Preface
✿ Oliva
The house smells like onions, dish soap and the lemon cleaner my mom swears is the only reason her counters aren’t technically alive.
It’s a smell that belongs to childhood. It’s a smell that says you’re safe enough to be annoyed.
I’m home on break from college, which means I’m home for three days and my mother is acting like I’ve returned from war. She keeps touching my shoulder when she walks past, like she needs to confirm I’m solid. She keeps asking if I’m hungry, even though I literally just ate. She keeps leaving the pantry door open so I can see the snacks like a display in a museum labeled PLEASE TAKE ONE, WE MISSED YOU.
It’s not that I don’t miss them. I do. I just miss them in the way you miss a song you don’t listen to every day, because if you did, you’d cry in the grocery store and that would be embarrassing.
“You’re hovering,” I tell her, leaning against the kitchen doorway with my hoodie sleeves pushed up.
She doesn’t even look at me. She’s slicing an onion with the aggressive focus of someone who has chosen this as her coping mechanism. “I’m cooking.”
“You’re cooking like you’re angry at the onion.”
“It knows what it did.”
I snort, because my mom is like that. She’ll make a joke with her mouth while her hands do the work of worry. She’ll keep everything normal because she believes normal is a spell you can cast over the people you love.
My dad is at the table with the newspaper spread out like he’s auditioning for a role called Man Who Understands The World. He has his reading glasses on, which makes him look older and softer at the same time. There’s a pen in his hand, and he’s circling something in the margins like he’s arguing with the ink.
I catch my reflection in the microwave door when my mom turns away from the counter. The pink is still bright, freshly done, not faded yet. Cotton-candy loud. A little uneven where I rushed the back because my roommate’s bathroom mirror is warped and hates me. It’s the kind of color that looks like a decision and also like a dare.
My dad notices first, because he always notices last week’s changes like they’ve been there forever.
He squints over the top of his paper. “Is it… pinker?”
“It’s pink,” I say. “Full commitment.”
My mom stops slicing the onion. Slowly. Like the knife needs to be told to behave.
She turns and really looks at me, eyes moving over my hair like she’s cataloging damage. “You did it again.”
“I refreshed it,” I say. “It was fading.”
“It was pink last time you were home.”
“Yes,” I agree. “And now it’s… more pink.”
Dad nods thoughtfully, like he’s considering the color on a spiritual level. “I think it suits you.”
Mom shoots him a look. “You would.”
He shrugs. “It’s cheerful. The world needs more cheerful.”
My mom steps closer and reaches up without asking, fingers brushing the ends of my hair. She rubs a strand between her fingers like she’s testing fabric quality. Like she can tell from texture whether I’m okay.
“You’re going to ruin your hair,” she says.
“It grows back.”
She looks at me sharply. “Everything does not grow back.”
The words land heavier than she means them to. There’s a beat of silence where none of us quite know what to do with that sentence.
I break it first, because that’s my job. “Mom. It’s just hair.”
She exhales, long and slow, like she’s been holding her breath without realizing it. “I know. I know. I just…” She shakes her head. “It’s very pink.”
“I wanted it loud,” I say. “School’s boring. I needed something that didn’t feel beige.”
Dad smiles at me over the paper. “You’ve always hated beige.”
“I come by it honestly,” I say, gesturing at my mother’s aggressively patterned curtains, the ones she calls tasteful and my dad calls migraine.
She snorts despite herself and turns back to the onion, chopping faster. “If you’re going to do ridiculous things to your hair, at least promise me you’ll use the good conditioner.”
“I do,” I say. “I’m not a monster.”
She hums, unconvinced.
When she passes me a moment later, she presses a kiss to the top of my pink head like it’s something she needs to memorize.
Dinner happens the way it always happens here. The table is too small for how much my dad believes in elbows. The salt shaker ends up in the middle like a negotiator in a war zone. My mom tells him to stop pushing it like he’s playing hockey. My dad complains about the news and then immediately starts telling a story about a guy at work who argued with a printer like it could be reasoned with.
“The printer always wins,” Mom says, like it’s a universal truth.
“I think it can smell fear,” Dad says.
“It can smell you,” Mom shoots back.
I laugh, and it’s easy. It’s so easy that it makes something in my chest loosen, and I hate that I’ve been holding it tight without noticing.
We don’t do this as often anymore. That’s the thing. I’m home sometimes, sure, but home now is a rotating cast of schedules and exhaustion and me disappearing back to campus with a laundry bag and a hug and a promise that sounds better than it feels. The past year has been a thousand small nothings that add up into distance. Not a fight. Not a break. Just life, quietly choosing other priorities and expecting love to keep up.
After dinner, my mom stands at the sink like she’s about to fight the dishes on principle. My dad folds his newspaper and clears his throat.
“All right,” he says, too bright. “Bonding event.”
I blink. “What.”
