I haven’t been to my parents’ house since the day I packed up my meager belongings and moved out. Their visit to my apartment wasn’t just a surprise, it was the first time they’d ever come there. I wasn’t entirely sure they knew my address.
Last night’s argument with Braxton still weighs heavily on my mind as I sit in the back of the SUV Braxton had called for me, texting me to let me know when it would arrive outside his building. I don’t want to fight with him, although I definitely enjoy the way we made up.
Plus, I essentially admitted to him that I love him. And then I went and called his place home.
I hadn’t realized I said it until he left the apartment, it took me a few minutes to understand why his smile had gone so wonky and happy before he left. Once I replayed the conversation in my head, I realized it was true.
His penthouse condo is more of a home than any I’ve ever had before. He’s the most family I’ve had outside of Jimmy and Jenna. But Jimmy is gone and Jenna is married, ridiculously planning to start a family based on my delivery schedule, and I know two things for certain, as the SUV pulls into my parents’ drive and their early-1900s home looms in front of me.
One, Jimmy would be so happy for me, if he could see how happy I currently am.
And two, I am absolutely in love with Braxton Henley and I can’t imagine anyone else I would want to have a family with. He’s all hard edges and scowls on the surface, but beneath the ripped muscles and brightly colored ink, he has the largest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.
Based on the way he looks at me, the things he’s said to me, I have no doubt he’s falling in love with me too.
I will treasure every single part you give me, Cara, you have my word.
I close my eyes and breathe out a slow, confidence-gathering breath as I remember his promise to me earlier. Knowing he’s thinking of me and worrying about me right now fills me with everything I need for the night ahead.
Regardless of how my dinner goes with my parents, everything will be fine.
It’s this assurance that has me opening the door of the SUV and thanking my driver. I don’t need my parents’ permission or their blessing. As much as I’d love for us to have a good relationship, one based on love and compassion and support, I’m twenty-four years old and I’ve finally realized if they can’t give that to me, then I don’t need it or their negativity in my life.
Stepping out of the SUV, I brush down the sides of the long, flowing dress I chose. It’s bright blue, covered with large tropical flowers. It’s one of the maternity dresses I bought when Braxton and I went shopping: it has thick shoulder straps that come down, showing off my lovely new cleavage from my rapidly swelling breasts. There’s a thick band just below them and then the material poufs out of my belly. It makes me look larger than I actually am. I chose to wear it tonight for that reason. I will not hide anything from them. Now that my morning sickness is less of an all-day dramatic affair and a lingering sensation I can manage with small meals and frequent snacks, I’m actually beginning to like the changes pregnancy is making to my body.
My breasts are larger than ever and the small swell of my stomach makes me smile when I stand in front of a mirror after my shower.
I’m growing a tiny little human inside of me, and perhaps it’s as this reality becomes more clear, I realize that this life inside of me is depending on me to teach him or her how to grow up, to be a decent and kind and loving person. Whether it’s a girl or a boy doesn’t matter to me. Squirt belongs to Braxton and me and no one else’s opinion matters.
Great. Even I’m using the ridiculous nickname.
Smiling, I head up the walk to my parents’ home and open the door, not bothering to ring the bell or knock. As soon as I enter, I’m assaulted by the aroma of dinner. Garlic and bread and a host of other scents that actually make my stomach rumble. I also have no doubt my mom didn’t prepare a single item of the dinner. She’s most likely had it either catered in, or had someone prepare it here, but it doesn’t matter. For all her faults, she’s the master at choosing dinners.
What makes me pause as I remove my jacket and set down my purse, however, isn’t the lack of greeting at the door, or the delicious food sure to be coming my way, it’s the laughter coming from the back room and quiet hum of music, the muffled murmur of voices that tells me it’s not solely dinner with my parents.
Great. I get to be talked down to in front of guests, which means their barbs will be more passive-aggressive than usual.
“Hello?” I call out, giving a quick peek into the library and then a formal sitting room as I head down the hall, past the main staircase. My heels click politely on the original wood floors, polished to a sparkling shine. “Mom? Dad?”
There’s no response, so I continue until I’ve reached the kitchen and turn the corner. I take in the sight in front of me, barely holding back a laugh at the ridiculousness of the scene.
Of course this is why they didn’t want Braxton to come.
The Shermans are here. Miles and my father are dressed in suits and perfectly smoothed ties as if they haven’t been wearing them all day at the office. My mom and Darla Sherman—best frenemies who are only polite to each other because they have to be—are both dressed in black gowns, as if this is a formal affair, or they’re headed to some sort of gala after this. Perhaps a funeral.
