Sometimes

I get rewarded for being like I am, all sloppy and lovey-like.

We went to California for my sister-in-law Angel’s high school graduation. Most of the week we also spent with her boyfriend, who seems to spend most days hanging out with A and the family. I like that. My boyfriends were always dragging me off someplace; many of them never met my family.

He came to Ben’s birthday party on the beach. He had his graduation party at the house in conjunction with Angel’s. Most of their time together seems to be spent with the family. He hangs out. He pitches in. He helps. He talks when called upon, and he’s quiet and tranquil, too. He won me over in about the first five minutes and then kept growin’ on me. I told everyone who’d listen, including his girlfriend (kitchen, me: drunk on tequila, middle of the night) how much I thought of him.

I found out he had been nervous to meet me and Ben, and I was actually nervous to meet him, too (me? Nervous to meet an eighteen-year-old boy?). At the graduation party, after knowing him about a week, he thanked me for the card and few dollars me and B had given him. I gave him a hug and told him, without thinking first, “I love you, Omar,” as if I’d known him all my life, and immediately thought, Now, why did you say that? He’s gonna think you’re weird, and that’s ’cause you are!

But he responded, casual-like, without missing a beat: “I love you, too.”

Now, how do you like that?