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Christopher Diaz had a list.
He hadn't written it down anywhere — he was nine, not a supervillain — but he kept it carefully in his head, organized by category. Things he liked. Things he didn't like. Things that were fine but he was keeping an eye on.
Ana Flores had started on the third list.
That was a while ago. She was firmly on the second list now.
He liked that his dad seemed happy. He really did. He liked when his dad came home from a date with a lighter step and made breakfast the next morning with the radio on, which he only did when something good had happened. He liked that his dad was starting to look less tired around the eyes, the way he'd looked for a long time after Mom died.
What he did not like was Ana.
He didn't dislike her the way you disliked a substitute teacher who gave too much homework. This felt different; deeper and heavier.
It was the kind of dislike that settled in slowly, made itself at home, started leaving its shoes by the door in the wrong spot. The kind of dislike that tried to make you believe it was normal and you should welcome it… but really it felt like constant questioning, trying to erase his favorite co-conspirator. Ableism that wouldn’t stop barging into his room without knocking.
It had started small. The way she'd ask Christopher questions at dinner but her eyes would drift before he finished answering. The way she'd say of course! when his dad mentioned Buck was coming over, bright and accommodating and immediately followed — at some later point when she thought Christopher wasn't close enough to hear — by something that made his jaw go tight.
He's always here, Eddie.
Does he have family nearby?
It's a little much, the way he depends on you.
Christopher knew a lot of words for what Buck was. His Buck, when he was being silly about it. Buck, most of the time, because that was his name and it fit him perfectly — strong and solid and exactly right. His dad's best friend. His dad's person. Part of their family. Not the paperwork kind but the real kind… the kind that showed up and stayed and knew exactly where the secret snacks were hidden and when all your doctor’s appointments were scheduled.
What Buck was NOT: A leech. Needy. Exhausting. Pathetic. Someone who didn't know his place.
Those were Ana's words. She was careful not to use the worst ones in front of Eddie, after she quickly realized that simply questioning if Buck had somewhere else to be put her boyfriend into a defensive crouch for a couple of days.
Ana must have sometimes forgotten that Chris was a real person with real ears. She talked too freely on phone calls with her friends while staying with Chris. Or muttered too loudly when she was out of Eddie’s earshot.
So Christopher gathered evidence and his list grew.
He was nine. He didn't have a lot of options for what to do about it.
But he was also Eddie Diaz's son, which meant he was resourceful, patient, and — when the moment called for it — capable of a very Diaz kind of chaos.
He'd been watching a lot of videos lately. Buck showed him stuff sometimes, clips from shows and movies that were funny, little pieces of internet culture that Buck thought he was old enough to appreciate. One of them had lodged itself in his brain like a splinter, small and sharp and increasingly useful.
He started waiting for his moment.
The first one happened at dinner, and it happened so naturally that Christopher almost surprised himself.
It was a Tuesday. His dad had attempted his grandmother's arroz con pollo — the real version, not the weeknight shortcut — which meant he was either trying to impress someone or apologizing to someone. Since Buck was already at the table when Ana arrived, Christopher was pretty sure it was both.
Ana had come in with flowers and a smile that flickered for just a half-second when she saw Buck settled into his usual chair, a beer in hand, mid-story about something that had happened at the station. She'd recovered quickly. Ana always recovered quickly. But Chris saw it, and filed it away on his list.
Dinner was good. The food, anyway. Christopher ate his arroz and listened and waited.
He'd been pushing peas around his plate for a few minutes when Ana glanced at them and said, gently, "Christopher, you should finish your vegetables, sweetheart."
Christopher looked at the peas. Looked at Ana. Looked at his dad.
"Karen said I have to eat these," he said.
He said it simply, the way he'd report any other fact. The table went still.
Buck made a sound that might have been him agreeing or might have been him swallowing his beer wrong. He pressed his fist to his mouth and looked intensely at his plate.
Eddie frowned. "Who's Karen?"
Chris pointed at Ana with his fork and went back to pushing the peas.
Ana blinked. "I think Christopher means me," she said, pleasantly, the smile reassembling itself.
"Why would he call you Karen?" Eddie asked.