Possibly my mother’s, because I’m definitely feeling some murderous tendencies as I take in who else is here.
Graham. My age. Handsome. A complete goofball who’s recently finished law school.
He’s at the fireplace, elbow up on the mantel, glaring at what I know is a whiskey sour because it’s the only thing he’s drunk since we turned twenty-one. Currently, he’s staring at it like it’s much too sour and he wants to crush the offensive glass in his fist.
From my spot at the corner, still unnoticed, I can smell the stench of a setup that is never going to happen. Graham, while a decent friend of mine, is his father’s puppet and will do everything his family says, but Jimmy and I are two of the few people who’ve known since we were all sixteen that Graham is gay.
I’d bust a gut laughing if this wasn’t so pathetic. All my anger and nerves dissipate, and suddenly, I’m very much looking forward to the evening ahead.
Let the games begin.
“Hello,” I state again, since my earlier greeting went unheard, and step into the room.
My mother is the first to turn, quickly followed by Darla. Both of the women’s eyes do a quick dip to my protruding abdomen. Where my mother flinches away, Darla’s light blue eyes lighten with excitement.
I rest my hand on my stomach and walk toward the parents who are fanning out in a semicircle, while Graham hangs back. My arrival is apparently something to be celebrated.
Perhaps to them, it is, especially if they think I don’t see exactly what’s going on here.
“Good evening, Cara,” my father says, leaning in and giving me a peck on the cheek. His cologne is the same he’s worn since I was born, and I remember at one time, as a young girl, I’d crawl into his lap just to smell him. Occasionally, I would sneak his ties into bed with me, using them like a blanket and running the silk through my fingers and pressing it to my nose to fall asleep.
Odd, how he used to be my hero and now I know he’s all plastic and perception.
“Father,” I greet politely and step back, shaking hands with Miles Sherman and saying hello.
Darla greets me next, hands at my shoulders, and air-kisses both of my cheeks. I actually like Darla. She’s the nicest of my parents’ friends, rather normal. Probably why my mother despises her. “Hi, Mrs. Sherman. How are you?”
“I’m well.” She grins down at my stomach. I doubt she’s happy to see me, but more thrilled at the prospect of my unborn child being her grandbaby. “How are you? How are you feeling?”
I smile up at her, happily. “I’ve never been better.”
With little pretense, I glare at my mother, not bothering to touch her. If I’m correct, this is all her doing in the first place. “Mother.”
“You’re late and dinner might be getting cold. We should start our meal.”
I’m five minutes early and I have no doubt that the caterers are hiding off our formal dining room, ready to serve piping hot and delicious entrees.
“Actually, Cara and I will not be joining the rest of you for dinner tonight.” Graham says, walking up to me and giving me a hug. “I’m so damn sorry,” he whispers in my ear before pulling back.
“What?” My eyes widen and I jolt, but am unable to move out of his hold. He adjusts me to his side and winks at me before looking at my parents.
“Excuse me,” my mother says. “Dinner is ready.”
Graham glances at a watch that isn’t on his wrist. “So is our reservation. I believe for what you are all planning, Cara and I should have our conversation privately.”
“Graham—” Darla says, but she’s cut off by my father.
“That makes sense,” he says. “Yes, that sounds like an excellent plan. You two go out and get reacquainted. You can join us back here for drinks later.”
He raises his highball glass in a toasting gesture.
It takes everything I have not to snap at him. Instead, I take comfort in Graham’s still firm embrace.
This whole conniving extravaganza has well exceeded the line of never gonna happen, but at least dinner will no longer suck.
“So,” Graham says to me as soon as we’re seated at Le Chat Noir, a French restaurant I absolutely adore, “you want to explain to me why I was called to the house tonight or”—his eyes drop to my stomach, hidden beneath the table, but his point is obvious—“or do I need to guess?”
I reach for the glass of sparkling water with one hand while the other rests on my stomach. “I believe we’ve been set up.”
I grin, but it’s solemn, and I’m not sure what Graham’s been told, but other than being a goofball and willing to play his father’s game to become partner by thirty, something Miles has always wanted for his son, he’s a good guy.
Him whisking me away from the nightmare at dinner only to call and get us a table at this place on the way is proof of it.
On the way here, I guided the conversation to Graham and kept it there, what he’s been up to since the last time I saw him, which coincidentally was Jimmy’s funeral, and how he’s been with his studying to pass the bar.
