Sunday in the Hofstadter house had a particular quality to it — slower than the rest of the week, quieter in the specific way that came from everyone being home without anywhere urgent to be. Alfred was reading somewhere. Beverly was doing whatever Beverly did on Sunday afternoons that she described as decompressing and that involved a particular armchair and a cup of tea and absolute silence in a ten foot radius.
Leo was at his desk.
He had his notebook open and his laptop beside it and he was working through the list of extracurriculars he and Alex had put together three days ago — two days before the park, technically, but the mood of it had carried forward and the work had taken on a different energy since. They'd sat across from each other at the library table and gone through the requirements for Harvard admission with the focused efficiency of two people who had decided on a destination and were now mapping the route.
Research programs. Academic competitions. Community involvement. The specific combination of things that built a profile rather than just a transcript.
It was good work. Interesting work. The kind that made an afternoon disappear.
He was humming.
He didn't fully realize he was doing it until he heard himself and by then he'd been doing it long enough that stopping felt more deliberate than continuing. Something by Jason Mraz — I'm Yours had been everywhere this summer, inescapable in the best kind of way, and it fit the Sunday afternoon in a way that he wasn't going to examine too closely.
The door opened without a knock, which meant Michael.
"Hey." Michael came in and leaned against the doorframe with the posture of someone who had arrived with a purpose but was taking his time about it.
"Hey," Leo said, without looking up.
Michael was quiet for a moment in the specific way he was quiet when he was observing something. Leo had learned to recognize this particular silence. It was the silence of data being collected.
"What are you working on," Michael said.
"Harvard prep stuff. Extracurricular planning."
"With Alex?"
"It's a joint list, yeah."
Another silence. Then, "You've been humming."
"I hum sometimes."
"You don't hum," Michael said. "Ever. You listen to music or you work in silence. You don't hum."
Leo looked up at him. Michael was eleven and had the observational precision of someone twice his age, which was either impressive or exhausting depending on the day. Today it was both.
"I'm in a good mood," Leo said. "People hum when they're in a good mood."
"You're always in a good mood."
"Then what's the question."
"This is different." Michael came further into the room and sat on the edge of the bed with the settled energy of someone who had decided this conversation was happening. "You've been like this for a few days. Like—" He searched for the word. "Radiant."
Leo looked at him.
"That's the word," Michael said. "Radiant. I looked it up."
"You looked up a word to describe my mood."
"I wanted to be accurate." He tilted his head. "It's Alex, isn't it."
"Michael—"
"It is."
"It's nothing."
"It's not nothing, you're humming Jason Mraz and you look like someone who won something."
Leo put his pen down. Looked at his brother for a moment — at the eleven year old face that had Beverly's precision and Alfred's patience and something entirely its own that had been making Leo's life more complicated and more interesting in equal measure for the past seven years.
"If I tell you something," Leo said, "you don't make it a whole thing."
Michael's expression didn't change but something in it sharpened slightly. "Depends on the thing."
"Michael."
"Fine. I won't make it a whole thing."
Leo leaned back in his chair. "Alex and I — it's not nothing anymore. It's a thing."
Michael was quiet for a moment.
"A thing," he said.
"Yeah."
"Like a relationship thing."
"Yeah."
Another pause. Michael nodded slowly in the way he nodded when information was being filed accurately. "Okay."
"That's it? Okay?"
"I mean I knew," Michael said, with the simple certainty of someone reporting a fact. "I've known for a while. It was pretty obvious."
"Was it."
"Leo. You literally threatened to revoke my PC time because I sang one song about you two." He looked at him. "Obvious."
Leo said nothing.
"I'm happy for you," Michael said. "She's good. Like actually good, not just good on paper." He considered this. "She argues with you the right amount."
"The right amount."
"Some people don't argue enough and you get bored. She never lets anything go unchallenged." He shrugged. "That's good for you specifically."
Leo looked at his eleven year old brother.
"When did you get like this," Leo said.
"I've always been like this," Michael said, standing up. "You just don't pay attention." He headed for the door. Paused. "Also you're still humming."
Leo realized he had in fact started humming again without noticing.
Michael left with the quiet satisfaction of someone whose analysis had been confirmed.
