tell Reki to send me his number. And he does, and Reki does, and that’s something.
A month later they go on an overnight trip, the two of them. A real vacation to a beach with their pooled work money and a little extra she throws in because they aren’t flush but they aren’t doing so poorly that she wouldn’t move the moon and stars to keep the excitement in Langa’s voice at the prospect. It’s a healing vacation, Reki tells her, verbatim. Something about his arm and at least they’re trying to be discreet.
Langa comes back two days later with a sunburn, a bag of souvenirs, and a grin. It looks good on him, and she realizes he’s crossed over some line she missed; he hasn’t been a child in a long time, but he was always closer to her and Oliver than he was to anyone else. She isn’t sure that’s true anymore. It’s a revelation both bitter and saccharine-sweet, and then she opens the bag he gives her. Pilfered shells, a box of shortbreads stamped into wave shapes, assorted cakes; all the odds and ends she missed about home when she lived in Canada, all the things Oliver and him used to treat her to on the rare times they could take a family vacation. Maybe, no matter how old he is, he’ll always be young to her.
She has that thought, and then sees a different color under the line of sunburn on his neck.
“Langa—what is that?” She points to the dark little bruise, though she knows what it is, what it has to be.
He frowns, reaches up to pull at his collar. “Oh. I think Reki did that. We were messing around.” He uses the English word for it, and she wants to put her face in her hands. It’s not like it’s a surprise, at least.
She musters a little courage. “Are you two sleeping together?”
“Sometimes,” he says with indifference and not an ounce of hesitation.
This boy. She prays Oliver had this talk with him at some point. They mentioned it; he said he would, and Langa has to know—about all that. He’s almost eighteen. He has to know. “You’re using protection, at least, I hope.”
He frowns at her. “Not really. The helmet makes it hard to see and knee pads throw my balance off.”
She really does put her face in her hands then. “No, I didn’t mean…”
She eyes the picture on the shelf of the three of them, and the new one beside it, the one she added, of her son and Reki. Oliver would love this. Every moment of it.
“Okay, Langa,” she decides. “As long as you’re happy,”
“I am.” His phone dings. He smiles. She believes him.