Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,54

of a cat as she darts up the stairs.

“Home!” Gray calls, hanging our coats on a hook by the doorway.

“In here!” a woman’s voice calls back.

Gray leads me through the living room, which is lined with bookshelves on two walls and art prints on the others, a blue velvet couch facing a pair of architectural-looking chairs. It’s not how I pictured his house, and it must show on my face, because Gray nudges me in the side. “Were you imagining like, the whole place decorated in the colors of the New England Patriots?” he asks.

“Shut up,” I say, though he’s definitely on to me at this point. “No.”

“You totally were,” he says with a laugh, then nods at the bookshelves. “How exactly did you think I came up with a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale so fast?”

He leads me through the formal living room and into a den, where two women are sitting watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine and drinking wine, a second orange cat purring on the sofa between them.

“Hey, baby,” one of them says, lifting her face so that Gray can drop a kiss onto her cheek.

“This is Marin,” he says. “These are my moms, Heather and Jenn.”

“This is Marin!” the brunette—Jenn, I think—crows, like she’s heard about me before.

I smile.

“Mom,” Gray says, looking faintly embarrassed. “Jesus.”

We chat for a little while, about the book club and about my editorials for the Beacon, which I guess he also mentioned.

“How was the party?” Heather asks.

“Kind of boring,” Gray says, though I’m not entirely sure if he means the potluck or Hurley’s; either way, he leaves out the part about Jacob and the algae pond. “We’re gonna get some food and go upstairs.”

“Door open!” Heather calls after us, and Gray makes a face for my benefit.

“Noted!” he calls back. Then, more quietly, “Jesus Christ, Mom.”

“We heard that!” Heather yells.

We head into the kitchen, which looks like it was recently redone, with stainless appliances and a big window above the sink overlooking the yard.

“Can I ask you something?” I say, hopping up onto a stool. “Do you call both your moms ‘Mom’?”

That makes him smile. “I mean, yeah,” he says, opening a box of Cheez-Its and digging out a bright-orange handful. “What else would I call them?”

“No, I just mean, how do you keep them straight?”

Gray gives me a weird look, like possibly he’s never stopped to think about it before. “Well, I mean, there’s only two of them,” he says. “And my sister always just kind of . . . knows which one I’m talking about? I don’t know. I didn’t think it was weird until right this minute, so thanks for that, I guess.”

“You’re welcome,” I say with a smile, taking the box of crackers from his outstretched hand. “Also, I gotta say—obviously I don’t know them, but those guys don’t seem like the type to get super worked up over whether you play lacrosse in college.”

Gray’s eyes narrow. “In the five minutes you talked to them?” he asks pointedly, and I can tell I’ve hit a nerve.

“Okay, fine,” I say, “Fair enough.”

“They just . . . want me to be a college guy, that’s all.” Gray shrugs. “And if I can’t get in on my grades, then . . .” He trails off. “I don’t know,” he says, picking the box of Cheez-Its up off the counter and using it to usher me out of the kitchen. “I’ll figure it out.”

“You will,” I promise, and follow him up the stairs.

Gray’s room is less of a surprise than the rest of the house, with white walls and bluish carpet and a signed Tom Brady jersey hanging in a poster frame above the desk. The bed is unmade, with rumpled flannel sheets melting off the edge of it. Gray scoops a pair of boxers off the floor and chucks them into the closet, looking goofily embarrassed.

“Sorry,” he says. “If I knew you were coming—” He breaks off, seeming to think about it for a moment. “Well, no, honestly. I probably still would have been a total slob.”

“Monster,” I tease, glancing around the room at the half-empty water glasses clustered on every available surface, paperbacks for book club stacked haphazardly on the desk. On the dresser is a photo of his moms standing on either side of a little boy with a slightly uneven bowl cut, his front teeth bucked like a cartoon character’s.

“Oh my gosh,” I say, reaching for it before I can stop myself. “Is this you?”

“Nah,” Gray says immediately, “it’s