---
***MICHAEL'S confession***
*"I knew," he said. Simply. Completely. "I knew since the bet. When he spent three weeks studying extra just to beat her academically so she'd work out with him." He paused. "Normal people don't do that. You do that when you want to spend time with someone and you need a reason."*
*A pause.*
*"Alex is good for him. She doesn't let him get away with things. He's smart but she's smart differently and they—" He thought about it. "They make each other better. You can see it."*
*He looked at the camera with the confidence of someone who had never had any doubt about this.*
*"I knew they'd end up together. It was always just a matter of when." A small shrug. "Took them long enough."*
***END OF CONFESSION.***
---
Across the street the Dunphy house had its own Sunday atmosphere, which was louder and involved more people moving between rooms for no clear reason.
Alex was at her desk with her notes from the library session and her laptop open to three tabs — one on Harvard's research opportunities for undergraduates, one on a math olympiad she and Leo had tentatively agreed to enter, and one on a biology paper that had nothing to do with either of those things but had caught her attention and she was reading it because she wanted to.
She was making notes in the margin of a printed page with a mechanical pencil.
This was, by any metric, a normal Sunday afternoon for Alex Dunphy.
The door burst open.
Haley came in with the energy of someone who had just received significant information and had been physically propelled toward the nearest available person by the force of it.
"Okay," Haley said.
Alex didn't look up. "Hi."
"Leo's video."
"What about it."
"Ten million views." Haley sat on her bed facing Alex. "In a week. Ten million. And his subscribers — Alex he's at like two hundred thousand now."
Alex looked up. "That's—"
"And it gets worse." Haley pointed at her. "Or better. Depending." She picked up her phone and turned it toward Alex. "My friend Madison — you don't know her, she's a junior — she texted me asking if I knew who Leo Hofstadter was."
Alex took the phone. Read the message. Handed it back.
"She called him," Haley continued, "and I am quoting directly here, 'genuinely the most impressive guy she's seen in a long time.' She found his channel through the algorithm and then looked him up and apparently figured out he goes to school near us and—"
"He's in middle school," Alex said. "He's thirteen."
"I know."
"There's a year before he's in high school."
"I know that too."
"There is no realistic scenario in which high school girls—"
"Alex." Haley looked at her. "Have you seen the comments on his videos? Have you seen his subscriber demographic? Because I looked, just now, out of curiosity—"
"Why were you looking at his subscriber demographic."
"Because Madison texted me and I got curious. The point is—" Haley set her phone down. "He's popular. Like actually popular. Not just YouTube popular, it's crossing over. People at school know who he is. Girls are talking about the before and after from the thirty day video." She made a face that was somewhere between amusement and discomfort. "Which, as someone whose friends are actively discussing this, is a very strange experience. My friends are talking about a thirteen year old like he's some kind of — I don't even know. It's weird. It's very weird."
"They're talking about him," Alex said, in a tone that was entirely flat and entirely neutral.
"Swooning. Madison's word specifically."
"Over Leo."
"Over Leo."
A pause.
"Well," Alex said, and returned to her notes.
Haley watched her. "That's it? Well?"
"What do you want me to say."
"I want you to say something that reflects how you actually feel about the fact that girls are swooning over your—" Haley stopped. Her eyes sharpened in the specific way they did when she was connecting something. "Your friend."
"He's my friend."
"Your friend," Haley said, slowly, "who you train with every morning. Who took you to a movie. Who you text at—" she picked up her own phone and scrolled, "—eleven forty PM on weeknights, which I know because I can see your screen from across the room and have been pretending not to."
Alex set her pencil down. "Haley."
"And right now," Haley continued, with the unstoppable momentum of someone who had been building to this, "when I told you girls were swooning over him you did not say oh that's nice or good for him. You said well in the voice you use when you're deciding whether to be annoyed about something."
"I use that voice generally."
"Not like that."
A pause.
Alex looked at her notes. Then at Haley. Then at her notes.
"Things," she said carefully, "may have progressed slightly."
Haley went very still. "Progressed."
"In a general sense."
"How generally."
"Haley."
"How generally, Alex."
Alex picked up her pencil. Put it down. "We're — it's a thing. It's a mutual thing. We've established that it's a mutual thing and we're — it's—"
"Oh my god."
