On Tuesday, my mother called. I let it go to voicemail and called back in the evening.
She said she’d been thinking about the conversation and she hoped I understood how much it would mean to Ethan. She said she knew twenty-five thousand was a lot but they’d pay me back when they could. She said the venue was getting booked up and they needed to make a decision soon.
I said I needed more time to think about it.
She said, “How much time? There’s a deposit.”
I said I wasn’t aware there was already a deposit situation.
A pause. Then she said they’d put down a small deposit to hold the date, just to not lose it, and that could count toward the total.
I said I’d be in touch.
On Thursday, I got a text from Ethan saying he hoped we could talk and that he appreciated me being supportive. I read that text three times. I had not told Ethan I was supportive. I had not told anyone I was supportive. I had asked a single question at a dinner table and then said I needed time to think.
I called Sophie.
Sophie has known me since we were sharing lecture notes at Meadowfield. She has seen the billing office ID badge phase of my life, the four-hundred-dollar emergency fund phase of my life, and the quiet satisfaction of the phase where I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. She is the only person outside my family who knows what the college fund situation actually was, because I told her, piecemeal, over the years, in the way you tell a close friend things — not as a monologue but as additions to an ongoing conversation.