The silence in the town car was a physical entity. It wasn't the comfortable quiet from the ride over, charged with hopeful tension. This was a dense, smothering silence, heavy with everything that had been said and everything that hadn't.
Derek stared out his window, his profile a stark, unyielding line against the blur of passing streetlights and darkened storefronts of Queens. The easy storyteller from my parents' living room was gone, locked away behind a fortress of his thoughts. His hands rested on his thighs, fingers loosely curled, but I could see the tension in the corded muscles of his forearms, visible where he'd pushed up his sleeves earlier.
I replayed my mother's words on a loop. His whole world. The awe of it warred with a crushing sense of responsibility. To be someone's
