All Your Perfects
Page 30

His mother absolutely loves me now and his father already refers to me as his daughter-in-law. I don’t mind it. I know we’ve only been together three months, but Graham will be my husband one day. It’s not even a question. It’s what happens when you meet your future husband. You eventually marry him.
And eventually . . . you introduce him to your mother.
Which is what is happening tonight. Not because I want him to meet her, but because it’s only fair since I’ve met his. I show you mine, you show me yours.
* * *
“Why are you so nervous?” Graham reaches across the seat and puts pressure on my knee. The knee I’ve been bouncing up and down since we got in the car. “I’m the one meeting your mother. I should be the nervous one.”
I squeeze his hand. “You’ll understand after you meet her.”
Graham laughs and brings my hand to his mouth, kissing it. “Do you think she’ll hate me?”
We’re on my mother’s street now. So close. “You aren’t Ethan. She already hates you.”
“Then why are you nervous? If she already hates me, I can’t disappoint her.”
“I don’t care if she hates you. I’m scared you’ll hate her.”
Graham shakes his head like I’m being ridiculous. “I could never hate the person who gave you life.”
He says that now . . .
I watch Graham’s expression as he pulls into the driveway. His eyes take in the massive home I grew up in. I can feel his thoughts from where I’m sitting. I can also hear them because he speaks them out loud.
“Holy shit. You grew up here?”
“Stop judging me.”
Graham puts the car in park. “It’s just a home, Quinn. It doesn’t define you.” He turns in his seat to face me, placing his hand on the seat rest behind my head as he leans in closer. “You know what else doesn’t define you? Your mother.” He leans forward and kisses me, then reaches around me and pushes open my door. “Let’s get this over with.”
No one greets us at the door, but once we’re inside, we find my mother in the kitchen. When she hears us, she turns around and assesses Graham from head to toe. It’s awkward because Graham goes in for a hug at the same time she goes in for a handshake. He falters a little, but that’s the only time he falters. He spends the entire dinner as the adorably charming person he is.
The whole time, I watch him, completely impressed. He’s done everything right. He greeted my mother as if he were actually excited to meet her. He’s answered all her questions politely. He’s talked just enough about his own family while making it seem he was more interested in ours. He complimented her décor, he laughed at her lame jokes, he ignored her underhanded insults. But even as I watch him excel, I’ve seen nothing but judgment in her eyes. I don’t even have to hear what she’s thinking because she’s always worn her thoughts in her expressions. Even through years of Botox.
She hates that he drove up in his Honda Accord and not something flashier.
She hates that he dared to show up for his first introduction in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
She hates that he’s an accountant, rather than the millionaires he does the accounting for.
She hates that he isn’t Ethan.
“Quinn,” she says as she stands. “Why don’t you give your friend a tour of the house.”
My friend.
She won’t even dignify us with a label.
I’m relieved to have an excuse to leave the sitting room, even if it’s just for a few minutes. I grab Graham’s hand and pull him out of the sitting room as my mother returns the tea tray to the kitchen.
We start in the great room, which is just a fancier name for a living room no one is allowed to sit in. I point to the wall of books and whisper, “I’ve never even seen her read a book. She just pretends to be worldly.”
Graham smiles and pretends to care while we walk slowly through the great room. He pauses in front of a wall of photos. Most of them are of my mother and us girls. Once our father died and she remarried, she put away most of the photos of him. But she’s always kept one. It’s a picture of our father with Ava on one knee and me on the other. As if Graham knows the exact photo I’m studying, he pulls it off the wall.
“You and Ava look more alike now than you did here.”
I nod. “Yeah, we get asked if we’re twins every time we’re together. We don’t really see it, though.”
“How old were you when your father died?”
“Fourteen.”
“That’s so young,” he says. “Were you very close?”
I shrug. “We weren’t not close. But he worked a lot. We only saw him a couple of times a week growing up, but he made the most of the times we did see him.” I force a smile. “I like to imagine that we’d be a lot closer now if he were alive. He was an older father, so I think it was just hard for him to connect with little girls, you know? But I think we would have connected as adults.”
Graham places the picture back on the wall. He pauses at every single picture and touches my photo, as if he can learn more about me through the pictures. When we finally make it through the sitting room, I lead him toward the back door to show him the greenhouse. But before we pass the stairs, he rests his hand against the small of my back and whispers against my ear. “I want to see your old bedroom first.”
His seductive voice makes his intentions clear. I get excited at the thought of recreating what happened in his childhood bedroom. I grab his hand and rush him up the stairs. It’s probably been a year or more since I actually came up to my old bedroom. I’m excited for him to see it because after being in his, I feel like I learned a lot more about him as a person.
When we reach my bedroom, I push open the door and let him walk in first. As soon as I flip on the light, I’m filled with disappointment. This experience won’t be the same as the one we had in Graham’s old bedroom.
My mother has boxed up everything. There are empty designer shoe boxes stacked up against two of the walls, floor to ceiling. Empty designer purse boxes cover a third wall. All of my things that once covered the walls of my bedroom are now boxed up in old moving boxes with my name sprawled across them. I walk over to the bed and run my hands over one of the boxes.
“I guess she needed the spare bedroom,” I say quietly.
Graham stands next to me and rubs a reassuring hand against my back. “It’s a tiny house,” he says. “I can see why she’d need the extra room.”
I laugh at his sarcasm. He pulls me in for a hug and I close my eyes as I curl into his chest. I hate that I was so excited for him to see my old bedroom. I hate that it makes me this sad to know my mother will never love me like Graham’s mother loves him. There are two guest bedrooms in this house, yet my mother chooses to use my old bedroom as the storage room. It embarrasses me that he’s witnessing this.
I pull back and suck up my emotions. I shrug, hoping he can’t tell how much it bothers me. But he can. He brushes my hair back and says, “You okay?”
“Yeah. I just . . . I don’t know. Meeting your family was an unexpected quality about you. I was kind of hoping you could have the same experience.” I laugh a little, embarrassed I even said that. “Wishful thinking.”
I walk over to my bedroom window and stare outside. I don’t want him to see the disappointment on my face. Graham walks up behind me and slips his arms around my waist.
“Most people are products of their environment, Quinn. I come from a good home. I grew up with two great, stable parents. It’s expected that I would grow up and be relatively normal.” He spins me around and puts his hands on my shoulders. He dips his head and looks at me with so much sincerity in his eyes. “Being here . . . meeting your mother and seeing where you came from and who you somehow turned out to be . . . it’s inspiring, Quinn. I don’t know how you did it, you selfless, amazing, incredible woman.”
A lot of people can’t pinpoint the exact moment they fall in love with another person.
I can.
It just happened.
And maybe it’s coincidence or maybe it’s something more, but Graham chooses this exact moment to press his forehead to mine and say, “I love you, Quinn.”