Total pages in book: 28
Estimated words: 26006 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 130(@200wpm)___ 104(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 26006 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 130(@200wpm)___ 104(@250wpm)___ 87(@300wpm)
Half an hour later, I was still sitting there.
When the front door opened and closed, I glanced over my shoulder. My friend Noah grinned at me as he descended the stairs. Then he handed me a drink, draped a throw blanket over my shoulders, and sat down beside me. I hadn’t even realized I’d been sitting there shivering until the blanket began to warm me.
“I decided to give you thirty minutes before coming to check on you,” he said.
I turned my head and looked into his jade green eyes, which crinkled at the corners when his grin turned into a smile. I’d really wanted to hate Noah when we first met. After all, here was this gorgeous guy who’d bonded so quickly and deeply with my boyfriend that they’d actually gone into business together right after they met. What man wouldn’t feel threatened by that?
But it was impossible to hate him. It would be like hating sunny days, or chocolate, or puppies. He was just this amazingly kind, considerate, genuinely good human being, and I felt lucky to be his friend.
I murmured a thank you and took a sip of whiskey before asking, “Who else knows I’m here?”
“No one. I saw your cab pull up while everyone else was deeply involved in a game of charades, and when you didn’t come in right away I figured you needed a little time to get yourself together. Meanwhile, Kel and Lark have been in the kitchen for the last three hours. They’re in charge of dinner tonight and refuse to accept help from anyone, including Dylan. That’s really a shame, because Lark’s boyfriend is an excellent cook. From the shrieks and crashes I’ve heard coming from the kitchen, I think dinner’s totally gone off the rails.”
“At what point do we try to intervene?”
“I don’t think we can, not without hurting their feelings,” he said, as I finished my drink. “Eventually they’ll either emerge triumphantly with something edible, or they’ll admit defeat and order pizza. It might take another three hours, but they’ll get there.”
I fished through my carry-on, then handed Noah a protein bar and got one for myself. “Thanks,” he said, “I was starving.” He tore off the wrapper and ate it in three bites before asking, “So, just how big a disaster was your visit with your parents?”
“It was off the charts. We’re talking the Hindenburg crashing into the Titanic during a tsunami.”
He smiled, but there was sympathy in his eyes as he said, “That good, huh?”
“I had a huge argument with my parents. I’d asked my mother to promise she wouldn’t set me up with any more of her friends’ daughters, but this morning at brunch she totally ambushed me. I held it together until we got back home, but then I accidentally got a little loud when I reminded her of her promise. That, of course, totally set off both my parents, because how dare I raise my voice to my mother?”
“Damn.”
“Then they started this long-winded spiel about how it’s time to settle down since I’m almost thirty, and how important it was to marry a girl from a good family, and on and on.”
“You’re only twenty-eight.”
“Right, but god forbid they’d clutter up their lecture with facts.” I sighed and added, “You know the worst part, though? I had the perfect opportunity to come out. It was right there, staring me in the face. I could have calmly told them I was gay, and that would have ended the entire debate about setting me up with their friends’ daughters once and for all. But I chickened out, for about the thousandth time. I’m so mad at myself.”
Noah squeezed my shoulder and said, “You shouldn’t beat yourself up. Like you told me before, coming out will probably end your relationship with your dad, and you don’t take that lightly.”
“I wish I didn’t care about that, especially since our relationship is pretty awful. All my life, I’ve felt like I needed to earn his love. I know that’s wrong and that it should be unconditional, but here I am, still trying, even as an adult.”
A tear tumbled down my cheek, and I swore under my breath and quickly ducked my head so Noah wouldn’t see. It was too late, though. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders and said, “It’s okay, Sonny. Let it out.” It was odd to hear him use Kel’s nickname for me, but it was nice, too—comforting, somehow.
I shook my head and wiped the tear away with the back of my hand. “It’s bad enough that I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself,” I muttered. “I’m not going to cry about it, too.”
“Suit yourself. But if you did, I obviously wouldn’t judge you for it.”
I wrapped the blanket around myself more securely when he removed his arm, and we both just sat there for a while. Even though I was facing away from the Victorian, I could see its Christmas lights reflected in the glossy, black Nissan parked at the curb. Finally, I said, “You know the worst part of all of this? Knowing I let Kel down, yet again.”