Abandon

Chapter Twenty-Six

We’re nearly at the restaurant when Senia’s phone rings. It’s her parents informing her that the restaurant reservation has been canceled. Dinner will take place at her parents’ house. I turn the car around – again – and ten minutes later we arrive at a large two-story stucco house in a country-club housing tract in North Raleigh.

I know Senia’s family does well with the family real estate business, but I did sort of fantasize that her family’s house would be a rundown shack I rescued her from. I reach for the door handle to exit the car, but Senia grabs my arm.

“Wait!” She holds my face and kisses me hard – the kind of kiss that melts your insides and makes you want to stay under the covers all day. “Just wanted to get it out of the way since I won’t be able to do that for a while.”

I chuckle as she lets go of my face and hops out of the car. We walk hand-in-hand toward the front door, passing under a bare bougainvillea archway that drips with melting snow. I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but I’m thinking that this feels an awful lot like walking down the aisle. She reaches for the doorknob and, I swear, the next twenty minutes are a slow-motion blur of handshakes and hugs. I can’t really remember much of it, but I do remember someone grabbing my ass and the look on Senia’s father’s face when he sees me.

He’s wearing a gray suit and he’s in good shape for a man his age. His dark hair is cropped short and impeccably styled. I can’t tell if he looks more like a real estate agent or a mobster. His nostrils flare as his gaze takes in my shoulder-length hair, my gray jeans and the black sweater I’m wearing under my army-green twill jacket.

I hold my hand out to him. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

He cocks an eyebrow, exactly the way Senia does when she’s not impressed. “Aren’t you going to remove your jacket?” he says with a slight accent that makes me feel as if I’ve stepped into a scene from the movie Scarface. I begin to take my jacket off and he laughs. “I’m only kidding!” He holds his hand out for me to shake. When I take it, he pulls me into a bone-crushing hug, which gives him the perfect opportunity to whisper in my ear: “Keep it in your pants in Las Vegas, okay?”

I swallow hard as he lets me go and he’s still wearing a huge smile. He nods and I nod just enough for him to notice, then I try not to smile. We’ll only be in Vegas for two nights. I can handle two nights without sex. Good thing is, with Senia being pregnant, I don’t have to.

Dinner actually goes pretty well after that. Senia’s mom serves up some fried fish and something called pupusas, which just look like fat tortillas stuffed with cheese and various meats. Senia rolls her eyes when I tell her I hope this food doesn’t give me explosive pupusa, then her cheeks flush red when I ask her for some ketchup for my fried fish. Just the sight of me pouring the ketchup onto my plate makes her mom, Nancy, cringe. Fried food always tastes better with ketchup. They’ll learn.

Senia’s three older sisters are a whole different story. They ogle me all through dinner and I catch Senia burning them with her laser eyes multiple times. None of them are as hot as Senia, but her sister Maribel, who’s just two years older than Senia, keeps glancing at me as she blathers on about her volunteer work at the local boys and girls club. It starts to make me a little uncomfortable, so I reach up and pretend to wipe something from the corner of Senia’s mouth.

“What is it?” Senia asks as she attempts to wipe her face clean.

“Nothing. Just a piece of pupu … sa. I got it.”

“You think that’s funny?”

“I think you’re smiling.”

I kiss her cheek and she pushes me away gently. “Stop.”

But Senia’s little sister Sophie, who Senia proudly claims to have named, is the most persistent of them all. She sits next to me on the couch as the family watches football and we draw pictures. She draws pictures of all the new friends she’s made in kindergarten and I draw a picture of Molly. She trades drawings with me and asks me to draw something on her picture. I think this is her subtle way of trying to get me to improve her drawing. So I add a sketch of Senia and me on the right side of the page and she makes me squeeze in a picture of her so the three of us are together.

Senia pretends to be playing on her phone the whole time, but I catch her stealing glances at Sophie and me every once in a while with a tiny smile curling the corners of her lips. By the time we leave her parents’ house, I’m confident I passed the test, if only for the blood-curdling tantrum that Sophie threw when I told her it was time for me to leave. After I’ve pulled my car into the garage and plugged it in to charge overnight, Senia and I take my tuxedo and her maid-of-honor dress upstairs and go straight to bed.

I don’t know if this is what it feels like to be in an adult relationship, but if it is, then I could get used to it. It feels good to be adored. But knowing that there’s only one girl who I adore is freeing. Unless the little sac of DNA inside Senia’s belly is a girl. Then I’ll have two girls to adore. In which case, the more the better.