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This new milestone he had going on with Charlie had potential. He enjoyed coming home to her. He enjoyed having someone sleeping next to him who smelled like flowers and tasted like fruits.
“Charlie’s great,” said Nick before he popped a piece of gum inhis mouth. “Sweet, beautiful, andrich. You’ve got it made. I’d hold on to that like a psycho stalker.”
Rick scowled. “Settle down, will you? I know what I’ve got.”
“Then why do you look like you lost the blood in your body?”
“Because the issue isn’t Charlie, okay? It’s her family.”
Nick’s eyes bulged. “Oh, shit. Do you think her mom’s going to hand you an envelope with a fat check to get you to break it off?”
It wasn’t a stretch.
When no response was offered, Nick dropped the bantering and fell back into serious mode.
“It won’t be that bad. Nerve-racking, yeah, but this isn’t a Korean drama.” Nick lowered his lashes, then tried keeping a straight face. “Technically.”
“Thanks, you’re a great help.” Rick turned his attention back on his phone, Charlie’s question still hovered, needing an answer.
Whatever. Nick was right. It wasn’t a big deal. He’d handle it.
Sure, let’s do it
After hitting send, Rick wondered if he’d RSVP’d to something catastrophic.
“Rick said yes,” Aera said to Charlie, who was at her desk keeping her mind fixed on work instead of the unnerving wait to hear from Rick. She’d set her phone aside to keep from peeking at it every ten seconds.
Aera took it upon herself to sneak at the message preview when the notification on Charlie’s phone beeped.
Charlie nearly fell off her chair at her partner’s sudden statement cutting into the prolonged quiet in her office.
“So this is it, you’re gonna have Rick meet your mother,” Aerasaid in a tone bordering on sympathy and anticipation. “I wish you two the best of luck.”
“Why are you saying it like that?” Charlie asked.
“No reason. It’s always intense when you do the whole ‘meet the parents’ thing, right?” Aera said. “Except Danny and my family already knew each other before we even got together. So that was different. And your mother knew Matt before you two even met! It’s like they secretly pushed us to arranged marriages.”
Charlie didn’t hear what Aera rambled on about. Her mind trained on the news of Rick agreeing to the meet. Goodness, reality hit harder than she’d expected. Despite Aera’s chatter, she was right about this being Charlie’s first time introducing a boyfriend to her family.
Rick wasn’t like her previous relationships, not only because of status and upbringing, but he held an aura that might appear intimidating. She’d gotten that impression the second they’d met. He wasn’t one who warmed up to people easily, and neither was her mother.
It scared her, thinking how the meeting might go awry, more worried about her mother than about Rick. She felt the need to shield him from Grace’s wrath. The woman was hardly welcoming if it wasn’t the people of her choosing.
She’d have to leave work early and head over to Rick’s so they could discuss the game plan.
“She’s really particular. Once, at a five-star restaurant, she made the servers take back an entrée because she didn’t like how the whole fish was looking at her,” Charlie said, recalling the cringeworthy times dining with her mother. “Then had them comp her for it.”
Rick chuckled. “Well, she knows what she wants, at least.”
While he was being a good sport about the horror storiesCharlie told, she was riddled with anxiety. On the one hand, she wanted him to like her mother, but the anecdotes weren’t helping.
T-minus one hour before the showdown. She wanted it to be a plain overreaction on her end, and that everything would work out fine. But she knew her mother. If Charlie couldn’t even get along with her, then how could she expect anyone else to do so?
Getting Grace to evenacceptRick was a hard to reach goal, and Charlie shouldn’t have been expecting it. Maybe it was a bad idea to bring this up at all. Maybe it was better off that they never met. But that was also impossible if she wanted something permanent with Rick. And she did.
Rick was it. There was no one else for her. Whether he felt the same was still unknown, and she wasn’t quite confident about asking him yet. But he was willing to face her mother, so that must mean something.
Staring at his smoldering dark eyes, Charlie exhaled a sigh, torn. It was too late to cancel.