My mom’s eyebrows lift. “You’re doing it right now.”
“No,” Dad says, shaking his head like this is important. “I mean a real bonding event. Out of the house. Together. Like a family. Like we’re not just three people who pass each other and call it love.”
He reaches into his pocket and produces three movie tickets like he’s a magician and the rabbit is proof he’s trying.
My mom’s expression softens before she can stop it. “You bought tickets.”
“I bought tickets,” Dad repeats, proud. “Late showing. The new one.”
“The one I said looked mid,” I say.
“Yes,” he says, delighted. “Exactly. Because bonding is suffering through your child’s opinions together.”
My mom’s laugh is small but real. “We haven’t done this in a while.”
There it is. The truth tucked inside the joke.
I swallow something that feels stupidly tender. “I’m in,” I say, trying to sound casual.
“Go change,” Mom says instantly, pointing at my hoodie. “If we’re doing family bonding, we’re doing it without that hole in your sleeve.”
“It’s a ventilation feature.”
“It’s a hole.”
Dad looks pleased with himself, like he planned this whole thing not only for bonding, but also for the pleasure of watching my mother enforce standards. “Listen to your mother.”
“Traitor.”
“I’m practical,” he says. “Also, your mother will stare you into obedience.”
“True,” Mom says, not even denying it.
I change because her stare has a gravitational pull. When I come back, she’s already draped my scarf over the chair like she’s preparing me for weather and not whatever this is. My dad is jingling his keys, bouncing on his heels like he’s taking us to Disneyland and not a movie theater with sticky floors.
“Ladies,” he announces.
“Dad,” I groan, laughing anyway.
Outside, the night air is clean and cold. The porch light flickers once like it can’t commit. Somewhere down the street, a dog barks and then decides it doesn’t actually want to commit to a point either.
Our old sedan waits in the driveway, dusted with road salt and stubbornness. My dad refuses to replace it because it’s “reliable,” which is his way of saying he has formed an emotional bond with the cupholders.
“Front seat?” Dad asks.
“No,” I say. “Back. Like a kid.”
“You are our kid,” Mom says, already climbing into the passenger seat, like this settles the argument permanently.
I slide into the back with theatrical suffering. The upholstery smells like Dad’s coffee and the pine air freshener he replaces like a ritual. There’s a folded blanket back here because my mom believes being prepared is a moral virtue. There are two mismatched water bottles because my dad loses one every week and keeps buying new ones like it’s his personal economy stimulus package.
I buckle my seatbelt because my mother will sense it if I don’t.
Dad starts the car and the radio blasts before he remembers himself. “Sorry,” he says, turning it down. “The car gets excited.”
“It’s not the car,” Mom mutters. “It’s you.”
Dad gasps. “Betrayal.”
Mom twists in her seat to look at me, eyes soft in a way that makes me feel seen and also slightly trapped. “You comfortable back there?”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
She nods, but her gaze lingers like she’s counting something she can’t name. Like she’s collecting moments to put in her pocket.
We pull out of the driveway. Streetlights spill gold across the road. The world feels safe in that late-night way where you’re not thinking about how fragile it all is.
My dad talks about popcorn. My mom calls it a scam. Dad calls it tradition. My mom calls it overpriced. My dad says life is short and popcorn is salty and both facts deserve respect.
“Life is short,” I echo, because it’s the kind of phrase people say without meaning it.
My mom makes a small sound. Not a laugh. Not a sigh. Something in between.
“Don’t start,” she tells my dad.
“I’m not starting,” he says, innocent. “I’m bonding.”
They argue in a circle until I laugh, because this is the kind of arguing that means love. My dad keeps glancing at me in the rearview mirror like he’s checking whether I’m still there. My mom keeps turning slightly, like she wants to look at me without making it obvious.
I rest my head against the window and watch houses blur by. The back seat always does this thing where it makes you feel like a kid again. It makes you remember falling asleep back here with your mouth open, drooling on the seatbelt, and waking up carried inside, half-dreaming.
I’m not falling asleep tonight. I’m too awake.
I think, briefly, about how strange it is that this is what makes me feel grounded. Not school. Not grades. Not whatever future I’ve been working toward. Just my parents in the front seats and the quiet certainty that if anything happens, they will handle it.
That thought is stupid and sentimental and uninvited.
We stop at a light. It turns yellow.
“Go,” I say without thinking. “You can make it.”
My mom makes a sound like she’s judging my entire character. “We do not run yellow lights.”
“It’s not running it, it’s—”
“It’s running it,” she interrupts.
Dad brakes gently and stops. He looks at me in the rearview mirror, amused. “Your mother would haunt me.”
“She would,” I agree.
Mom narrows her eyes like she can feel us bonding without her. “I can hear you.”
Dad smiles. “Good. Then you can hear how right I am.”
The light turns green.
Dad starts forward.
