Jude
family's home, greeted by the smell of dinner and the faint notes of clean linen. Compared to the dry, uncomfortably warm night for an October evening, he embraced the familiar comforts of his childhood home.
"Anyone home?" he shouted before closing the front door, but the slight stirring of movement in the dining room signaled his parents' whereabouts without a word spoken.
Jude shrugged off his pea coat, draping it on a free peg in the coat rack next to his father's favorite blazer, and rolled down the bunched-up sleeves of his turtleneck. After a long day of classes and traffic on the congested Los Angeles freeways, nothing would satisfy Jude quicker than a home-cooked meal.
He could manage on his own, but his mom's culinary skills put him to shame.
"In the dining room!" his dad bellowed, followed by the light clatter of plates. Jude chuckled under his breath and headed for the dining room, slipping through the brightly lit kitchen. A giant, stainless-steel pot rested over a low flame, and when Jude lifted the lid, a rush of herb-scented steam brushed across his face.
Rosemary, thyme, and what he suspected was chicken submerged in viscous, brown gravy prodded at the hunger pent up within him.
"Jude! I already grabbed your plate!" His mom's whistle through the adjoining door stopped him in his tracks, losing his grip on the lid. The steel clattered on top of the pot, barely askew.
He glanced around, spooked, and fixed the lid on the pot. Jude shuffled into the next room, finding his parents at the dinner table as promised.
"Good evening." Jude slid into his chair and got comfortable as his parents broke out the silverware. He joined them, armed with a fork for the hearty helping of potatoes and chicken. "How was your week?"
"Not bad at all. Miriam?" his dad asked.
"Excellent! The ladies and I met up at the Ridge for some much-needed shopping. Thank you, Jude. . . how's school?"
"Not bad. This semester's classes have heavier workloads with my seminar class and thesis plans. Still, I'm in a decent place approaching midterms."
Jude's dad, David, ran his napkin over the beginning patches of stubble peppered around his chin, and Jude considered teasing him about buying him his first razor. When he stared at his dad, he imagined his own appearance in a few decades, hoping he aged half as gracefully.
His dad scooted his chair closer to the table, mid-bite, "I'll admit. . . I expected some world-shifting news, especially with a last-minute call for a Friday dinner instead of Sunday."
Jude shifted in his seat, knowing his parents would think some kind of announcement was in order with his impromptu dinner request. "Aww, do you guys miss me?"
"No."
"David, don't lie. You stop by Jude's room at least twice a day because you forget he doesn't live here." His mom, Miriam, rolled her eyes while she fetched her glass of water. Her eyes crinkled at the corners after such a lighthearted jab toward his dad's little white lie.
Jude snorted. He tried to suppress his laughter but couldn't when his dad grumbled something unintelligible under his breath. However, he knew his parents loved him and each other, no matter how many quips they cracked around the dinner table.
Eventually, he composed himself enough to pick at his plate. "If only I could make it home every night."
"Your room will always stay open for you and any friends you might bring along," his mom promised while grabbing the gravy boat in the middle of the table. "Besides, it'll give me more excuses to make family plans."
"There's nothing you love more than planning outings, dear." His dad leaned over and took his mom's hand, kissing her knuckles.
"To Dad's earlier point, I called for Friday dinner because I have an important announcement. It's not something I wanted to share over the phone." Jude stole a bite off his plate, pausing when his parents' eyes snapped toward him.
"What is it? Everything's alright?"
"Yeah, it's great. This is more for Mom's benefit, but I won't be attending any more outings that are actually trial dates. I'm officially off-the-market."
"You have a girlfriend?" my dad asks.
"Yes."
His mom gasped. "Since when?" She sounded more excited than affronted. Jude held his parents' undivided attention after detonating the bombshell he politely laid between the gravy boat and the freshly baked dinner rolls.
"Since last week. Now, you don't need to worry about me spending the prime years of my life alone." Jude mused, taking another bite of his dinner. Compliments to the chef for another excellent meal.
His mom crinkled her nose. "I wasn't worried about you ending up alone! You're a handsome, well-adjusted young man. Any girl would be lucky to date you. . . but since you've found someone, I want to know everything about her."
Giselle's face flashed in his mind, and heat crept up Jude's neck, causing all the hairs to stand straight. His eyes jumped between his parents and filled the pause with more eating.
"Jude." His mom's slender brow arched at his dodgy silence, and she linked hands with his dad over the table. "She's real, isn't she?"
"Giselle is real. Thank you."
"Giselle. . . didn't you used to go to school with a girl named Giselle?"
Busted.
