Hey all, sorry about the delay on this chapter, my life has been kind of flipped over lately. Getting back to a regular publishing schedule soon. Thank you for your patience.
- - -
"Alison!" I heard from behind my sunglasses. I looked over at the sliding glass door in our backyard and saw my Mother waving me inside. I groaned and let my legs off of the inflatable raft, standing up in the pool and letting the cool water embrace my body. It swallowed nearly all of me, this bikini was not very modest (read: incredible that it even held itself together at all with how little structural support it possessed,) since I'd bought it not for swimming but for tanning in the backyard.
"Coming." I yelled back, pulling myself up the A-Frame ladder and out of the pool. I bent down for the folded towel resting on our grass and wrapped myself in it as I walked towards the back door, drying my shoulders off as I went. It was Saturday, maybe eleven am, and I'd been tanning my front for maybe twenty minutes. The water droplets on my skin didn't reflect the tanned body I'd been working for with this outfit. Damn it to Hell.
Inside, my Mother was watching me with a disapproving glare. "Alison May Dent, I thought we had a discussion about you telling me before you had friends over?" She asked, quietly. I must've looked confused.
"Huh? Who's here?" I asked, since I hadn't invited anyone to be over for at least another hour. And even then, Eric was just going to pick me up in his car, not come inside. So he wasn't coming over, per se.
"Eric. He said he was running early. He honked, didn't you hear him?" She asked, while my worst fears were confirmed. I shook my head no. God, I hadn't wanted my parents to meet him for a few more weeks at least, possibly not ever. If you haven't worked out yet, my parents and I aren't exactly close.
"No, I didn't hear. And he wasn't coming over, he was just going to pick me up so we could grab lunch. Where is he now?" I asked, saying a silent prayer to whichever God or Saint or whatever could hear those. My mother waved a hand carelessly.
"He's in the den with you Father, they're discussing his car. Out of morbid curiousity, do you know how many airbags it has?" She asked me, as I jogged to my room, still holding my towel around my dripping body. I changed as fast as I could, a process made easier by the fact that I'd already laid out my outfit this morning for our date. Just a simple V-neck, some nice jeans that showed off the curve of my waist and a pair of black Sully Wong's. I had considered a leather jacket so I looked cool but it was too damn hot.
I sprinted out of my room to the basement, our family "den" with a home cinema and a desk that only my Dad used when he needed a place to set his sewing machine without annoying mom with the noise. Eric and my Dad were standing a few feet apart, and maybe it was my imagination, maybe they were sizing each other up. My Dad was wearing his usual "around the house sweats" and a Green Day concert tour T-shirt. Eric was more... formally dressed in a custom T that said "So I look down at the phone and it's my Mother, which is very, very weird because she never calls me," some nice dark jeans, and a pair of red Chuck Taylor's.
"Hey Eric. Hey Dad. Has he threatened you with neutering?" I said, faux-chipper to highlight instead of avoid the awkwardness of the social convention, the father meeting his daughter's boyfriend. Eric smiled at me, which made me smile like the idiot I was and butterflies or maybe a dozen bags of industrial-strength Pop Rocks filled my tummy, making me deliciously nervous.
"Hi Honeycake. Eric here was just telling me about his car. If he gets you home before Seven in one piece, I'll even believe he can drive it." He said, but in a playful tone that showed his hostility was mostly a ruse. Not to say my father wouldn't kick the crap out of Eric or anyone who hurt me.
"Challenge accepted." Eric said with a smile, going along with the abuse. He smiled at me again, but nothing more. I stood on my tiptoe to kiss Dad on the cheek.
"Bye Daddy! I'll be safe." I assured him. He smiled warmly at me and squeezed me in his arms. Yeah, yeah, I'm a total Daddy's Girl, proud of it. He and I were a lot more similar than me and my mom.
"You do that. Eric, always a pleasure." He said, holding out his hand to him. Eric quickly took it.
"Same to you, Sir." He replied. But the way he said it didn't feel like he was pandering, made him seem like a real Southern Gentleman. He and my Father broke apart and we were heading up the stairs. I called out a goodbye to my Mom and we exited quickly, me mostly pushing him to the car. He seemed amused more than anything about how quickly I seemed to want to get out of there. But I didn't want to waste any of our time together at my house when we could be doing so much else.
He carefully put his seatbelt on and slowly drove away from my house, going at the precise speed limit of twenty MPH on our typical suburban street. I wanted him to burn rubber out of there. I was grinding my teeth together in the passenger seat. When I opened my eyes, Eric was glancing over at me, still paying attention to the road.
"So, you seemed anxious to get out of there." He said pointedly, cruising towards the highway.
"Well, yeah. Guess I was. I didn't want anyone to start chatting your ear off." I said, cool as a cucumber.