Today was the perfect day for it. I had told my parents a few nights back, and they insisted on a testing.
“How long have you been dating?” my dad had asked.
He looked over at Mom after I said I had been dating Julien for three months. I knew that look—it was that “why didn’t she tell us earlier?” look.
“And you didn’t tell us earlier?” my mom asked, validating that I’d indeed been correct about the look.
“I’m old enough now to decide when it's best to tell you guys who I’m seeing, don’t you think?” I folded my arms in protest. I didn’t want to sound disrespectful, but it wasn’t as if we were outside of the period for scaling. We had up to six months to do this.
“Skyla,” Dad said gently. “We’re not trying to get into your business, but it is for your own protection that you get tested. I’ll run his name through the Bureau to make sure no D Glow reports come up on him.”
“I’ll have Sammy, our front desk clerk, help me get Julien's name run through the police search systems, too,” my mom added.
“Of course,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. I had gotten up from the dining room table after that and scurried out of my parents’ house before they could ask me any more questions about Julien.
This was not the first guy I had dated, and it certainly wasn’t the first time my parents had done this. I felt confident that Julien would be perfect on the scale and my parents would love him the second they met him.
We had made plans for coffee after work at our favorite little café in Soho. I loved their organic blends and Julien loved their espresso. It was gray outside and lightly drizzling. My day had been stressful and I was feeling somewhat frazzled. I checked my hair in the mirror and decided to put it up since the rain was making it frizzy and unmanageable. That morning, I had decided to wear dark-pink shirt to try and shake away the grayness of the day. I reapplied some red lipstick and added a touch of pink gloss over it. I was going to put on some blush and eye shadow but decided against it. Don’t need to be so vain.
When I arrived at the café, I was surprised to see Julien already there. He was sitting at one of the tables, looking down, engrossed with something on his phone.
As I approached the table, my one-inch heeled boots clumping on the ceramic floor, Julien looked up and gave me a halfhearted smile.
“Hey,” he said as he stood up to give me a quick embrace. There was no real emotion on his face. “I already ordered a double shot of espresso. Do you want anything?”
“A double shot sounds perfect,” I said as I unzipped my pink raincoat and set it on the chair.
“You look a little tired,” I remarked as I took a seat across from where he was sitting.
His eyes didn’t have their usual sparkle and his face looked sullen. His all-gray outfit—gray slacks, a medium-gray crew cut sweater, and dark-gray suede shoes—didn’t help.
“Yeah. I didn’t sleep well. But nothing coffee can’t fix, right?” He flashed me a smile to assure me all was OK and went over to the counter to get us our caffeine boost.
He came back, handed me my espresso, and grabbed three packets of sugar from the sugar dish on the table.
“Three packets of sugar?”
Julien sat back down and gave me a dismissive hand wave. I pressed my lips together with a slight frown. I probably shouldn’t have sounded disapproving, but what did he expect from a nutritionist? I didn’t want the conversation to get sidetracked, so I decided it was best to just cut to the chase.
“Um,” I said, watching him stir the sugar into his espresso. “Would it be too early in our relationship to ask you to meet my parents?”
“What?!” he said, taken aback, dropping his spoon abruptly on the table.
“I’m sorry?” I asked. I was confused by his reaction. “I didn’t mean to spring this on you, but I wasn’t sure how else to ask you.”
“Do you think this is necessary?” he asked, looking slightly panicked. He took a napkin and started to clean up the drops of coffee that had splattered off his spoon with a little more tenacity than needed.
“Well,” I said, clasping my hands in front of me on the table. “We’ve been seeing each other for a little over three months now, and well, you know the rules—we can’t meet each other's families until we…” My voice trailed off. We were in a public area, so I needed to be careful about using the word scale even though Normals wouldn’t have a clue what we were talking about or even care.
“I thought we might be at a point where we would want to do that…you know, meet each other's families,” I reemphasized the last part of the sentence.
“We’ve been being going out for three months?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise.
I raised my hands to my chin and looked down at the granite table. This was not going how I thought it would. How could he not know we had been going out for three months? I was regretting this conversation already. After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, I looked up at him and said pointedly, “You’re kind of missing the point, Julien. It's not really about the three months, it's about meeting each other's families. If you’re not ready for it, then just tell me.”
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms. I was feeling a little frustrated. Why was this a big deal? Things had been going well, hadn’t they?
Julien didn’t say anything; instead he put his head in both of his hands. I reached down for my purse that was on the floor next to my feet and pulled it up to take out my phone. I started to go through my emails to distract myself from the situation. I wasn’t sure what else to do or say. Was this a dealbreaker?
“You know what?” he said, standing up suddenly. “Let's do this!” He gulped down his espresso and looked down at me.
“Where's the closest center?” he asked impatiently.
I quickly pulled up my search on the phone and held it up so he could see it.
“Right around the corner, how convenient,” he mumbled.
As he put on his gray rain jacket, I stood up and chugged my espresso. He stared at me with a look of irritation.
“Julien, if you don’t want to go, then let's wait,” I urged.
Deep down I knew that if we didn’t do this now, unless he offered up a good reason, it would eat at me and I would likely distance myself from him. Who's to say he wouldn’t do the same? Isn’t this relationship worth moving forward?
“You wanted to do this, so let's do this.”
He started for the door without me. I grabbed my coat and put it on while running to catch up with him. I didn’t bother to zip it up—I was feeling warm. There was a sadness and fear rising in me, a feeling that our relationship could be coming to an end.