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Friday and weekend nights in Lawrence and Adam’s apartment had a regular pattern, and this Friday was no exception. Lawrence and his daughter sat at the kitchen table, while Adam stood by the stove working on dinner.
Diana put down the marker she was using. “Is it almost ready?” she asked for the third time in five minutes.
“Like maybe ten more minutes,” he repeated
“Does it have zucchini in it?” She scrunched up her face in disgust.
“It’s got one vegetable you hate,” Adam answered. “But, I’m gonna make it so that you don’t hate it, and you can’t even taste it. If you can even guess what it is, then you can have one mouthful of whipped cream. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Lawrence looked up from his laptop with an expression that said he was very much not in agreement with this deal. Adam just smiled and turned back to the vegetarian chili he was working on.
He’d never been much of a cook in his previous life. Most of his meals used to consist of cereal or instant noodles; or sometimes something like yellow mustard spread on a heel of bread, because that was all that he had in the apartment. Once he moved in with Lawrence, he had the opportunity to eat actual adult, human food.
More than that, taking over cooking meant he had something to contribute to the household. As much as Lawrence had assured him that it wasn’t a problem, Adam still hated the knowledge that Lawrence was doing the lion’s share of supporting them. He made some money doing shoots for bands and stuff (along with Lawrence telling him he shouldn’t give up on his dumb “art photography" ambitions), but it wasn’t much.
Cooking, though, was something Lawrence was epically shitty at, so it was a chance for Adam to be useful. Of course, Lawrence still found a way to be annoying about it, buying Adam a stack of huge, glossy cookbooks that must have cost at least a hundred dollars total.
God, rich people didn’t know how not to be the fucking worst.
Adam turned out to be a damn good cook, if he did say so himself. Lawrence especially noted that he was able to work around Diana’s picky eating, amazed that he’d been able to actually get her to eat broccoli on multiple occasions. There was also the recipe for making ice cream in a Ziploc bag that was probably the best childhood memory he had and that Diana thought was the best thing ever.
“She thinks you’re about the coolest grownup on the planet,” Lawrence had informed him once. “Probably because she’s doesn’t actually think you’re a grownup.”
Adam had shrugged. “I’m okay with that.”
Getting along with Diana had actually been about the last thing he expected to happen. Alison abso-damn-lutely didn’t like the idea of her daughter hanging out with her ex-husband’s twenty-seven-year-old boyfriend he met when they were chained up in a bathroom by a serial killer. When they first moved in together after the "separation," Lawrence told him as tactfully as possible that he didn’t want Diana getting attached to him, if they weren’t sure that…
They didn’t want to say exactly what, but Adam agreed. On top of that, Lawrence only got to spend weekends with his daughter, and Adam didn’t want to take time away from him.
A year into their relationship, things were different. Adam was letting himself believe that maybe he wouldn’t fuck up this thing with Lawrence. Lawrence was right that he and Diana did seem to get along. He hadn’t known that little kids could be cool, but Diana was fun to hang out, and she seemed to enjoy hanging out with him too.
Alison even thawed a little. She’d started to let Diana stay on weekdays when it was convenient and even said she was okay with Adam watching her. Now that was a change.
For a few minutes, each of them focused on their individual tasks, cooking dinner, filling out EMRs, and working on a school project.
“Hey, Adam?” Diana said eventually
Adam looked up from the stove. “Yeah, Di?” (He was the only one that she let call her that nickname).
She frowned thoughtfully and pressed the pencil to her lips, like she was a writer hard at work at her first novel. “What are your mom and dad’s names?”
Adam stared dumbly. “Huh?”
“For class we’re supposed to do a family tree, and I already know Mom’s and Dad’s parents’ names, but I don’t know your parents’ names.”
He stood there with his mouth slightly open, spoon poised over the saucepan. Diana was doing an assignment about her family, and she was asking about him. “Why do you need to know that?”
