Then Brandon came along.w
He came into our lives carefully. That’s the word I always use for it. Carefully.
He never tried to force anything with Lisa. He didn’t show up on the third date and announce he was going to be her new daddy, the way some men do, like a kid is a prize that comes attached
to the woman. He just… paid attention. He noticed things.
He fixed a Lego castle of hers that had lost a crucial piece, engineering a replacement out of spares so she wouldn’t notice the difference. He learned which cereal she liked, the specific one,
and started keeping a box of it at his
place before I’d ever said a word about us staying over.
One afternoon he sat on the living room floor for almost an hour, patient as a stone, because Lisa was learning to roller-skate and was terrified to let go of the couch. He didn’t rush her. He
didn’t do that fake-cheerful adult thing of come on, you can do it! He just sat there, holding her hand, letting her hold onto the couch with the other one, until she was ready. She wasn’t ready that day. Or the next. He came back and sat on that floor as many times as it took.