"Internet thing," Buck said quickly…trying to take some heat off of Chris. His voice had a quality to it that Christopher recognized — the strained, careful tone of someone doing significant internal work. "I'll explain later."
Eddie narrowed his eyes. “Is this a TikTok thing?”
Buck’s face lit up with delight. “Oh my God, you know what TikTok is?”
“I know what TikTok is.”
“Do you? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Name one TikTok.”
Eddie paused, having to think about that one. “That’s not how it works.”
Buck grinned. “Look at you. Growing.”
Ana laughed at their antics. "I don't mind. Christopher, sweetheart, my name is Ana."
Christopher looked up at her.
"I know," he said.
He picked up a forkful of peas and ate them staring directly at Ana.
It happened again three days later, in the living room, and by then Christopher knew exactly what he was doing.
Ana had brought cookies, which should have been a safe and welcome contribution to the afternoon. Christopher loved cookies. Buck loved cookies. Eddie loved any food he did not have to cook himself.
Buck was on the floor with Christopher working through the tail end of a math worksheet, pencil tucked behind his ear, currently arguing that the answer was definitely twelve and that whoever had written this worksheet had made a mistake.
"The worksheet didn't make a mistake," Christopher said rolling his eyes and laughing.
"Worksheets make mistakes all the time."
"Name one time."
"I can't name a specific time, but statistically—"
"Look what Ana brought," Eddie said loudly, setting the container on the coffee table. He was well-practiced in redirecting Christopher/Buck tangents.
"Karen brought cookies?" Christopher said, looking up.
Buck's pencil fell off his ear.
He did not pick it up.
Eddie sighed. “Chris.”
“What?”
“Her name is Ana.”
Christopher nodded solemnly. “I know.”
Ana folded her hands in her lap. “I’m sure Christopher is just being silly.”
“I’m not.” Christopher said.
Buck just stared at his pencil like he was trying to move it with his mind. But his mind was otherwise focused on the little red flag waving in his brain. He was starting to believe Chris’ Karen jokes weren’t just jokes; they meant something more. He just didn’t know what yet.
Eddie rubbed his forehead. "Chris, you can't call Ana Karen."
"Okay," Christopher said.
"Thank you."
They went back to the worksheet in comfortable silence for approximately four seconds.
Then Christopher cheerfully piped up, "Can I call her Karen Ana?"
Buck stood up.
"Where are you going?" Eddie asked.
"To check something."
“Buck”, Eddie chastised with absolutely no heat. “Don’t laugh.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m emotionally supporting him.”
“You’re enabling him.”
“Those can overlap,” Buck said without an ounce of apology— never willing to vacate his post as Christopher’s most devoted defender.
Eddie scrunched his face at Buck, then turned back to Christopher. "No."
Christopher looked disappointed but not defeated. His dad had been a soldier. He recognized a tactical retreat when he saw one. The campaign was not over.
Ana picked up a cookie and broke it in half with unnecessary force.
The third time, it was different. Not funnier, exactly — or maybe funnier in a way that had some weight underneath it.
It was a Thursday. Ana had come for dinner again, and Buck had also come for dinner because Eddie had invited him without thinking about it. Ana was thinking about it though. She had increasingly been thinking about it each time she came over and Buck was already there.
She waited until Eddie was in the kitchen to say anything.
"You're here a lot," she said to Buck, her voice light, conversational. Christopher was right there at the table. She either hadn't noticed him or had decided he didn't count.
Buck smiled easily. "Yeah, Chris and I are finishing up a science project."
"It's a shoebox volcano," Christopher said.
"It is a structurally ambitious shoebox volcano."
Ana laughed, politely. Her eyes moved between them. "That's sweet." A pause, a little too long. "It's good Christopher has so many people who care about him."
"He does," Buck said.
"Though sometimes I wonder if it's confusing." She lowered her voice. Not enough. "All this... extra attachment. Children need stability. Clear roles. They need to know who the family is."
Christopher's hand tightened around his crutch.
Buck's easy smile disappeared. Not dramatically — just quietly, like a light being turned down.
Christopher clocked it immediately and it made his heart hurt for Buck.
