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was meant to convince me. “We just don’t want to uproot you when it seems like you’re making some progress.”
    It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he didn’t even bother with the pretense of putting the phone on speaker. We all knew my mother would have nothing to say on the subject. I was making progress. Each day, the minute we walked through the ornate iron gates at the bottom of the hill, Addison reached for my hand. Clockwork.
    And Joshua officially approved of me. We’d get to Sal’s or the Boston Market and he’d scoot out of the booth so that I could sit down. Then he’d sit beside me. The first time he did it, he pointed at Addison and said, “I want him to be able to look at you.”
    But usually it was Joshua looking at me. “You are one lucky bastard.” He’d say it to Addison, but he’d be staring at me. “Does Chuckie know how he got the Shit. End. Of. The. Stick. I mean, really. What does he get to look at all day? Oprah? Your poor, suffering mother? And you got this?”
    â€œThis has a name, Joshua,” I chided him once.
    But he said, “Don’t even pretend you feel objectified. I know you’ve been treated like a thing to be owned. No man will ever treat you better than this young man right here. And do you know where he learned how to treat a woman?” Joshua clapped Addison on the back. “What taught you?”
    â€œYou did.” Addison laughed.
    But then Joshua followed up with, “It wasn’t your father running around on your poor mother, right? Leaving her to clean up after her two drunk sons while he spent the night in hotels with pharmaceutical sales reps? It wasn’t him, right?”
    Addison had stopped laughing. I craned my neck, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. He’d always described his parents as so loving — to him, to each other. Even to Chuckie, who needed his stomach pumped every other week. My teeth clenched with embarrassment for him and then a protectiverage. I turned to Joshua, who hadn’t yet looked at my face but still said, “Don’t look at me like that. You don’t get to judge me. If you’re surprised about this, it’s because Addison was dishonest with you. I thought we’d all decided not to lie to each other.”
    When did we decide that? I wanted to ask. Instead I sat there, waiting for someone to decide how to move on from the moment.
    â€œIt’s okay.” Addison finally spoke. “I don’t think I lied to you. It’s just not something that really comes up.”
    But Joshua wasn’t going to let it go. “It doesn’t come up? The two of you are lying around in bed together and it never occurs to you to examine the relationships you’ve grown up watching? You don’t mention those when you’re declaring yourselves the great love affair of the century?”
    If I’d felt my cheeks at that moment, they might have seared my hand. My face went that warm, with embarrassment.
    â€œStop.” Addison said it quietly.
    â€œI’m sorry if I am challenging you.” Joshua sounded so angry. I tried to think back to the past few minutes. How had we made him this furious?
    â€œMan, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Addison’s voice had a serrated edge.
    â€œI know what counts as intimacy. And it’s not just blow jobs.” Then my face went full-on scarlet. I didn’t know if I felt embarrassed for us or for him.
    â€œIt’s not like that.” Addison measured his words out carefully. “We don’t have chances like that, to spend time alone.”
    â€œYou’re telling me you’re not fucking?” Joshua was incredulous. I considered getting up from the table. Across the way, a lady glared over at us from under her perm.
    â€œThat’s enough.” Addison sounded like a stern dad.
    Joshua’s giggle was as