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“What’s the news?” my dad asks.
“I decided to move to Vegas after all,” I blurt.
My mom gasps, and the server chooses that moment to take our drink order. I skip over the alcohol as my parents order champagne to celebrate, but they don’t question my choice because of the stomach bug thing.
“Oh, I’m so thrilled!” my mom gushes.
“What made you change your mind?” my dad asks.
I lift a shoulder. “We’re six months out from the charity ball, and I need to be closer to manage the auction items and help Erin with some other tasks.” I wonder if I can talk her into giving me Asher’s foundation as one of my first tasks aside from the ball.
I wonder if I can talk to Ellie and admit the truth. She represents him, and as one of her clients, maybe she’d have some ideas to help us manage our relationship.
I make a mental note to ask Asher his opinion on that.
I need to stop saying his name in my head while I’m sitting at the table with my parents before it slips out of my mouth.
“What other tasks for Erin?” my dad asks.
“Oh, I don’t know. She mentioned some different player foundations and things like that.” I keep my tone schooled so as not to raise any suspicion, and I think it works.
“Will you still work for Angelica?” my mom asks.
“I’ve actually thought a lot about that, and I think I’m going to part ways with her when I move.” I haven’t told her that yet, and I also haven’t mentioned that I’m moving. But I have so few tasks with her these days that I’m sure it won’t come as a shock.
“Where are you looking to live?” my dad asks. “We know the good areas now if you need any help.”
“I think I’d like to be close to the Complex,” I say.
We chat about where I should live all through dinner, and the next weekend, I find myself pulling into my parents’ driveway in Vegas with my California plates on my Mercedes.
I gifted Addy with the furniture and a contact who will help her sell it if she chooses to, and my parents paid for a moving company to move the rest of my stuff here.
And that’s it. I cried when I said goodbye to my friends, and then I drove by myself to Vegas on a Saturday so I could attend tomorrow’s home game.
It’s all a bit surreal to me as I get out of the front seat and draw in a deep breath of dry desert air. This is home now.
Well,thisis home for the next few days until I settle on a place of my own, and on Monday I’ll be touring potential new homes with my mom and her realtor, Joyce.
It’s getting harder and harder to keep this secret from her, though. And to be honest, I don’twantto keep it from her.
But I can’t tell her and expect her to keep it from my dad, and I’m not ready for him to know yet.
Still, I have questions. Lots of them. The kind you want to ask your mom as you go through something she went through about twenty-six years ago.
I’m ten weeks pregnant when Christmas comes, and as we open gifts by the fireplace, even though it’s in the seventies outside, I count my blessings.
But later, when my dad pours eggnog and adds the traditional brandy to it, a drink we’ve laughed over annually since I turned twenty-one—or nineteen, if nobody’s counting—I freeze.
It slipped my mind that he’d want to share a glass with me, and I’m not sure how to decline. I don’t have the stomach bug anymore. I’ve been eating like a horse all day.
I hand my glass to my mom as if I’m passing it over, and my dad moves to pour a third.
I can fake it, or I can fess up.
I hold up a hand. “I, uh…I don’t want any,” I say.
My dad’s brows furrow. “It’s tradition, Desi-Doo.”