Then Eddie came back with plates. "Who's hungry?"
"Me," Buck said, immediately. And much too brightly.
Christopher looked at him. Buck looked back. Eddie looked between them. "What did I miss?"
Christopher looked at Ana again and he felt his stomach knot tightly — which happens sometimes when he looks at her — and his young brow furrowed.
"Karen doesn't like the volcano," he said.
Ana's face flushed. "Christopher." Her voice had an edge in it that she'd never let out before, thin and bright and real. "That is enough."
The word landed hard in the room.
Buck sat up straighter. Eddie went still.
Ana seemed to hear herself. She took a breath, and Christopher watched her quickly put the pleasant mask back on in real time — the smile reassembling, the voice going warm again. "I'm sorry, sweetheart. I only mean my name is Ana." Sweet. Patient. Like none of the last fifteen seconds had happened.
Christopher looked through her. "I know," he said.
After a strange quiet few seconds, Ana spoke… still clearly trying to clean up any potential damage her outburst caused in Eddie’s eyes. “Christopher, tell me more about your Science Project. Maybe I can help improve it.”
Christopher shook his head. “Me and Buck are doing it.”
“Buck and I,” Eddie corrected.
Christopher rolled his eyes at his dad. “Me and Buck and I are doing it.”
Buck beamed and offered Chris a fist bump. “Nailed it, Superman.”
Eddie decided, not for the first time, that everyone in his house was speaking a language he had not been invited to learn.
Later that night, Eddie tried to impose order. It went about as well as every other time Eddie had tried to impose order on people he loved.
“Christopher,” he said, sitting on the edge of his son’s bed. “You can’t keep calling Ana Karen.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not her name.”
Christopher shrugged. “People call Buck Buck.”
“That’s different.”
“His name is Evan.”
Eddie opened his mouth. Closed it.
Christopher looked smug.
“That is different,” Eddie repeated, with less confidence.
“Why?”
“Because Buck likes being called Buck.”
“I like calling Ana Karen.”
Eddie stared at him.
Christopher stared back.
There were moments as a parent when Eddie felt very proud of the independent, sharp, stubborn person his son was becoming.
There were other moments when he realized that independent, sharp, stubborn person had inherited his ability to dig in and Shannon’s ability to quickly volley any point right back into his face. And somehow — in way that should feel strange but simply doesn’t — he’d also inherited Buck’s ability to win any argument with nothing but a smile.
This was one of those moments.
“Do you not like Ana?” Eddie asked quietly.
Christopher’s expression changed.
Just a little. Just enough.
“I like Buck,” he said.
“I know you like Buck.”
“Buck likes us.”
Eddie’s chest did something uncomfortable, like it was wrestling for control.
“Ana likes us too.”
Christopher looked down at his blanket.
Eddie waited.
Christopher did not say anything else.
“Chris?”
“I’m tired, Dad.”
It was not an answer. Eddie knew that.
But he also knew the difference between a door that was closed and a door that was locked.
So he kissed Christopher’s forehead, pulled the blanket up, and said, “Okay. Goodnight, buddy. Te amo, mijo.”
“Goodnight, Dad. Te amo también.”
At the doorway, Eddie looked back.
Christopher was watching him.
Not scared. Not sad exactly.
Just waiting.
Eddie had no idea what he was waiting for.
The Sunday gatherings at Bobby and Athena's had become a fixture — big and boisterous and full of people who loved each other loudly, which was the only way the 118 family knew how to do anything. The backyard smelled like Bobby's grill running at full ambition. Hen and Karen were by the cooler. Chimney and Maddie were in the shade with Jee-Yeon, who was determinedly investigating a couple of ladybugs.
Buck was across the yard involved in something with Albert that appeared to have no rules but required a lot of running. Chris smiled to himself thinking that a game with no rules was perfect for Buck.
He had positioned himself strategically near the drink cooler, which Hen reliably kept stocked with various juice boxes… something that no one ever discussed but that had become one of the reliable features of his universe.
She offered him a pomegranate-berry mix without being asked and he took it. It was one of the flavors that made him feel more grown-up.
"Having fun?" she asked, like a bartender playing psychologist to her patrons.