“Because you’re part of my family, so I have to include you in it.” She said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Adam turned to Lawrence to help him make sense of what was happening. Lawrence was smiling from ear-to-ear, seeming like he was barely containing his delight. “Was your mother’s name Linda or Lianne?”
“Lianne.” Adam was surprised Lawrence had even been able to guess. He’d only brought up his mom a handful of times since they met each other.
“How do you spell that?” Diana asked.
“Uh, L-I-A—”
“Slow down!”
“Eeeehhllllll…”
“Not that slow!” she said with a giggle.
He started over spelling the name at a reasonable speed. Once she’d finished writing, she looked up at him again.
“And what’s your dad’s name?”
Adam was pretty sure he’d never told Lawrence his biological father’s name. “My dad’s name was Adrian. A-D—”
“Wait, I wanna guess. A-D-R-E-N?”
“I think it’s A-D-R-I-A-N,” Lawrence said. “Right, Adam?”
“Yeah.”
While Diana focused on her paper, tongue stuck out in concentration, Adam turned back to the chili he was supposed to be stirring. He’d been happy that he and Diana got along and that she was cool with her dad living with him—that she understood and didn’t have a problem explaining to other people that her dad lived with his boyfriend Adam. But that wasn’t the same as her saying that he was a part of her family. He barely talked to his own mom. The idea that someone else would consider him part of their family… it was just weird to think about.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“Are they on there too?”
“No, I just wanna know.” She picked up a glue stick and set to work.
“I have a sister called Megan.” He wasn’t going to get into the tangled net of half- and stepsiblings.
‘“Megan’s my second best friend’s name!” she enthused. “Where do your parents and your sister live?”
“They live really far away,” he said. It definitely wasn’t the time to tell her that his dad had died when he was younger than she was now. “Way farther away than your grandma and grandpa live.”
She pressed down the last bit of paper. “Dad can you look at it and tell me if it’s good or not?”
“I’m sure it’s perfect.” Lawrence moved a chair over so that he was sitting next to her. “Can Adam look at it too?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Adam turned the heat down to simmer and walked to the table. He slid into the chair on her other side. He ruffled her hair in the way that always made her feign annoyance as she giggled and slapped his hand away. Her demeanor quickly grew serious as she held up the piece of paper.
“It’s not a hundred percent done yet.” She cautioned them.
The picture was a collage of construction paper leaves connected by branches, all growing from a tree trunk labeled Diana. Above that were leaves reading Mom: Alison and Dad: Lawrence, with her grandparents and then great-grandparents above that. Connected to Dad by a brown line was another leaf labeled Adam.
Mom, Dad, and Adam. All there on the family tree, all on the same line, almost as if they were all just as important. Like he was a part of her family.
“It looks really good,” Lawrence says. “Your handwriting is beautiful.”
“Adam says it’s better than yours.” She shot Adam a mischievous smile which he returned.
Lawrence shook his head. “Of course he would.” He pointed at Adam’s name. “What will you say if someone asks you who Adam is?”
“I guess I’ll say he’s like my stepdad, except you guys aren’t married. And I’ll tell them that sometimes boys have boyfriends and girls have girlfriends.”
Lawrence had told him that Diana had mentioned that her dad had a boyfriend to classmates before. Adam was immediately worried, but Lawrence assured him that she hadn’t gotten any ruder responses than “that’s weird.” Most her classmates knew about divorce (50% of marriages, right?) and thought that her dad dating another guy instead of a girl was just unusual or even cool in its strangeness.
But, he didn’t know that Diana would call him her stepdad. Dad. Someone was calling him a dad.
“Is there something wrong with it?” Diana asked him.
Adam realized he’d been staring at the paper. Diana couldn’t guess about the existential epiphany he was having. She just assumed he was thinking about her work.
“No, dude, it’s awesome. Is that the moon up there?”
“Yeah. It’s like that picture you helped me take of the moon out in the daytime.”
