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“No.” She shakes her head. “You look like you could be anywhere between thirty and your actual age and being only nine years older than me isn’t that big of a deal. My brother is about ten years older than my sister-in-law.”
“But you’re the baby.” I smirk as if to say, the rules are probably very different for you.
“They won’t sweat that,” she says. “My parents are…somehow both a little old fashioned and what they believe to be cool at the same time.”
I nod, understanding somewhat because her parents seem so much different than my mother. “Okay, anything else?” I ask her, wanting to make a good impression.
“No…” She winces. “If I coach you too much, they’ll know. They can sniff out bullshit pretty easily. Just be yourself I guess.” She smiles at me. “The annoying part about all of this, is that they’ll probably like you.”
“Annoying part?” I can’t deny that it makes me happy that she thinks that her parents will like me. She doesn’t answer, she just shoots me a sideways glance before rolling her eyes. I’m about to respond when my phone begins to ring, resounding through the car and connecting to my Bluetooth which just so happens to flash on the screen on my console.
Holly’s name appears across the screen and even though I press the end call button before it has a chance to ring a second time, I know Marissa sees it and I watch the hurt flash across her face.
“Marissa…” I start and she shakes her head as she looks out the window.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.”
“No, it’s really not. It’s fucked up. You are minutes away from meeting my parents and your wife calls you.” She lets out a sigh. “You said she didn’t care what you did.”
“She doesn’t,” I counter.
“She’s calling you after you’ve been gone for two days. That’s a woman who’s wondering where her man is.”
“I am not her—”
“According to the state of Pennsylvania, you are,” she interrupts me with a glare.
“A piece of paper doesn’t mean shit.”
“Except hundreds of millions of dollars,” she snaps and I don’t even know what to say to that. “I’ll make something up. I’ll say you had to go. I don’t want you meeting them.”
I can see her shutting down quickly and I hate it. “What…Marissa, I can at least come in and say hello.”
“No! I don’t need them liking you because that will lead to wanting to have you over for dinner or one of my aunt’s parties or my nieces’ birthdays and that’s not happening. You are not my boyfriend. You can’t be while you’re still someone else’s husband.”
“Then what am I?” I don’t know why I ask because I’m not sure I want to know her answer. I don’t want to know what she considers me to be right now.
“I don’t know, you tell me?”
“Marissa, you already told them I’d come in. I don’t want to be rude to your family and put a bad taste in their mouths for when you are ready to call me your boyfriend,” I tell her. “And make no mistake, at some point, you will be calling me your boyfriend.”
“You can’t possibly be that sure of yourself.”
“I’m not sure about anything except how much I want to be with you.”
She rubs her chest and I watch as the previously hard look on her face softens. “Do you always say the right things?”
“No. And the longer you’re with me, you’ll see that I don’t.”
“I still don’t think the time is right to meet them. I’ll tell them it was my decision.”
“This is really what you want?” I ask her, because I don’t want to do anything that will cause her family to see me in a bad light. I’m already planning our next date and the one after that and the last thing I want is to piss her parents off before I even have the chance to meet them.
She nods. “I’ll come over later. I just…” She trails off. “They’re my parents and I feel wrong letting them meet someone under false pretenses.”
“It’s not false,” I tell her because there is nothing untrue about what I feel for her or what I think she feels for me.