"Yep."
He watched Ana work the gathering — touching arms, laughing at the right moments, being perfectly pleasant to everyone while her eyes tracked Buck the way a person tracked something they'd prefer to move out of the way. She was good at masks, Christopher had to give her that.
He watched her face do the thing when Buck appeared at the grill and said something that made Eddie laugh.
“She’s such a Karen,” Christopher muttered to himself before taking a long swig from his juice box.
Hen looked at him, while raising one eyebrow. “Hmm?”
"Ana." He nodded across the yard. “She acts exactly like a Karen."
From eight feet away, Maddie — who had apparently been listening — made a sharp sound and buried her face in Chimney's shoulder. Chimney looked at the sky.
Hen looked down at Christopher with an expression he couldn't entirely decode. It had several things in it. "Chris."
"What?"
“What’s my wife’s na…”
"I am not a Karen," said Karen, materializing at Hen's elbow with a drink before Hen could finish her sentence. She had the mildly long-suffering expression of someone who had had this conversation many times before. "I keep telling everyone to retire that word."
"He wasn't talking about you, baby," Hen said, impressively steady.
"I was talking about Ana," Christopher said helpfully.
Karen looked across the yard. Took in Ana. Took in something in Ana's expression — the tight smile, the careful eyes. Then she looked at Christopher with new consideration.
"Okay," she said. “Allowed.”
Maddie, with shoulders now shaking, had heard it all and wondered how much her brother knew about Chris’ use of Karen. Hell, she thought….Buck was probably responsible for Chris learning ‘Karen’.
Ana had kept her smile in place most of the afternoon. She'd heard the name. She'd watched people laugh. She couldn't ask what was funny without making it about herself, and making it about herself would require her to say out loud that she believed a nine-year-old was running a coordinated campaign against her — which would make her sound, to everyone assembled, exactly like a Karen.
Christopher had pomegranate juice. The afternoon was nice. He found this deeply satisfying.
The date had been Eddie's idea, sort of. A nice dinner out, just the two of them, which Ana had been quietly angling toward for a while. Eddie had agreed because it was easier than examining too closely why the thought of it made him feel like he was wearing someone else's shirt.
Buck came over to stay with Christopher without being asked. He just appeared with a pizza, his backpack, and a new card game that Chris had mentioned he wanted to try. That was how Buck did most things… already there before you'd thought to need him.
It was a good evening — cards spread across Christopher's floor, arguments about the rules, Buck insisting the rules sheet was wrong and Christopher insisting Buck just didn't like losing, both of them laughing too hard to settle it either way. Christopher won twice. They were deep into a third game when the front door opened.
Eddie and Ana came in talking, a little dressed up, the easy fatigue of people who'd had a long dinner. Eddie headed for the kitchen to put decaf coffee on. Ana's heels clicked down the hallway.
She stopped in the doorway of Christopher's room.
Christopher and Buck looked up.
"Just checking in," she said, with her warm-ish smile. "How was the evening?"
"Good," Christopher said smiling genuinely.
"We were playing cards,” Buck said while chuckling. “Or at least Superman was. I was losing at cards.”
Ana's eyes moved from Christopher to Buck — to Buck sitting cross-legged on Christopher's floor, completely at home in the room — and something shifted behind her expression. Small. Carefully managed.
"It's getting a little late." Her eyes stayed on Buck. "I'm sure you have things to get back to, Evan."
Buck looked at her calmly. "I'm good."
"I only mean—"
"Buck does bedtime when Dad goes out," Christopher stated. Helpful. Informational. “We have our own whole routine.”
Ana's smile didn't move. "Of course you do."
She went to find Eddie.
Christopher looked at Buck. Buck looked at Christopher.
"She has a look," Buck whispered, practically sighing at the same time.
"I know," Christopher said.
They cleaned up the cards and drifted to the kitchen doorway. Eddie was at the counter shuffling through some mail, already talking to Ana about some work-story that his bills just reminded him of. Buck leaned in the doorway listening, a small smile on his face hearing Eddie tell Ana the story of how he and Buck got trapped trying to help a postal worker when the mail sorting machine went crazy.