Jude didn't mean to announce her name, but he hadn't expected his mom to remember his rambles about people he used to know. He talked about Giselle all the time back in high school, considering her a friend until Jameson Calloway interjected.
He cleared his throat. "Yes. That's the same Giselle. She's a local to the area and went to Del Mesa Prep."
His dad perked up. "Would we happen to know her family? Perhaps we've encountered them at the Ridge without realizing it. . . you know how small social circles are in this town."
"Right, but Giselle and her family don't frequent the Ridge. At least, I don't think they do, from what she's told me. So, we likely don't know her parents." Jude stepped around his words with such care.
Giselle came from modest means, honest and hardworking, and he didn't know how his parents might take the news of their different upbringings. He rarely introduced them to people he knew, and it had never been someone who didn't run in the same cramped social circles.
Compared to them, Giselle filled his life like a breath of fresh spring air. She wiped him clean from the stilted aura masquerading as the sophistication of the high life.
"Oh, okay. What's Giselle like?" his mom asked, sparing a sidelong glance toward his dad when his phone buzzed. Jude waited until his dad denied the call, silencing his phone and focusing on the group.
Being an immunologist kept a roof firmly over their heads but left his dad prone to frequent calls outside working hours.
Jude smiled, imagining Giselle seated at the table across from him. In his mind, her copper hair pulled away from her face and eyes, giving him ample opportunity to admire her. Her eyes sparkled as bright as her smile, poorly hidden behind a dainty hand.
"She's. . . hardworking. She's worked in town since she was fifteen, holding onto the same job at the plant nursery. I've never heard anyone say an unkind word about her because she's soft-spoken, charitable, and willing to help anyone who needs her,” he explained, chuckling to himself at the memories of them drawing doodles on each other’s lab reports back in biology class or the paper notes they slid across the lab table when they got bored. “When we shared a biology class, she knew every answer to the teacher's questions but never rushed to show off her smarts. But her humility can't eclipse how wonderfully beautiful she is."
Jude gushed, no sign of slowing down in sight. If he wanted his parents to believe his and Giselle's charade, he needed to give every reason for it to be true. Hyping Giselle up was the easy part, at least for him.
On cue, he reached for his water and tentatively sipped, watching his parents for their reactions. His dad nodded in between bites of his dinner. Jude didn't decipher further into whether his dad approved.
On the other hand, his mom looked utterly lovestruck. She leaned onto her folded hands, mouth stretched into the widest smile he could remember seeing on her, and stared at him with gleaming eyes. Pride enveloped her face in a radiant glow.
She gestured for more. "Don't stop there! You two obviously met in high school, but have you kept in touch since then? When did this develop?"
"I saw her at the Ridge after I left Sugar Roux." Jude sank further into his chair, getting comfortable with his act. The slight twinge of guilt left his tongue buzzing with every addition he spun into his web, strong like a shot of hard liquor. "She and I talked, but I found her at her workplace and asked her on a date. It's not too romantic."
"I disagree." His mom downright swooned while stretching out of her chair. She grasped another buttery dinner roll from the basket. "You two sounded close whenever you mentioned her in passing all those years ago. It was meant to be."
"Maybe so." Jude flashed a smile, but he wouldn't contradict his mom while she clearly heard the wedding bells. If she needed a delusion to cling to, he and Giselle became the playwrights for a whirlwind romance.
His dad cleared his throat, and Jude's world slid off its axis, reminded of the second hurdle to clear. A quick glimpse of his dad's calm but unreadable demeanor and the worst bubbled up in Jude's mind.
Had he failed to convince his dad? Was he disappointed with his choice of girlfriend?
In bated breath, Jude couldn't think about his next move or how to pivot should his dad be upset at him. He could name maybe five times when his dad voiced disapproval toward him or his actions, and four of them happened before he turned twelve.
However, his dad hummed, "Well, you sound content with her companionship, which is what your mom and I hoped for you. She lives local, yes?"
"Yeah, no more than fifteen minutes from our place. Why?"
"We should have her over for dinner. She could bring her parents if she wanted, but we'd love to meet her and get to know her better. She's been in your life for a while, but you never brought friends over in high school."
Jude paused, keenly aware he talked himself into a slight hiccup. He feared a lackluster response but accidentally flung himself in the opposite direction. They took his news of Giselle and ran with it, gunning to meet the woman of the hour.
He swallowed. "When would this dinner be?"
"Why not this Sunday, before you return to school?" his mom interjected, and the hopeful gleam threaded in his parents' expressions slammed the final nail in Jude's resolve. He dug a hole, but Giselle could pull him back out.