He failed it his first time. From the sounds of the stress in his voice and the tight pinch of his mouth while he explained studying for it the second time, his test in a few weeks is weighing heavily on him.
“I got that, honey,” he says, “but what I want to know is why and how it is you’re pregnant in the first place.”
“Well, you see, sweetie,” I tease, leaning in, “when there’s a boy and a girl, a boy puts his parts inside a girl’s—”
“Cut the shit, Cara.”
Oh-kay. Apparently stressed Graham lost his ability to joke.
“Sorry.” I take another sip of my water and set the glass down, trailing my finger around the stem of the elegant wineglass. “What have you been told?”
“I was told by my mom, who talked to your mom, that you’re in an unseemly situation”—I all but roll my eyes as he air-quotes “unseemly.” Please.—“And that you’re alone, struggling with no income to raise a baby, and your mom spoke with my mom, and your dad talked to my dad, and they think, since we’ve been family friends forever, that it’s best at this point to become family. Hence,” he points his finger at his chest and scowls, “I’m supposed to marry you. And I’ll do it, honey, you know I will.” He leans forward, and for not the first time in my life, his attractiveness is almost enough to steal my breath away if I still liked the polo shirt, suit-wearing, golf-club-membership kind of guy.
And, you know, if he was straight.
Fortunately, I find I have a taste for the tatted-up, knitted-hat, rough scruffy jaw, muscled variety. Which is why I’m boiling, my lid about ready to blow right off my top before he’s done talking.
“Excuse me?” My forehead aches from the stress of my brows shooting up so high and so fast. “You were told what?”
“I see that might not be the truth.”
“It sure as hell isn’t,” I hiss, leaning so close to the table I’m almost bent over it. “I am not alone and I’m most certainly not struggling for income. Granted, I’m not rolling in six figures, or even high five figures, with my job at the gallery, but I sure as hell am not alone. I’m living with Braxton, the father of my child, and we’re together, and Mom and Dad know this considering they showed up at my apartment one night when we were there, and I told them.”
One would think Graham would be shocked by the fact his parents and mine have had no problem lying to him.
Fortunately for me, it’s not the first time.
“I see,” he says, and takes a drink from his glass of white wine. He seems at a loss for saying anything else, and I definitely can’t blame him for that.
So while he processes the extremely screwed-up nature of our families, I peruse the menu, and when the waiter returns we both place our orders.
It’s when the waiter leaves, and Graham is already sipping out of his second glass of wine, he says, “I shouldn’t be surprised at this.”
“I’m certainly not, but why should you not be?”
“I came out to my parents about six months ago.”
“You did?” Holy shit! He’s been terrified of that moment since we were so young, since he tried to make out with a girl his first year of college, just to make sure he was really gay, to see if he could swing it, and when he was done, called me and said he never wanted to touch another woman for as long as he lived.
And he’d sent me a photo of the girl. She was gorgeous. Definitely make-out worthy.
“How’d it go?” I don’t even need to ask. It explains everything at my parents’ house earlier, and the way he’s swallowing his wine quicker than a starving man chugs water. “That bad?”
“Pretty much the worst possible scenario I’d ever imagined short of being disowned.”
“Oh. Graham.” My heart aches for him. His pain is so evident in his expression. I reach across the table and take his hand in mine, squeezing it tightly. “I’m so sorry. Tell me about it.”
“I’d rather not.” He drains his glass of wine and sets it down, sucking back the taste of his drink. “I think we have enough to talk about with you, woman. Tell me who got you pregnant and why my parents approached, insisting I should marry you so this baby can have a decent upbringing.”
“Decent?” I arch a brow, teasing. It takes him a minute to smile.
“Yeah, I get the irony. But fuck decent. Tell me everything.”
It doesn’t take me more than a breath to let it all spill out. I tell Graham everything. We talk about Braxton and my pregnancy, I tell him about the food trucks. By the time our own food arrives, we dig in, laughing and talking as I continue spilling all my stories about Braxton.
He asks me about the pregnancy. I give him the rundown on how far along I am, that I am secretly hoping it is a boy and grows up to be just like Braxton, with a bit of Jimmy sprinkled in.
We laugh about our parents, he jokes that if it doesn’t work out for us, he’ll happily take over and I can be his beard.
We spend hours at the restaurant, and I completely forget about my parents. I forget about everything except how good it feels to be with Graham, someone who totally gets me, and Braxton, a man who just might love me like I love him.
So when Graham suggests we head out and go a few blocks east to a jazz club he loves with live music, I don’t hesitate to say yes.