AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I laugh nervously, rolling my eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure you’ve been counting down the minutes.”
He steps aside and waves me inside. “Come on in.”
I walk into an entrance that exceeds the already high expectations I set the moment I pulled into his driveway.
Seb slides my backpack off my shoulder and his eyes go wide. “What the hell do you have in here? Rocks?”
“You don’t have to carry that,” I tell him, because honestly, his chivalrous manners are throwing me off.
But he ignores me and just tells me to leave my shoes on, and then starts down the hall to the left, still carrying my bag.
“My folks want to meet you,” he says over his shoulder.
“Sure.” I follow close behind, pretending not to be totally gawking at his mind-blowing home.
I’m not really that nervous about meeting his parents. Honestly, I already know what they’re going to be like. I’ve spoken to his dad a few times over the phone and he’s lived up to every pre-conceived notion I had of him: the all-American football dad whose approval of his son is directly proportional to his football-playing prowess. So, I’m assuming his mom will be the female counterpart to her football-obsessed husband: the doting mother who plans her entire schedule around her son’s football games and chooses a good portion of her wardrobe according to the Titans team colors (burgundy and white: I’m seventy percent positive).
Sebastian leads me down a down-lit concrete hallway adorned with oversized contemporary artwork, with a wood-slatted ceiling that’s at least twelve feet high. He grabs an apple from a bowl perched on a recessed shelf. He twists in my direction. “You want one?”
“Uh, no. Thanks. I’m okay,”
He takes a huge bite out of his own shiny red apple and arches a perfect eyebrow at me. “You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Thank you.”
He keeps walking, and I keep following.
And suddenly we’re spit out into a cavernous, two-storey high seating area, carpeted in a lush dark gray with a wide perimeter of shiny concrete flooring. Even the giant, uber-deep U-shaped couch is gray. The equally giant square coffee table in the middle of it all, though, is distressed wood. Opposite that is the longest gas fireplace I’ve ever seen, housed in a low counter-height concrete box. Yet all of this awesomeness pales compared to the room’s backdrop: a floor-to-ceiling glass wall overlooking the ocean.
“Oh, my… gosh. This house is—your home is stunning,” I murmur.
“You like it?” Seb asks. So casual. Totally comfortable in these luxe surroundings.“My dad’s an architect. This was kind of his pet project.” He takes another bite of his apple. “It’s his dream house, so he sorta went all out.”
“It’smydream house.” I sigh.
Seb laughs. “Yeah, the views are something else, huh?”
Everythinghere is something else.
He leads me up two wide steps to the right of the fireplace, up into a kitchen that stretches the entire length behind the long fireplace. There’s a man standing on the other side of the concrete island counter, pouring something sparkly into a glass. He’s skinny and has wavy ginger hair, and he’s decked out in a preppy checked shirt and black-rimmed glasses. He looks nothing like Sebastian. Or how I imagined his father.
He looks up as we approach, and his mouth stretches into a warm smile. “You must be Caroline,” he says in the kind of soothing voice that sounds like he should read audio books for a living. “I’m Seb’s dad.” He reaches his arm across the counter. “Dale.”
“Oh. Uh…” My eyebrows furrow a little as I take a step closer and shake his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I’m totally confused because I’ve talked to Seb’s dad at least three times on the phone, and I know his name is Graham. And that his voice is deep and kind of intimidating—not soothing or mellow.
“Is that Caroline?” another male voice calls from somewhere beyond the kitchen. And a second later, a tall, muscular man appears. His shaved salt-and-pepper hair matches the stubble on his square jaw, and his eyes are gray and intense. The man exudes confidence.
Thisis how I imagined Sebastian’s father.
“Caroline,” he says. “Nice to meet you in person. I’m Graham.”
I shake his extended hand, even more confused. “Nice to meet you, too.” I glance back at the other man—Dale, and then at Seb.
“I uh… I don’t—I thought…”
Seb laughs, obviously picking up on my confusion. “They’re gay,” he says, biting into his apple. He points at Dale with the index finger of the hand holding the apple. “Chill dad,” he explains, still chewing. Then he points to Graham: “Hard-ass dad.”
