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“Look at her,” Nash said. “I’m embarrassing her, but it’s true. We want a big family.”
“Don’t be embarrassed, dear,” Mom said. “It’s okay. Sex is a part of marriage.”
“Mom!” I said. “Nobody was talking about sex.”
“That is how you make babies, babe,” Nash said, grinning hugely. He loved this.
“Nash makes a good point, honey,” Dad said.
I couldn’t believe him.
“How often are you two trying?” Mom asked Nash.
“Oh, every day at least,” Nash said nonchalantly. “You never know when it’ll happen.”
“Good man. Always be prepared.”
“Oh my god,” I said. “You are not talking about us having sex right now.”
The three of them laughed, and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
But, on the bright side, Nash had clearly already won them over. It was hard not to like him when he wanted to be charming. Even my parents had been dragged into his magnetism and clearly couldn’t get away. Even to the point where they somehow thought it was okay to joke about their daughter having sex.
Soon we ordered food and fell into a comfortable conversation. Mom and Dad asked Nash about his work, about his life, and about our tour. He did the majority of talking, only pausing to let me confirm any details. Really, that was how I liked it. Of the two of us, he was the much better liar, probably because he had been trained to be a special forces guy. He had to be able to lie for his country.
But not me. I was just another regular girl, not trained to lie, not built to fight.
“Tell me, Nash,” Dad said. “How are you going to take care of our daughter?”
“Dad,” I said, “he doesn’t take care of me. I take care of myself.”
Nash smiled. “It’s okay, babe. Chris just wants to make sure that I’m not some bum.”
“He’s on television,” Mom said. “He can’t be a bum.”
Nash laughed. “You’d be surprised. But to answer your question, sir, I’m doing very well with the book sales. It’s going to be optioned into a movie soon. After all this blows over, I was thinking about going into military consulting. You’d be surprised by how well that pays and how in demand people with my kind of training are.”
Dad nodded thoughtfully. “So you have a plan.”
“Yes, sir. Get your daughter pregnant soon and then provide for my family.”
“Sounds good,” Dad said, grinning.
I was so embarrassed.
“So, Nash, tell us,” Mom said. “Is Selena just about the hardest person to live with?”
“Mom!” I said. “What the heck?”
She shrugged, smiling. “It’s true. You’re so messy.”
Nash laughed. “No, Tracey. She’s fine. I don’t cut her any slack. I’m trying to instill some military discipline into her.”
“Good man!” Dad exclaimed. “I like the sound of that.”
Nash grinned hugely. “That’s right. We drill every day. She’ll be very clean by the time I’m finished with her.”
I couldn’t believe him. There was no way my parents weren’t going to get the subtext of that comment. I was ready to stomp on his foot, but Mom just smiled and laughed.
“Well, if you can get her to clean up, it’ll be a miracle.”
“Great. Let’s just all pile up on me,” I grumbled.
“Sorry, honey,” Mom said. “You just don’t bring a lot of boyfriends around.”
“Really?” Nash asked. “How many before me?”
“Oh,” Dad said. “One, back in high school.”
“She doesn’t date much,” Mom said. “Well, didn’t at least.”
“Really?” Nash asked. “I would have pegged her for a girl with lots of boys.”
“That’s not true,” I said quickly. “I had boyfriends. I just never brought them around for obvious reasons.”
“I don’t know, honey,” Dad said. “You’ve always been more interested in studying hard than meeting boys.”
“Studying hard, huh?” Nash asked. “Sounds about right. Your daughter is a regular old bookworm.”
“She used to spend hours in her bedroom reading romance novels,” Mom said, laughing. “She was such a moody teenager.”
“Romance novels?” Nash grinned at me. “The steamy kind?”
“No!” I said quickly. “No. Just regular books. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“They were steamy all right!” Dad said, and I turned bright red. “What? They were.”
Nash laughed loudly along with Dad, and Mom gave me a well, what can you do look.
The waitress came soon after with our meals. Without a doubt, so far it had been the weirdest dinner of my life. Nash was charming, clearly winning over my parents, and they seemed so willing to make jokes about my sex life, not to mention to air my embarrassing past life. As if anybody was cool when they were a teenager?
We ate for a few minutes, but about ten minutes after the meals came, Dad gave Mom a look. She nodded and turned back to us.
“What?” I asked her. “I saw that look.”
“Your father isn’t feeling well. We should get going.”
Nash frowned. “Are you sure? I’m having a great time.”
