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My leg bounced and I chewed the nail on my index finger. Mom was going on about some show she was into–apparently it was nearing the finale and she wasn’t sure if her favorite contestant was going to make it. I sat on the couch I’d spent so much time reading on as a kid, halfway listening while my thoughts bounced around.
My parents had a McMansion in a suburb a little over an hour outside the city. The only time I used the old beater my dad insisted I keep was when I came to see them. There was a little known, secret parking spot I kept it in. I’d briefly worked in a building with an underground garage that had far more parking than needed for the building. So nobody ever checked permits on the cars there, and so far I’d been able to avoid the major hassle of having a car in Manhattan as long as I was willing to take the train all the way to the garage to pick my car up. Still, one of these days, I knew that old car was going to break down on me. Thankfully, it hadn’t this trip.
The lawns were manicured, the houses all looked like they were cut from the same mold, and just about every house was close enough together you could’ve stuck a hand out your window and given the neighbors a high-five. I still remembered moving here when I was seven. Dad had just sold a big story toThe New Yorkerand he was convinced the money was going to start rolling in.
Of course, that had been the last big story. After that, it was all financial talk and stress and worry. Mom and dad had to take on jobs as realtors to scrape by, but they were always underwater with the mortgage on this place. Still, dad didn’t want to admit he’d gone in over his head and risk embarrassing himself in front of the neighbors and his friends, so they just kept struggling.
I knew it was stupid pride on their part, but I still felt bad for my parents. It was one reason I’d always had a secret dream of making it big somewhere so I could buy them out of their mortgage and let them finally relax. I knew all my dad cared about was bragging rights, though. He wanted me to land a prestigious position at an “important” magazine or journal somewhere. Then, he could brag to his circle of friends from when he’d been involved in the world of academia and feel like he’d somehow been redeemed.
“...and he’s just gorgeous,” Mom was saying. “But I don’t think he’ll make it. He really hasn’t clicked with anyone else, especially not Jenny, and she’s definitely gathering allies to get him out of there.”
I realized my eyes had probably been glazed over, so I refocused my attention on mom and nodded, smiling. “Sounds intense,” I said.
She nodded back with big eyes. “That’s an understatement.” My mom had me when she was young. She was in her late forties with an out-of-date poof of brown curly hair she meticulously kept styled and large. In her twenties, she’d been a semi professional tennis player, but a chronic shoulder injury ended her career and landed her on the couch. There were no signs around the house about her former life and I knew better than to ever bring it up. Tennis had been her biggest passion and dream, but it was taken away from her. Now she lived through other people on her shows, I guessed.
Dad was in the kitchen. The sound of something sizzling rose up with the steam. I smelled butter, garlic, and rosemary, which instantly triggered memories of steak and potatoes for dinner as a kid. I hadn’t seen the cracks in my family back then, so my memories of those times were still fond and nostalgic. At the time, I’d just felt supported and motivated to please my parents–especially my dad, who was always in my corner trying to guide me along.
He was ten years older than my mom with mostly gray hair and a goatee I’d literally never seen him without. He was thin and tall, but starting to bend a little with age. He spotted me looking from the kitchen and raised his eyes up over his rounded glasses and flashed me a smile and a wink.
I smiled back.
“So who is this guy you invited?” My dad asked from the kitchen. He had to raise his voice over the sound of whatever was sizzling and crackling in the pans.
“My boss,” I said. I felt a little silly. I’d invited Dominic purely to screw with him and see if I could get him off balance again for the interview after dinner. The part I hadn’t really thought about was how this would look and sound to my parents.
My mom narrowed her eyes and gave a little tilt of her head. “And what makes you want to bring your boss over for family dinner? Is something going on?”
Years of training from reality TV and drama shows meant my mom was inhumanly fast at sniffing out any sort of hidden social dynamics. There was no use lying to her because she’d see right through it, so I settled for a version of the truth.
“I mean,” I said. “He’s obviously really attractive. But no, I don’t think there’s something going on. I just have to interview him for this piece we’re going to put in the magazine, and he’s kind of stuffy and reserved. I’m hoping if I bring him out of his comfort zone, I can manage to get a little more honest responses out of him for the interviews.”
“Oh.” My mom pursed her lips and nodded. “Well, I’m excited to meet him.”
“That’s smart, Buttercup,” My dad called from the kitchen. “That’s exactly why your talents are wasted at thatSquawkerplace. You’ve got a nose for how to get the story and the chops to tell it in a way that does it justice.”
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, but the words felt hollow. I wished I could go back to the version of myself that only saw his words as encouragement. I wanted to go back to not knowing he was struggling financially or seeing how desperate he was for the approval of his friends. At some point, I’d realized my dad wasn’t superhuman. He was just a normal human being with faults and flaws. Ever since then, his encouragement felt more like the desperate hands of someone drowning and trying to grab onto something solid to stay afloat. It drained me and frustrated me, but I didn’t want to let him know that.
The doorbell rang and I bounced to my feet, heart pounding. My parents' two dogs, Tinkerbell and Jarvis, bolted from my mom’s lap to yap at the door. Both of them might weigh a combined ten pounds if they were soaking wet. Tinkerbell was some kind of god-forsaken cross between a chihuahua and a yorkie. I was pretty sure Jarvis was actually just a mutated, oversized rat my parents had mistaken for a dog. He was half bald with little patches of wiry, brown hair that shot off his tiny, wrinkled body in various directions.
“I’ll get it,” I said, following the dogs to the door. I opened it and saw Dominic standing there, looking incredible. He had on jeans and a collared t-shirt. It was the most casual I’d ever seen him and also the best look I’d had at his tattoos. They ran from the backs of his hands all the way up his arms to disappear beneath the deep green sleeves of his shirt. He had one or two buttons undone and I could see more ink rising up his chest and stopping just at the line of his collar bone, except for a single key-shaped tattoo on the base of his neck.
“Hi,” I said in an annoyingly breathless voice.Stop acting so freaking starstruck, Darcy.
He raised a bottle of expensive looking wine towards me. “Thanks for inviting me.”
I took the wine and gave it a look. “You didn’t need to bring anything.”
“It’s not every day you meet your best employee’s parents, is it?”
Iknewhe was fucking with me, but my stupid cheeks still flushed and my insides went warm. “No, it’s not,” I muttered. For some reason, my usual ability to bite back and give him shit was short circuiting. All I could think about was how damn good he looked and how insane it was that he was in my childhood home about to meet my parents. How the hell did I think this was a good idea?
“Well, hello there,” my mom said. Her voice dropped several octaves. She straightened the collar on her floral print, deep V-neck. It was a shirt she owned about fifty variations of and I hardly ever saw her venture outside that exact fit and style. “Darcy told us you were handsome. She didn’t say you weregorgeous.”
Dominic gave her an easy smile, then his eyes slid to meet mine with a dangerous flicker. “I didn’t know Darcy found me handsome,” he said.
“Oh, stop it,” my mom had somehow closed the distance between herself and Dominic in record time. If Dad was asking her for help in the kitchen, it seemed to take her ages to move on her bad knees. Apparently, Dominic had temporarily cured her of that because she practically teleported to his side. “You must get into all sorts of trouble with your employees.”
“Mom!” I warned under my breath.
