Love In Colour

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: HAPPY SIBLINGS & DISTINGUISHED GENTLEMEN

I decide to take time off at work. After a very intensive session with the staff therapist, he advised that I take some days off, for the sake of my mental health. So, I took his advice and applied for a week off; my request was swiftly granted, thankfully.

I haven't heard from Richard and her. No contact with them since that day. However, their kids have been blowing my phone up with texts. They would like us to meet again. Honestly, I would like that as well, but at the same time, I kind of don't want to. Gray and I spoke about it, and he said that he will be with me in any decision I take.

I might even let them meet him. My gorgeous boyfriend that I love oh so much. I'm still getting used to saying the words out loud. To him. When he says them to me, my heart clenches and butterflies erupt in my stomach. I feel giddy and dizzy like I'm floating on cloud nine.

Our relationship is truly one of the best things I have ever experienced. As someone with a shitty dating past, I want to preserve this. Protect what I have with him because I'm certain that I would not survive being without him. He's a part of me now, woven into my life.

Once again, I sit in my car. Slightly less than the first time. I'm meeting my siblings—half-siblings—again at the same coffee shop we met before. They'll want to know what meeting their mother was like, if they haven't been filled in on the details.

With one last look in the rearview mirror, I deeply inhale and exit my car. The cafe looks the same as before; nothing has changed since the last time I was here. I have changed, though, I don't feel like the angry and resentful person I was. I still want the world to burn, but a little less than before.

The cafe looks the same. Nothing has changed. Not that it should have changed, it's only been a few weeks since I sat here with Zoe and Lwandle. It feels like forever ago.

I spot them, sitting in the same area we were before. Zoe looks great, beautiful as always, and her leg is no longer in a cast, but she is elevating it on a cushion that's placed on top of a small ottoman. Lwandle sits next to his sister, his eyes focused on his phone as his thumbs rapidly tap on the screen.

Zoe smiles widely when she sees me. I approach the table, and for a moment, I'm struck by how normal this feels. How easy. Three weeks ago, I sat here as a different person–brittle and armoured, ready for a fight I didn't know how to name. Now, my shoulders are relaxed. My breathing is steady. I'm not clenching my jaw or curling my hands into fists.

Growth, I think, and almost laugh at myself. Who am I with my therapy words and my mental health days? Who am I, showing up to coffee with half-siblings like it's the most natural thing in the world? In my world?

Lwandle looks up from his phone, and his smile mirrors Zoe's. "You came," he says. A statement of fact.

"I said I would," I reply, settling onto the plush leather couch. "I keep my word."

Zoe reaches her hand over to me. I hesitate for only a second before taking it. Her fingers are warm, her grip surprisingly strong. "You look different," she states, studying my face. "Good different. Lighter."

Lighter. A word that I'm starting to recognise as the truth.

"I've been working on that." I shrug. "Turns out, carrying years of rage is exhausting."

Lwandle chuckles. "Years. You sound old."

"I feel old sometimes," I admit. "Ancient. Like I've been alive for a thousand years, and most of them were terrible."

"And now?" Zoe's eyes are searching. Earnest. She wants so badly for this work, for me to be okay. For all of us to be some version of a family. I can see it in the way she holds herself, the way she leans forward like she's trying to close the distance between us.