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“No, but we do now. I want you to come to my family dinner tonight,” he said.
My heart might have stopped a little bit at that moment. Maybe I didn’t hear him correctly. Did he really just say I should go have dinner with his family?”
“Your family dinner?” I asked, hoping for some clarification.
He nodded. “Yeah. My brothers and their families get together for dinner most Sundays. We see each other at the vineyard all the time, but we’re spread out. There really isn’t much time for us to just hang out. Our family dinners let us catch up and actually spend time together. And I want you to come.”
He kissed my head again and gave my hip a playful smack as he moved himself out from under me and got out of bed. I stayed there while he went to the bathroom and was still in the same position, staring into the middle distance and trying to process it, when he came out and went to the kitchen.
I heard a cabinet door open and close and a heavy sigh. “I forgot you don’t have coffee. We need to fix that. I’m going to call and have some delivered so it’s here.”
I got out of bed and put on a bathrobe before heading into the kitchen.
“Okay. There are a few stores nearby.” I hesitated for a second. “Are you sure about dinner?”
“Yeah,” he said from where his head was tucked in the refrigerator. He stood up holding eggs and bacon. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know if I feel like I belong there. I don’t know them. They don’t know me. I just…”
My voice trailed off when I saw the serious expression on his face.
“Camilla,” he said. “This isn’t a casual invitation. I didn’t just think of this as some spur-of-the-moment idea that I thought might be fun. I have never, ever brought a date home. Not once. I didn’t even have pictures taken with my prom date at my house. I have never had someone come to a family dinner with me. That’s how important you are to me.”
My breath caught in my chest, and I felt myself tearing up. Words I had been holding back for over a week now tingled on the tip of my tongue, and I almost blurted them out. But this didn’t feel like the right time to say it. Even though I was sure about it. Even though I knew it deep inside me.
I’d told Fiona what I was feeling over pancakes the Saturday morning after our last date night. Part of me felt like I was saying it out loud to try it on for size, like I was testing what it was like to say it and putting it out there into the Universe to see what happened when I acknowledged it.
As much as I thought there might be some sort of big, dynamic reaction, the opposite was actually true. Fiona wasn’t fazed by it. She nodded like it was a foregone conclusion and waited for me to expand on it, like she thought it was something I’d already gone over and was just ready to explore more.
That told me I needed to choose more carefully when I was going to approach it. I wanted it to be right, to be absolutely sure I was ready. Because this wasn’t just a casual thing. This wasn’t just something I was in for the fun of it and could just walk away from at the drop of a hat when I grew bored of it.
The thing was, I knew deep in my heart this was it. I was done searching, done wondering what my life was going to be. As soon as I opened up and let myself really fall into this, it was everything, and that was never going to change.
The thought was thrilling but also a little scary. It was a lot to take in, and I needed to be sure I was fully prepared for it. A big part of that was taking this step to meet Alex’s family and see what the dynamic was really like. I didn’t want to dive headlong into something without knowing what was ahead of me.
So, I bit my tongue and didn’t say anything yet. I agreed to go to the family dinner with him, and Alex immediately lit back up. The seriousness was gone from his face, and he was back to thinking only about his coffee and how quickly the store could get it to him.
I reminded him he could just go and get it, but he was quick to point out that would mean having to put on real clothes and leave the apartment, and he had no intention of doing that for the next several hours. I smiled, putting the nervousness about that night behind me so I could just enjoy a lazy day with him.
