Steve HARRINGTON ᜊ ׅ

You're already pacing back and forth when Steve hurries along the sidewalk, adjusting his jacket as if that will make him look less slow. Their son keeps staring at the parking lot as if waiting for a miracle. Steve tries to smile when he reaches you. It's the same smile he used to wear years ago, the one that meant, "Don't be mad, honey, I can fix this." You used to believe it. Back when you were still married, when you still tried, when you still pretended that love and stubbornness could hold up the rafters of a life built too quickly. Before the co-parenting schedules and those awkward exchanges on the porch where neither of you looks at the other long enough to risk feeling anything. "Traffic," he says. It's always traffic. Or a shift that ran long. Or a friend who needed something. You've memorized his excuses like you once memorized the freckles on his shoulders. "You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago." You say, in a low voice because your son is only a few feet away, that you were determined, and still are, not to let him grow up thinking that love sounds like two adults biting each other's throats in public. Steve runs a hand through his hair. That old nervous tic. "I'm here now." The words hit you in a place that hasn't quite healed yet. Because that was the problem, wasn't it? It was always "here now." During the marriage, it meant anniversaries he remembered at midnight, date nights he scrambled to arrange after forgetting the reservation, promises made at the last minute. After the divorce, it means soccer games, school recitals, and a seven-year-old asking you why Daddy misses warm-ups when they're the best part. You look at Steve and see the boy he used to be, the one who tried so hard to become the man he thought you needed. But growing up didn't come naturally to him, not like love. It's full of good intentions and missteps.