Will had dropped his hands when he’d heard that silence, barely noticing the tomatoes tumbling to the ground. He’d moved to the stairs, moved to get his mother, to make sure they started making good on that ultimatum immediately, but she beat him to it, opening the screen and following his same path out of the apartment, her face pale. When she was close enough, he could see her cheeks were wet with tears. She did not look at him as she passed him by, but somehow, he could tell.

He could tell she knew that he’d heard.

He followed her to the car, for the first time in a long time feeling like he had to make an effort to keep up with her short-legged stride as she crossed the yard—under the tree and out the other side, into the rear alley where they’d parked not even all that long ago.

He was in the passenger seat, watching his mother’s hands shake as she fumbled with her keys, before he even thought of the girl. Her voice, her laugh, her nonna and squirrels and spoiled tomatoes. He thought of how silly it was, that he had noticed her. That she had felt so important to notice. Everything about his world felt silly—school, summer, Caitlin, baseball—everything that wasn’t this, what he’d heard his mother say and what she and his dad were desperate enough to ask. Everything about himself felt silly—his restlessness, his moods, his absurd crushes on tomato-throwing strangers, his stupid fucking eyes, and his ridiculous, immature vanity.

He reached out and touched his mother’s wrist.

“Mom,” he said, and he made a decision right then, right when he heard his own voice again. He decided he would catch up to the way his voice had grown up. He decided that what he had overheard being said in that apartment meant that he had to.

“We’re okay,” she said, and he thought maybe she said it more to herself than to him, but still she moved to clutch his hand, squeezing it and steadying herself.

“We’re okay,” she repeated.

He said it back to her. Multiple times, until she was calm enough to start the car.

When she backed out, he wanted—for a desperate, fleeting second—to look back up toward the sky, toward that third-floor balcony. Toward the girl with the lovely voice and the long ponytail. The girl he hadn’t really been able to see at all.

But he didn’t.

He was done with blurry distractions. He was done with being a kid.