"It's not a big deal—"
"It's absolutely a big deal—"
"It's just—"
"Are you together? Like officially? Did someone say words?"
"We didn't use the word officially—"
"But it's a thing."
"It's a thing," Alex confirmed, in the tone of someone making a very small concession.
Haley stared at her. Then she broke into the full genuine smile she had when something pleased her without any complicated feelings attached. "Finally," she said.
"Don't—"
"I have been watching you two—"
"Haley—"
"—for literally years—"
"Can we not—"
"Have you kissed him?"
The room went quiet.
Alex looked at her notes.
"Alex."
"I'm reading something."
"You put the pencil down."
"I'm reading without annotating."
"Alex." Haley leaned forward. "Have you kissed him."
A pause that lasted approximately one second too long to mean nothing.
Haley's eyes went wide. "Oh my god you have."
"I didn't say—"
"You didn't say you hadn't—"
"That's not—the absence of a denial is not confirmation of—"
"OH MY GOD—"
"Haley, keep your voice—"
"You kissed Leo—"
"I did not confirm—"
"Your face confirmed it—"
"My face did not—"
"You've gone completely red, Alex, your face is doing everything—"
The door opened.
Claire stood in the doorway with a laundry basket and the specific expression of someone who had caught the tail end of something significant and was still assembling the pieces.
"You've kissed?" Claire said.
Alex and Haley turned simultaneously.
"Mom," Haley said. "Knock."
"The door was open." Claire set the laundry basket down on the floor with the deliberate care of someone clearing their hands for a conversation. Her eyes were on Alex. "You kissed someone?"
"I—" Alex looked at Haley with the expression of someone identifying the source of a problem. "This is your fault."
"I didn't invite her in—"
"You were basically shouting—"
"I was at a normal conversational volume—"
"Girls." Claire came fully into the room and sat on the edge of Haley's bed with the settled energy of someone who had arrived and was not leaving without information. "Alex. Leo?"
Alex said nothing.
Which was, as Haley had recently established, the same as saying yes.
Claire looked at her for a moment. Then she did something unexpected — she didn't immediately launch into the lecture. She just looked at her daughter with an expression that had several things in it at once, and took a breath.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?" Alex said.
"Okay." Claire folded her hands in her lap. "I'm going to say some things and I need you to actually listen and not just wait for me to finish."
Alex straightened slightly. "I always actually listen."
"You listen to formulate your counterargument. That's different." Claire looked at her. "You're thirteen."
"I'm aware."
"And Leo is—"
"Also thirteen."
"I know." A pause. "He's a good kid. I've always thought he was a good kid. That's not the concern." She looked at her hands briefly then back up. "The concern is that feelings at this age are real but they're also — they move fast and they're intense and sometimes that intensity can push things in directions that—"
"Mom." Alex's voice was even. "We kissed. In a park. During a workout. That's the entirety of what happened."
Claire looked at her.
"I understand the conversation you're trying to have," Alex continued. "I understand why you're having it. But I would like to point out that I am not a person who does things without thinking them through and I would also like to point out that Leo is equally not that person and that the level of concern this warrants is—" She paused. "Moderate at most."
Claire was quiet for a moment.
"Moderate," she said.
"Moderate," Alex confirmed.
Haley was looking between them with the focused attention of someone watching a negotiation.
"You still need to tell me these things," Claire said finally.
"I know."
"Not because I don't trust you. Because I'm your mother and I'd like to know what's happening in your life."
"I know," Alex said again, and this time it had less defense in it.
Claire looked at her for another moment. Then she stood, picked up the laundry basket, and moved toward the door.
"Moderate," she said again, mostly to herself.
"Mom," Alex said.
Claire turned.
"Thank you. For not—" Alex stopped. "For the way you handled that."
Something in Claire's face softened in the specific way it did when one of her kids surprised her in a good direction. "You're my kid," she said simply. "That's the whole job."
She left.
The room was quiet for a moment.
Then Haley said, "She's going to tell dad."
Alex closed her eyes briefly. "I know."
"Dad's going to be so excited."
"I know."
"He's going to want to have a talk with Leo."
"Please stop."
"He'll probably call him L-Money during it."
Alex put her face in her hands.
Haley, to her credit, waited a full four seconds before starting to laugh.
**End of Chapter 33**