Into His Love

Seventeen

Kimberly

   I'm still trying to process the last ten minutes when I get into my house. I want to be someone you're able to talk to, Kimberly. His voice is a broken record, constantly repeating in my head. The slow image of his lips moving as each word escapes his lips. What he doesn't know is he is that he already is someone I can talk to. I've opened up to him in such a short amount of time. I've never let anyone get so close to me so fast, but with him, everything is so easy.

"Smells good." I walk into the kitchen to find Mama.

"Yeah," she sighs. "It's been a long time since I've cooked Gumbo, so I figured that I would. I know how much you love it." Oh, no. This has got to be bad.

Really bad.

    She made one of my favorite foods to soften the blow of whatever news she's about to deliver, she always does. She wipes her hand over her floral apron and walks over to kiss me on my cheek.

"You can go ahead and take your shower and everything. By the time you're done, the food should be ready." Her face is full of many emotions, all mixed and swirled together like the ingredients of the gumbo. The only difference being that I can't point out the different emotions her face holds like I can point out the ingredients in the gumbo.

   "Okay." I nod.

                             * * *

"So are you going to tell me what it is we need to talk about that's so important?"

I purposely took a long shower to prepare myself for what's to come. We've been sitting at this table eating in silence for the last five minutes and I can't take the tension any longer. The expression on her face makes me not want to know, but my anticipation that this news won't be good hurts way too much as my brain feeds on the silence between us.

"Yes, but I need you to know that I thought about you throughout all of this and I need you to keep an open mind, okay?"

"Yeah. I always do." When haven't I kept an open mind?

"Okay." She pauses before she starts. "This has been going on for some time now, but I wanted to wait to see what would happen before I came to tell you."

"Mhm." I look her in her eyes, my mouth full of gumbo.

"Well, I've been talking to this man."

I swallow my food before speaking. "Okay, about?"

She frowns. "No. As in seeing someone, Kimberly. 'Talking' as you kids say nowadays." She makes air quotes.

"You're dating." I let my spoon rest on the side of the bowl.

"Yes. We've been dating for a while now." Of all the scenarios that ran through my mind earlier today, this most definitely was not one of them. My mom is dating. The idea of my mom moving on from my dad was not something I thought I'd have to think about. Yet here I am.

"And things are serious?" My voice breaks at the end of my sentence. How serious are things? How long have they been dating? Who is he? How long has she known him? What about dad? She can't just forget him. How can she-

"Very serious. He asked me to marry him." She looks away from my eyes then back to me.

"Oh," is the only thing that I can manage to say even with the millions of things swarming my mind, like bees on a hive.

"I know that this might be weird for you. I haven't been with anyone since your father and I don't want you to think by any means that this means I don't love your father anymore..."