Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 78043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78043 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 390(@200wpm)___ 312(@250wpm)___ 260(@300wpm)
Where the fuck were his parents raised?
Mars?
Him being an alien would make more sense than him being human, but it probably wasn’t likely.
“Really?” His gaze went back to bouncing between us as he studied our faces. Whatever he was looking for confused me, but after a few moments, he sighed. “People bring flowers like that. Huh.”
Okay, had he been raised in a cult?
Commune?
The moon?
Wait. Hadn’t we watched some Ancient Aliens shit about ant people in the desert?
Had he mentioned where his family was originally from?
“Um, yeah, people bring flowers.” Tate was now the one studying Joel, but he didn’t seem upset. “Quick question. It’s a tangent but where did your parents live when they met? Where were they from?”
Joel didn’t seem to mind the random questions but that might’ve been because he was still rolling the flowers thing around in his head. “They met in San Francisco, but my dad is from a small town in Utah that I can’t remember the name of and my mother is from Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
That explained so much.
But maybe I wouldn’t say that out loud after the whole needing to be polite conversation.
“I think we’re going to have more questions about how to behave at dinner.” Somehow Tate managed to say that with a straight face.
He was right, but I was also pretty sure just saying it without rolling his eyes made him the best Dom ever.
Chapter 14
Tate
“Have you figured out anything else we need to ask him?” After the flowers fiasco, I was a little nervous about bringing anything up to Joel, so I didn’t mention it again until he was off at class and I had Dean to myself.
A very antsy Dean who kept wandering around the apartment doing random shit like he couldn’t turn his brain off. I wasn’t sure what was on his mind, but he’d spent a suspiciously long amount of time in the bathroom. If he’d been Joel, I’d have known what to guess, but with Dean, I was just hoping he hadn’t gotten food poisoning or something.
The most logical option was that he was worried about how the dinner would go since Joel’s mother was definitely going to ask about our sex life. I’d already assured him a half-dozen times that I’d take care of that part, though, so I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He was a Grade A worrier, though, so he’d probably found something new and fun to focus on.
The one thing he didn’t seem nervous about was the what to bring part, and I was very lucky that my worrier wasn’t quite as scarred as I was and had taken the lead on that part of dinner planning. For some reason, that was one of the only conversational topics with Joel that didn’t seem to worry him. “Um, I’ve established that dessert is not intimate or special in any way, so Sunday afternoon I’m going to make brownies before we go over.”
Well, that was one thing we could check off the worry-about list.
“Anything else?” At first, the whole situation had been funny, but I was at the waiting for the land mines to explode part. It was more stressful than I’d anticipated. “No flowers and no asking for board games. But everything else…”
Having dinner with a boyfriend’s parents shouldn’t be so stressful.
I’d done it several times since I’d figured out dating and I’d done a damned good job of it. Parents liked me. I had manners but wasn’t fake. I could find something funny to talk about with almost anyone. I ate nearly everything and could even stomach my first boyfriend Nick’s mother’s weird meatloaf that’d been really dry and had hardboiled eggs in it.
But Joel…
“No.” Shaking his head, Dean plopped down beside me on the couch and crashed into my shoulder as his energy finally wound down. “The rest of the manners stuff seems to be very conventional. No surprises when it comes to food. She’s making this bacon pasta that sounds really good. Oh, and regular clothes are fine. No modesty issues.”
Shit.
“I hadn’t even thought about that.” Letting out a deep breath, I leaned my head against Dean’s and tried not to sound as dramatic as he did. “Thank you for asking about it.”
Joel kept saying he hadn’t grown up religious but nothing he said about relationships went with that statement…and nothing mainstream worked with all the strange pieces, so it couldn’t be one of those.
I just couldn’t figure out what had replaced religion in his life that he didn’t realize was actually some kind of religion.
Did those weird multi-level marketing cults have issues with board games and flowers?
“Did you ask anything else about his upbringing?” We were at the point where I couldn’t ask him about God any longer without it being weird, but Dean hadn’t pushed it as far as I had.