"You know, I'll ask her," Jude spoke cautiously. He didn't want to promise anything because he couldn't force Giselle to play along when he invented new layers to their lie. "She's on the shyer side. Meeting the parents is a big ask so early in our relationship. I don't want to scare her away."
"We promise to keep everything low-maintenance and casual. Would that be better?" asked his mom.
"Do we mean 'casual' as in what everyone else would deem casual or what's expected at the Royal Ridge?" Jude replied.
"How about Giselle wears whatever she feels comfortable wearing, but don't spook her into wearing anything too fancy? That seems like a compromise," his dad spoke, mouth full of chicken, but Jude heard some wisdom there.
"Fair enough. I'll extend the invitation tonight. I'll tell you what Giselle says."
"Your parents want to meet me? This Sunday? With no dress code? Am I missing anything?" Giselle, as Jude expected, took the news with palpable anxiety.
At first, her response to the news had been to move around. But her frantic pacing around the cash register of Greens & Gardens caused Jude to hold her still by her shoulders until she promised to sit down and stop burning a hole in the floor.
Behind the register, Giselle's hands moved around without restraint, yet Jude focused on her face. A few wispy strands of hair fell from her ponytail and into her eyes, but Giselle left them alone. She sported an oversized T-shirt and jeans underneath her dirt-stained apron, more casual than Jude had ever seen her.
"No, you summed everything up nicely," Jude said, leaning against the wall of seeds. He thought it best to show up and break the news face-to-face. He was glad he had come and caught her towards the end of her closing shift. "Tell me what's going on in that mind of yours."
"It's. . . I didn't expect meeting the parents to happen so soon, so I didn't prepare. I haven't established a cover story or any details yet."
"You won't need to worry about that. I handled the how we met question already."
"And what did you say?"
"I told my mom the truth. . . mostly. We went to high school at Del Mesa Prep together; we lost contact, and we reconnected after years when I saw you at the Ridge. I came to your work and asked you out. Keeping it simple and close to the truth sounded like the best idea."
Giselle stopped her twitchy movements behind the counter, staring at him with her mouth slightly parted like she was shocked. But the instantaneous exhale plunged her tense shoulders into a relaxed stance.
She sighed, "Alright, that's not too bad. You're surprisingly good at this fake boyfriend thing. . . have you done it before?"
Giselle's words stoked a risky flush of heat under his collar, and Jude shook his head. "No. You're my first."
"Well, you should teach me your ways because I need to get my fake girlfriend act together," Giselle laughed. However, a split-second switch in her demeanor brought the levity crashing down. "I'm trying to be a better pretend girlfriend than I was as a real girlfriend. It's a steep learning curve."
Jude frowned, ready to protest Giselle's alleged lack of girlfriend skills. He knew nothing about her and James' relationship beyond what he and everyone else saw in public. But no part of him believed Giselle could be at fault for anything in that relationship.
He pushed off the wall and approached the counter, leaning over the edge until Giselle's eyes met his. The apologetic, downtrodden turn of her brows threatened to cleave his heart from his chest. What had James done to her?
Jude's memories of her from their Del Mesa days remained a sharp contrast among the grainy, faded blur of everything else. The Giselle he remembered from high school never shied away from a question or challenge.
But he had been away too long and missed her for even longer.
Jude reached over the counter, grasping one of her hands in his. He ran his thumb across the back of her hand and witnessed her fingers twitching before she accepted the hold.
"Giselle," he murmured. "You're so much more than my pretend girlfriend or James' ex, alright? But, for the record, Calloway probably couldn't see past his monumental ego to appreciate what was right in front of him. So, don't pay him any attention. . . he doesn't matter between you and me."
Giselle's lips twitched like she wanted to smile at his words, but she couldn't. She blinked at him. "Jude, do you think I'll be able to impress your parents?"
"You already have."
"No, they're impressed by the version of me you told them about, but I don't want the real deal to fall short of expectations. Like, even with no dress code, I doubt anything in my closet will impress them. That doesn't cover the lack of life experience or stories to share when they ask about me."
"Giselle, come on. Don't doubt yourself so hard."
"I can't help it! I want to go to dinner, I do. But this fake relationship must be believable, so they need to like me. I need them to like me as much as your mom liked the girls she set you up with," Giselle interrupted, but Jude caught her before the spiral.
His other hand cupped the underside of her chin, tipping her head until her runaway eyes met his. “Please don’t hide from me. It will never bother me that you don’t wear designer clothes because clothes don’t change the amazing person that you are. I like you as is. Whatever’s bothering you, let me help.”