Ana stood slightly apart, fingers tapping her cup.
Christopher watched her the way he always did— seeing far more than she realized. She wasn’t listening to Eddie’s story. She was loading.
She set her cup down and said with forced lightness, "Eddie, can I talk to you for a second?"
"Sure." He didn't stop moving around the kitchen. "What's up?"
"About Buck being in Christopher's room." Her voice stayed pleasant, the way it always did when she was about to say something she'd wrapped in careful packaging. "I just wonder sometimes if it's — I don't know. Appropriate. A grown man, alone with a child, door closed."
The kitchen went very quiet.
Eddie turned around. "The door wasn't closed."
"It was mostly closed."
"Ana—"
"I'm not saying anything bad about Buck, I'm sure he’s… nice. But he isn’t family. I only mean there should be some—"
"He's not just some guy." Eddie's voice had an edge in it that Christopher recognized — the one that meant he was choosing words carefully because he didn't want to choose the wrong ones. "He's—"
"Ours!”
All eyes turned towards Christopher.
He hadn't planned it exactly. But now he was standing in the kitchen doorway, everyone staring at him waiting, and he'd been carrying his list for a long time…and the list had gotten heavy.
He was nine years old and he was Eddie Diaz's son. Mi Tesoro to his bisabuela.
Superman to his Buck.
"Buck is ours," Christopher said. He was looking directly at Ana, which he almost never did. "He's been here for every single thing. Every hard thing and every good thing. He knows where everything is in this house because this is his house too."
He felt his voice shake and forced himself to push through it. Superman would push through. “And I've heard what you say about him. When you think I can’t hear you, or think I’m too stupid to understand what you’re saying. And it’s not true.”
Ana opened her mouth.
Christopher looked at her — at the nice mask and the careful smile and the person underneath both of those things who had stood in various rooms of their home and called his Buck exhausting and pathetic.
And he was done with her. He sharpened his gaze.
"Bye, Felicia," he said.
The word landed like a door swinging shut.
Buck made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a gasp and turned it immediately into a cough that fooled absolutely no one.
Ana went very still. The pleasant mask slipped — just for a second, just enough — and underneath it was something raw and affronted and real. "I'm sorry. What did you just say to me?"
Christopher didn't look away. "Bye, Felicia."
"My name," Ana said, each word in staccato, "is Ana."
“I. Know.” Christopher returned, just as precise.
The silence that followed was enormous.
Then Ana looked at Eddie — at Eddie, who was staring at his nine-year-old son with an expression that couldn't decide between bewilderment and admiration….something that might have been the beginning of an understanding — and she seemed to make a decision.
"I'll call you later," she said to Eddie, the facade of warmth fully reconstructed as she trailed her hand down his arm. She picked up her purse from the counter and walked to the door with her back straight and her chin up and her pleasant mask firmly back in place. She left without another word, or even a glance towards Buck or Christopher.
Buck stood very still for three full seconds. He was never good with awkward silences, and slid down the cabinet and sat on the kitchen floor.
Not dramatically. Just — in a Buck way. Sat down, back against the cupboard, hands over his face, silent gentle laughter making his whole body shake.
Eddie looked at him. Looked at Christopher.
"Okay," he said. He pulled out a kitchen stool and sat. He decided to approach this mystery calmly. "What is a Felicia?”
Buck made a muffled sound from the floor.
Chris sent him a look full of Dude, you’re not helping. And then turned towards his dad. “It means — you say it when you want to someone to leave and you don’t want to see them anymore.”
Eddie absorbed this. "So you told my girlfriend to get out of our house? For good?”
Christopher considered this framing. "She was already leaving."
"Chris."
"She was."
Buck pressed both palms flat to the floor and breathed carefully. He loved this kid so much.
Eddie rubbed his face. "I'm going to call her and talk about this.”
"Dad—"
“How she spoke to you is not okay and I plan to talk to her about that. But she's an adult, and my girlfriend. And you're nine and what you did wasn't—"
"Dad." Christopher's voice was different now. Quieter. He was looking at his hands. “Don’t call her. Can I tell you some stuff first?"
