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My mom is judgemental. Not far underneath the impossibly sweet, ur-maternal Southern churchwoman way about her - which, despite what I'm about to say, is still 100% genuine - there's a savage mean girl inside her. It's not just that she's catty. It can go as far as being warlike. I've seen it. It's honestly something I've always been impressed by, as much as I'm intimidated by it. It's something I don't think she's proud of half the time, but she can't help it, and she knows that. She'd never tell you but she's been through a lot. It's that kind of thing. So with that, I was more nervous for you to meet her than I was to meet you, as I know you'd understand. Being that we're a year post-Joey, I'm weary of dyed-hair-and-piercings people getting on her radar. It wasn't like she would say anything to your face about it if she had a problem. I just wouldn't be able to stand her judging you ever. But, unsurprisingly, she never said anything bad about you. She definitely liked you a lot. Her buying you and Willow ShakeShack was my no means out of character for her, but there seemed to be a little bit of extra kindness behind it. I don't think it was a kind of thank you for anything. That would be reading too much into it. But you could feel in the air that she wanted to be nice to the two of you.
The most she gave for comment about you was that she doesn't think I like-like you, but that you "like" me. If only she knew, right?
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I don't know what my dad thinks of you. It's not that he's not telling me. He has always claimed he's "not very articulate", which - according to this incredibly kind woman who worked as this vegan ice cream parlor I used to run up in Calgary - is a very articulate thing to say. One thing I caught him do was seem pleasantly surprised when you said you only come up to New York for shows. I was little confused as to why he would seem surprised at that, given that you're a friend of mine. When we got back to Midtown, I told him that music was one of the biggest things we've bonded over. It was such a minor, off-hand thing for anyone to say, but I could it softened my dad up to you. His voice went up in pitch a bit.
You seem like the kind of person he would like. I know he would find you funny. He's just reserved. It's probably a universal dad thing with all due respect to him.
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Not unlike my dad, my sister is inscrutable. She likes you, clearly. But, just as I said for my mom, you have the make of someone who would be her mortal enemy. I'm always afraid she harbours a secret dislike for you, but given the Snap streaks and hanging out in Brooklyn, I evidently am not going to know about it if that's how she feels. I never know with her. I'm probably just working myself up over nothing again.
I was shocked she got along with Willow. Again, seemingly not her kind of person, but looking back, she absolutely is. It's so funny now.
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I did not expect Lower Manhattan that night to feel so warm and sleepy. Sure, the buildings crowd around you like the the mountains in the Canadian Rockies, and nobody seems to sleep just like they say, but there was a stillness that is totally uncanny to the New York I'm used to. It no longer felt like a car accident. Instead, the streetlights over the now empty-ish streets felt like closed greenhouses with the lights kept on into the night. There were solitary Skip cyclists hauling nondescript backpacks cutting through said empty-ish streets, made into black human-shaped holes in the night by the oncoming headlights from other streets. The Met Gala had just wrapped up that night, which I don't know much about nor give a shit enough to learn more, but I thought of it in every crowd we passed in the cab my family took back to our hotel. It's strange to feel close to the center of something culturally as someone who lives far away from most things. But that's not what mattered. Pretend this last sentence is deep and poetic because I'm going to write it later.