(He’d started teaching Diana the basics of photography, and she was clearly stoked about it. She’d switched her career goal from fashion designer and zoologist to fashion designer and wildlife photographer. That picture of the sky was currently on the fridge).
“Well, it’s really cool. You’re gonna get an A-plus.”
She beamed. “Thanks, Adam.”
“I’m sure it’ll be way better than all those other kids'.”
“That’s not necessarily how you want to look at it,” Lawrence said reasonably.
Adam rolled his eyes, drawing a laugh from Diana.
Lawrence put a hand on her shoulder. “Alright. Time to clear this away and get ready for dinner.”
“You too," she responded.
He smiled and patted her head. “Of course.” Adam didn’t know anything firsthand how Lawrence had been with ignoring his family for work before the bathroom, but it seemed pretty clear he'd become a lot better about it since he and Adam moved in together.
Adam finished making dinner and got the table set up, while Lawrence took Diana to put her school stuff away. He’d just finished pouring her glass lemonade when Diana rushed back into the kitchen, midway through repeating a story her friend from ballet class had told her about her trip to Hawaii.
As the dinner went on, she was too busy hoovering down her chili to focus on what hated veggie she was eating. At the end of the night she guessed beets, incredulous when Adam revealed it was zucchini.
“But zucchini tastes gross,” she whined.
“Then, I guess you’re gross,” he countered.
She gave him an exaggeratedly sour expression. Adam returned it. He softened the blow with a mini Crunch bar from the candy stash, Lawrence begrudgingly having to take the jar from the top shelf that was far out of Adam’s reach, let alone Diana’s.
“All right, hon,” Lawrence said. “Let’s get you off to bed before Adam spoils you anymore.”
“Hey, she ate gross zucchini: give her a break.”
Diana grinned at him while Lawrence rolled his eyes.
“C’mon, pumpkin.”
Adam knew Diana was officially old enough that she got embarrassed when her dad used the nickname in public, but she was young enough she still liked it at home. She led Lawrence up the stairs, racing up while Lawrence needed more support from the bannister.
Adam busied himself gathering up the dinner dishes and bringing them to the sink. He hadn’t done a lot of cleaning dishes at his old apartment. All of his plates and cups and pans and things could have easily fit in a drawer even of Lawrence’s post-divorce apartment. He ate off of paper plates or just standing in front of the stove, which was lucky since the dishwasher had been broken since he moved in.
A year on, he was still getting used to living with Lawrence and having money just not be an issue. He still sometimes felt like a leech, like he wasn’t supposed to be there. Some days his brain came up with any excuse to make him feel like a piece of shit.
He kept scrubbing at the plates as he heard Lawrence’s distinctive uneven footsteps. (He didn’t need to use the cane to get around anymore, but the physical therapists had said that at his age he was probably always going to walk with a noticeable limp).
Lawrence stopped behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He kissed the nape of Adam’s neck. “Hi.”
“Hey. She in bed?”
“Mhm. She’s reading her book. Apparently she started and finished another one just this week.”
“Dude, your daughter’s really smart.”
“She is.”
A few moments of passed with Adam rinsing out the saucepan while Lawrence leaned on the counter and watched him quietly.
“Penny for your thoughts?” he said eventually
Adam rolled his eyes. He remembered how much older than him Lawrence was when he said stupid shit like that. “What do you think?”
“You shouldn’t be surprised. She’s seen you almost every weekend for a year. She knows you and I live together, and she likes you. That, and she’s the sweetest kid in the world. Of course she’d think of you as her family.”
“Yeah, I guess.” He dried his hand on the dishtowel.
Lawrence placed a soft hand on Adam’s lower back. “You okay?”
“Yeah. It’s just… I don’t know. This is all just so fucking weird.” He took a deep breath. “Before everything, I wasn’t sure I was gonna make it past thirty-five. I definitely didn’t think I was ever going to be someone’s, you know…”
“Dad?”
