I nod. “Nina?” I ask, without taking my eyes off him. “Can you give us a minute?”
She giggles again, and I hear the door creak as it opens and then closes after her.
And then I kiss him with everything I have. “You look so fucking hot in that tie,” I pant at him as our lips separate. “Sorry I didn’t say that earlier.”
He flushes and looks shy again. “It’s really okay?”
“Better than okay. Thank you. You don’t need a tie to impress me, but thank you.”
The smile he gives me then is brilliant, and that warmth I saw earlier in his eyes blossoms like fire. I think I know what it means. I think I know what it says.
I have to find a way to fix this, I think frantically as I kiss him again. This can’t be an ending. This must be the beginning.
“Cal, where in California are you from?” Christie asks, causing me to choke on a piece of bread.
We’re all sitting around the large dining room table, Abe on my left, and Cal to my right. Nina and Mary sit across from us. My mother and Christie sit at the ends of the table. I give serious thought to telling Christie to shut her fucking face, but I don’t think that would quell the innocent question I took to be overtly suspicious. She’s family, I remind myself. She’s not like everyone else.
I jump in. “Redding.”
“San Diego,” my mother says at the same time.
“Sacramento,” Abe says at the same time.
Everyone stares at us.
“He traveled a lot,” I say hastily as Cal watches me. “He never stayed in one place for too long. Kind of his thing.”
“I moved around a lot,” Cal repeats as I resist the urge to kick him under the table. “Always moving. Kind of my thing. Lola, would you happen to have any green clover marshmallows? I think I would like some.”
My mother smiles weakly I as stifle a groan. “Sorry, Cal. Fresh out. I’m sure Benji has some back at Little House when we’re finished.”
“Rosie told me you had a thing for those,” Mary says, eyes sparkling. “I found that to be so dear.”
“Rosie is a good person,” Cal says as he chases a carrot around his plate with a spoon. “She carries that shotgun around with her everywhere and made me cupcakes. I like people like that.”
“Do you?” Christie asks, amused. “It seems to me shotguns are a scary thing.”
“I’m not really scared of much,” Cal says. He glances at me and smiles. This look is not missed by anyone at the table.
“Good to know,” Christie says. “Do you have family back in California, Cal?”
Dammit. He speaks before I can stop him. “I have a Father,” he says quietly. “And many brothers.”
Not quite a lie.
“Big family?”
“You could say that.”
I start to sweat.
“Are you the oldest?”
He shakes his head. “Youngest.”
Oh, that’s right. He’s only a couple of hundred years old.
“What about your mother?”
“Jesus, Christie,” I snap. “What’s with the third degree?”
She looks surprised. “I just wanted to get to know your friend better. Seems everyone in town just adores him, and I wanted to see what all the fuss is about. Besides, if he’s going to date my nephew, I think I have a right to know him better!”
“Dating? We’re… we’re not—” I sputter. “We’re just… shit.”
“Language,” Nina scolds me.
“We’re dating,” Cal tells the whole table quite loudly.
Abe and Nina grin. My mom looks stressed. Mary looks confused. Christie looks triumphant. I look embarrassed, I’m sure. And Cal? Cal looks pretty damned pleased with himself.
“I guess,” I mumble. “Let’s just drop it, okay?”
Dinner resumes, conversations veering here and there. Sometimes I speak up, other times I listen. I try to include Cal, steering the conversation away from any dangerous topics. My mom had asked me before why we just didn’t tell Mary and Christie about Cal since they were the only ones here who didn’t know, but I’d asked her to keep it under wraps for now. Mary, though I love her, isn’t known for her discretion, and I didn’t need Cal’s coming-out angel party to include the whole damned town. In my head I saw the swarms of media that would descend on Roseland, cameras flashing, reporters shouting. Then scientists would come and whisk him away to some secret underground testing facility where they would experiment on him, trying to find some way to hold him hostage and try to ransom him off to God. It was