We don't want to label it

XXVII

"Hey mum." he says as the familiar door swings open and he forces his feet to move forward. God, he's nervous. Ridiculously nervous, like he has a big concert tonight and he hasn't practised, but one look at his mum's face, managing to be both expectant and sad all at once, and he knows it's going to be worse than an unpractised concert. Oh, God. She's really mad, isn't she? Or disappointed, which everyone knows is worse?
"Hello, Eddy." she tells him and she's backing away before he can think to hug her, back towards the kitchen.
His nose is the first thing to pick up, even though the butterflies still swim uncomfortably in his stomach. Kung pao chicken, he can smell it from here as he kicks off his shoes and pads forward, and something inside him softens. 
She's made him one of his favourite meals. 
Okay, so she can't be that mad. Right? He follows her to the kitchen and he makes a big show of sniffing the pan that is still sitting on the fire, inhaling with a big huff, exhaling with an appreciative groan he knows she'll like. 
He doesn't have to act either, it really does smell divine. 
"Oh, wow! Thank you mum!" he enthuses. "I'm glad I came already."
It's only a little smile, but he catches it all the same.
It's a start, right?
She doesn't say much as she finishes the food, putting rice into a bowl in between shakes of the wok, pouring soy sauce in the little blue and white dish they have had for just that purpose for as long as he can remember. She certainly doesn't say anything about the reason she got him here, and maybe it's that he doesn't feel like awkward silence but he finds himself chattering, like they've always been good at. He tells her about his week, about the videos they've made for Twoset, about the Prok rehearsals, how good the soloist is  and how ugly the building is. She laughs at that last remark. 
"Every building here is ugly, Eddy. But they don't crumble at least."
"That's true." He picks up the bowls she's put out as soon as the chicken comes out of the wok, and he carries them to the dinner table. The dark wood with decades worth of patina he puts them on feels firm, familiar. The bowls thump into it in just the way they always have and it feels like home. It's too easy to forget, sometimes, where she came from. Why they are here in the first place. How many chances she's given him by coming here and what she left behind, for him and his sister, more than anything else. Suddenly he turns around and hugs her, just as she's put down the bowl of chicken she was holding. She squeaks in surprise but then she hugs him back all the same, her arms around him soft but firm. He could so easily dissolve into her safety.
You know what? He's not been here enough lately. He should make an effort to be here more often. 

Of course the other shoe does drop, once they're knee deep into chicken and conversation he had half and half hoped would keep the topic away. But she breathes in in just that way she has and he puts his chopsticks on the table automatically, the tips resting on the side of the bowl. 
"So..." she says and oh, God, he knows that tone. He cringes hard and suddenly the chicken in his stomach seems to want to turn to stone. 
But no, no. No. he's been thinking, you see, all throughout the last Prok rehearsal, this afternoon. He knows exactly what he wants to say, what he needs to say and now all he as to do is to say it. So he shakes his head and stares right into her weary eyes, so dark they might as well be black, and he raises his right index finger to stop her before she starts.