He threw up his hands and leaned heavily against the sink. “Fuck, I don’t know why she doesn’t hate me. I’m just the guy who her dad divorced her mom to get with.”
“You know that’s not true.”
He nodded. Yeah, he knew that. It had taken a while, but eventually he let himself trust Lawrence and remember how clear it had been that him and Alison were never going to last. no matter what would have happened.
He folded his arms, looking down at his feet. “I hated my stepdad,” he mumbled.
“From everything you’ve told me your stepfather was a bastard.”
“Well, I’m a bastard.”
“Adam…”
“I know, I know.”
He felt Lawrence’s palm on his cheek, gently easing his face up. “Adam. I love you. Diana loves you. We’re all happier, because you’re here.”
“Okay, okay, don’t get all…” He waved a hand vaguely. Schmaltzy, Lifetime movie, talking-about-feelings, because Adam had never done that in his life, and it was still completely alien.
“I know you don’t mean it when you say things like that,” Lawrence continued.
Adam shrugged. “Yeah.” Lawrence was right. Insulting himself had become instinctual. Acknowledging it took at least some of the bite out of actually hating himself. But, there wasn’t the same force behind those jokes now, though. The change hadn’t come consciously, but the days just gradually became less miserable. Maybe living with someone who kept insisting that he loved you was a good thing. Maybe so was spending time with a kid who actually liked you. Who’da thought?
“Yeah,” he repeated more strongly. “I know.”
“Besides,” Lawrence said, smiling. “Most stepdads try their hardest to be the ‘cool’ dad, and it’s just embarrassing. You’re not even trying and Diana already thinks you’re so much cooler than me.”
“I mean, it’s not hard to be a cooler dad than you.”
“Ha ha,” Lawrence intoned.
“I mean, I also always could be her older brother,” he said with a grin. Pointing out how much younger he was than Lawrence always got his boyfriend hilariously, adorably, wound up. He went up on his tiptoes and waited. Lawrence obliged by leaning down and kissing him.
“You know how important Diana is to me,” he said after pulling away. “You’ve made her happy, and there’s nothing else that could make me love you more.”
“Thanks.” He couldn’t decide whether or not to pull away and lean against the sink again, or hug Lawrence. He went with the second. “I love you.” He still wasn’t great at it, but he was at least getting a little better at the schmaltzy shit.
After a few seconds of just holding each other, Lawrence said softly. “I think it’s time to tell Diana to go to sleep.”
“I’ll go.”
“Oh, no. You always fall for the ‘just let me finish this chapter' line.”
“Dude, your kid wants to read. Why do you have a problem with that?”
“I don’t mind her reading. I prefer if she sleeps, though.”
“Whatever. She’ll be fine.”
“Okay, you can go, but try to have some backbone.”
“Oh, yeah, like you’re any better.”
Now it was Lawrence’s turn to roll his eyes.
Adam leaned up again to kiss him. “Love you,” he said quickly.
“Love you, too, Adam.”
Adam grinned and slapped him on the ass, before heading out of the kitchen, toward Diana’s room.
Yeah, this was all still weird as hell. Sometimes it didn’t even feel real; like he was going to close his eyes, and when he opened them it was all going to be gone. He’d be back in his shithole apartment, alone with just his aching shoulder and the stuttering voice echoing in his head. “I promise.”
Or, maybe he’d just wake up back in that room in total darkness, screaming into the void, knowing that he was going to die slowly, painfully, completely alone.
Pathetic. Pathetic. Pathetic.
But that wasn’t going to happen. He was here, alive, with Lawrence and Diana. He lived with someone who didn’t just tolerate him, but who loved him. He had a family.
He wasn’t pathetic—he never had been, Lawrence insisted. He mattered. There were people who gave a shit about him and loved him for who he was.
There was one little girl who liked him enough to put him on her family tree.
That was something.