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I sighed and placed my hands on the table. "I'll just be happy when this is all over."
Brandon reached out and covered my hand with his large one. He brushed his fingertip over my oval-shaped nailbeds. "Not long now, Red. We're supposed to be signing the final papers in less than two weeks."
"Let's just eat," I said. I pulled my hands back to my lap.
Brandon studied me for a minute, then suddenly stood up from the table.
"Fuck this," he pronounced as he pulled me up, his accent large and pronounced. "I can do better. And you're not some dirty little secret, you're the love of my fuckin' life."
I glanced around the restaurant, but there was no one there to notice the outburst. Brandon leaned down and stamped a hard kiss on my lips.
"I'm not going to run around like a scared mouse just because Miranda's looking for dirt," he said.
While he tugged me toward the back of the restaurant, Brandon took out his phone, swiped through a few apps, and then pushed the door open into the kitchen. The waiter and the cook (there were apparently only two employees in the entire restaurant) looked up from where they were sharing a cigarette by the window. Our dinners were simmering on the massive stovetop. Admittedly, they did smell delicious.
Brandon slapped several hundred-dollar bills on the counter.
"That's for the food and your trouble," he told them. "St. Mary's up the street runs a soup kitchen on Fridays. I'm sure they'd appreciate the extras."
The waiter reached out cautiously and took the bills while the cook nodded at Brandon's suggestion.
"Sim, of course," he said as he waved us away.
I gave them a grim smile while Brandon opened the back door into an alley. Like a spy, he glanced down both ends of the street before pulling me out to follow toward Allston Street. An unfamiliar Prius pulled up at the curb, and immediately we hopped in.
"Whose car is this?" I asked once we were on our way. I had no idea what was happening, but Brandon seemed to be in charge.
In return I received a massive Cheshire grin. "What?" he said. "You've never heard of Uber?"
I couldn't help but laugh despite the stoic expression of the driver.
"So, what subpar restaurant are we going to instead?" I joked.
Brandon gave me a grim smile back. "Well, the food will be good, I promise you that."
~
Twenty minutes later, after a stop at the grocery store to pick up some flowers and a premade pie, we pulled up in front of a small blue colonial on a quiet street in Somerville. It was the kind of street that reminded me of Flatbush, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I'd grown up. Close to the city, yet still a street dominated by single-family houses, most of them barred from the sidewalk by chain-linked fences and even a few trees. A couple of lights shone brightly through the windows of the house, which, though small, had obviously been carefully kept up over the years.
The Prius drove off, leaving us standing in front of the small wood fence that bordered the house and a tiny yard that had been planted with rose bushes and azaleas. Brandon took my hand so that I could face him.
"You up for a family dinner?" he asked shyly. "Friday is usually chicken."
I glanced back at the house, full of epiphany. Of course. This was the house where Brandon had lived with his foster parents between the ages of twelve and twenty or so. I had once met Ray Petersen, the crotchety old MIT professor who seemed to view Brandon more as a lost intellectual commodity than a son. I had heard better things about Susan, Brandon's foster mother, but had never had the pleasure of meeting her.
"The chicken?" I asked.
Brandon had once told me a story about Susan's special roasted chicken and how the way Ray, normally a taciturn, emotionless man, looked at her when she made it helped Brandon realize just what he was missing in his own marriage. It was a funny thing to say, but Susan's chicken meant love to Brandon Sterling. So of course, I couldn't wait to taste it.
Brandon just grinned. "If we're lucky. But I'm warning you, Susan isn't going to let up with the questions."
I faced the house with determination, eager to be among people––especially the people who knew Brandon better than anyone else. "Bring on the cross-examination."
Brandon let me up the short walk through a dimly lit yard that was lined with flower beds and hanging baskets on the front porch. One of Petersens definitely had a green thumb, I noted as velvety purple petunias brushed my shoulder.
Brandon knocked on the white front door, and we waited. It was a marked difference from the way I would enter my family's house. If I ever knocked on the front door, Bubbe would probably start wondering if I had been hit in the head.
"I'm getting it!"