Eddie looked at him. At his son's expression — not guilty, not nervous, just carrying something. Had he been missing something? All this Karen business… was Chris trying to tell him something he didn’t know how to say otherwise?
“Yeah, buddy. Of course you can. What stuff?"
Christopher glanced up at Buck, who had gone still on the kitchen floor, watching him. Chris knew he couldn’t look at Buck when he said these words out loud, so he stared hard at the floor.
His dad immediately heard the tears in Chris’ voice, “I don't want to say it in front of Buck.”
The kitchen went quiet in a different way.
Buck's face changed. He looked at this kid — this kid he'd carried on his back and read to sleep and built volcanoes for, who had just gone to war on his behalf with nothing but a word — and something moved across his expression that he couldn’t keep in check.
"Hey," Buck said, soft. "It's okay, Superman. You can say it."
Christopher's fingers tightened around his crutch handles. He kept looking at Buck for a moment, like he was trying to figure out how to protect him from the next thirty seconds.
Then he took a breath and told his dad everything.
All at once. Just — thrown all over the floor the way you drop something heavy you've been holding for a long time, feeling sweet relief that your hands are now empty.
Chris didn’t hold back, working his way through his list. The comments in the hallway, the dinner table, the extra attachment speech with Buck sitting right there. Needy. Leech. Exhausting. Inappropriate. He's always here. He doesn't know his place. If I was around more, he'd get the message.
When he finished, the kitchen was very quiet.
Eddie's jaw was tight. He was looking at the counter, not at anything in particular. Christopher could see him doing what his dad did sometimes — going somewhere internal, running through things, landing somewhere. He wondered if that was what he looked like when he was thinking about one of his lists.
He cautiously looked at Buck, scared that he would see hurt that his own voice just put there.
Buck was still on the floor, gazing back at Christopher with an expression that had too many things in it to sort. But one thing shone through brightly….love.
"I didn't want him to get her stupid message," Christopher said, not breaking eye contact with Buck. "He belongs here with us.”
Buck exhaled slowly. He was almost overwhelmed with the force of Chris’ words and support; his fierce protectiveness. No one had ever had his back before he met Eddie. And now he could count Eddie’s son in that group too.
Eddie was quiet for another moment. Then he reached out and put his hand on Christopher's knee and held it there.
"Yeah," Eddie said. "He does belong here with us. With his family.”
Now Buck thought they were legitimately trying to kill him. How is he supposed to survive being wrapped in so much love from his two favorite people? He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and looked at the ceiling and did not fully succeed at whatever he was attempting to stifle.
Eddie looked at his best friend — at Buck, who had just heard all of that and was sitting on his kitchen floor trying to hold himself together in front of a nine-year-old — and felt something in his chest do something complicated that he was going to need to think about later.
But right now, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. Needed to do.
He picked up his phone. "How do you spell Felicia?"
Christopher's head snapped up. Buck went completely still.
"Dad—"
"How do you spell it?”
A slow, wide, ornery grin spread across Christopher's face. Buck’s smile turned equally goofy.
"F-E-L-I-C-I-A."
Eddie typed. He didn't overthink it. He'd been overthinking things for long enough.
He hit send.
One full second of silence.
Christopher and Buck’s eyes met.
Eddie looked between the two of them — his son, his best friend, the messy kitchen, the pizza boxes on the counter, the cards still scattered on Christopher's floor — and felt something settle in his chest that had been loose and restless for a long time.
He reached out and put an arm around his son pulling him into a side hug and showing him his phone screen. He wanted Chris to get the message loud and clear— that he had been heard, and his feelings were prioritized.
Christopher squeezed his dad back tightly, feeling all the sadness and anger that was in him disappear.
Eddie let Chris decide when the hug was over.
“Bedtime," he then said. "Come on. Both of you."
"Both of us?" Buck said.
"You heard me."
Buck looked up at him from the floor with a smile that was soft and warm… and just a little bit dangerous. Eddie was absolutely going to think about that later too. With all the other things he had already banked to think about later.
He held out a hand and pulled Buck to his feet. Then he followed his family down the hall.
On Ana Flores' phone, unread for the rest of the night, a single text from Eddie Diaz.
Two words.
Bye, Felicia.