Giselle chewed her lip. “I’m running on pure anxiety thinking about dinner. What if I mess up our story? What if I wear an awful outfit, and your mom judges me for how I dress? What if I forget all of my dinner etiquette and use the wrong utensil? There are so many ways I can mess this up for us—”
"One thing at a time." Jude shook his head. "Our story is already set, and we need to follow the plan. Let me take the lead if you don’t know what to do, and I’ll cover it. You’re not going to be tested or anything. If not having anything to wear worries you, how about I grab you something for the big night and drop it at your house tomorrow?"
"You'd do that?" whispered Giselle.
"Yes, and I'll get you whatever size you need. Anything you want and need is yours."
"I'm typically a size four, but some places would have me as a six. . . promise me you'll let me pay you back for the cost of the dress. I don't feel comfortable letting you buy me a brand-new dress, and we can work out a payment plan."
Jude stopped her before she got too far ahead. "Giselle, I know some people who know some people. I can get the dress on loan if that helps you feel better, but I won't be making you pay me back."
Giselle didn't rush to rebut him that time or guilt him with puppy dog eyes. She, pausing for a beat, whispered, "Okay. You've convinced me. I'll rent a dress and come to Sunday dinner."
"Glad to hear it. I promise you'll be great." Jude beamed and squeezed Giselle's hand, realizing he held her captive with his arms. He relinquished his hold, and Giselle stepped back, cheeks flushed with pink to contrast the otherwise tired shadows under her eyes.
"Well, you'll be there to protect me if everything goes horribly wrong," Giselle remarked, sounding on the verge of a smile. "Thanks for swinging by."
"Well, I promised to spend time with you whenever I’m in town, remember? I haven't met this week's quota."
"Oh? Then, could you stay and walk me to my car? I've almost finished closing for the night since my shift ended fifteen minutes ago."
Jude's head snapped toward the clock on the wall, gawking. "Wait, did I keep you here over time? I'm sorry about that."
"It's okay! I always stay extra when I close since I fix everything for the morning workers. I'll meet you outside?" Giselle hopped off her stool and snatched the keyring from the peg on the wall behind her.
"Sure thing. I'll be waiting."
"Be right back!"
Giselle bolted for the greenhouse while Jude headed for the door, slipping into the chilly evening to the chime of the bell. He stayed close to the door and propped himself next to the window with the store's flowery logo painted onto the glass.
He checked his phone for missed messages, finding none, and spent the passing seconds counting stars and the occasional red blink of an airplane overhead. The peaceful air of the evening and the nearby waves crashing against the cliffside soothed Jude's restless mind.
He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for the tinkling bell over the door. When the chime sang, he cracked an eye open to see Giselle sans apron but with a new pair of keys.
Her back faced him while her fingers fumbled with the keys, testing them in the lock until one clicked. She straightened and spun around, jumping slightly when she saw Jude so close.
"Hi!" Giselle panted a little and nodded toward the parking lot. Jude nodded, too, smiling, and they walked down the pavement. "Um, thanks for stopping by. I mean it. I shouldn't have panicked so hard, but I'm lucky you have the patience of a saint."
Jude snorted. "Don't worry about it. . . you know, "patience of a saint" is kind of ironic, given my name."
Giselle cocked her head even as they weaved through the few remaining cars in the poorly lit parking lot. "Jude? You weren't named for the Beatles song?"
"Nope."
"Is Jude short for Judas? I didn't see that coming, I won't lie."
"No, my mom named me Jude for Saint Jude. . . the Patron Saint of Hope. My mom's mom was Catholic, and although my mom strayed away, she named me in honor of my grandma. She used to wear a golden necklace with St. Jude on the medallion, which I keep in a box in my bedroom," Jude explained.
Although James used to think it was the funniest joke to call him Judas instead of his name. Another footnote in their tense history that Giselle didn't need to worry about.
That evening, the temperature along the coast dropped to a new low for the week, colder than expected for California weather. Fog from the marine layer blanketed over the parking lot, turning the glow of the lamps into a murky yellow. A hard shiver racked Giselle’s body as they approached her car. She tried to hide it but couldn't undo the chattering of her teeth or how the shaking jumped off her skin and onto Jude's.
Giselle reached for her keys to unlock her car, but Jude leaned over and opened the driver's side for her. "Before you go. . . take this with you."
He shrugged off his pea coat and slid it over Giselle's shoulders, swamping her in his clothes. He trusted the heating in his car to keep him warm until he got home, but his coat could keep Giselle company.
"Jude, this is a nice coat. Are you sure you want me to take it?" Giselle gawked, but Jude noticed the subtle tug of the coat closer to her body.
He ushered her to sit inside her car, smiling. "Keep it until Sunday. That's how I make sure you don’t stand me up for dinner.” He winked and tucked her into her car, closing the door safely behind her.