Page 76 of Playboy For Hire

I shrugged. “I used to do that. Wear suits whenever they visited, bring work clothes home with me whenever I went back to see them. But that just earned me comments about how I thought I was too good to work on a farm anymore, and I was trying to hide my roots.”

“Ugh. That’s awful.”

“That’s my parents. This way, at least, they don’t comment about how I’m getting too big for my britches. You on the other hand—” I smiled at Quinn “—are going to knock their socks off.”

“Which I want to do because…”

“Because maybe, if they think you’re cool and important, some of that will rub off on me.” I turned back to the closet and pulled out a blazer that matched the trousers. “Here. You’re not going to wear that, just carry it over your arm. It’ll be perfect.”

Quinn did, in fact, look perfect. I tried to stare without looking like I was staring all through dinner. He was elegant and poised, and the fact that he was kind of quiet was working in his favor. It came across like he was aloof and thinking about the world’s problems, rather than shy. I congratulated myself for having played a tiny role in that, but really, it was all Quinn.

He was surprisingly good with my parents, charming my mom with questions about what it was like growing up in the countryside, since he was from Baltimore originally. He asked my dad about the kind of machinery he used on the farm, which made him as happy as I’d ever seen him, outside of one of this YouTube rabbit holes.

Quinn mentioned the right-to-repair movement, saying he’d heard arguments on both sides, and wondered what my dad thought about it. My dad hadlotsof thoughts, it turned out, and that kept the conversation going for another thirty minutes.

Since my parents liked nothing more than talking about themselves, they were having a lovely evening, which was trickling down into me having a not-totally-sucky evening myself. If visits with my parents always went this smoothly, I might not avoid them so much.

“But enough about me,” my dad said finally. “Quinn, you seem like a young man with a good head on your shoulders. How on earth did you and Ryder end up being friends? You tutor him in math or something?”

Quinn shot me an awkward look. I just shrugged. As barbs from my parents went, that one was pretty benign.

“No sir,” Quinn said. “Actually, math isn’t my strong suit. Ryder and I met at a bocce game. His team beat mine in a landslide.”

“Bocce.” My dad sounded suspicious. “What kind of game is that? Some sort of city-slickers thing?”

I closed my eyes briefly, impressed by my dad’s ability to get worked up over bocce, and his ability to use the word ‘city-slickers’ unironically.

“Oh.” Quinn shot me another glance. “I don’t know where it’s popular, exactly. But it’s kind of like bowling, but outdoors?”

“It’s Italian in origin,” I put in. “And traces its roots to the Roman Empire. People play it around the country.”

Trust me to know useless facts that would never help me at work or in school.

“Well, I’ve never heard of it,” my dad harrumphed.

My mom gave me a reproving glance. “So you have time to play soccer and go to schoolandplay this other game, but you can’t spare a weekend to come down and see your parents?”

“Bocce is like, one hour a week,” I protested. “It’s not the same commitment as coming home for a weekend.”

My mom looked at my dad. “It’s always the same answer, isn’t it?”

“Boy thinks he’s better than us,” my dad said. “Never should have let him go to that fancy school.”

“You didn’t actuallyletme do anything,” I said. “The scholarship is what made it possible. That, and me working.”

“Youshouldbe working back home. Back in my day, kids didn’t sass their parents like that. If you ask me, a good beating is all it would take to—”

“Mrs. Olson,” Quinn interrupted, “you never finished telling me that story about your grandmother’s quilt. Do you still have it to this day?”

It was a blatant change of topic, but my mom was so excited to talk about it that she jumped in over my dad.

“Oh, yes, I do. It’s one of many that I’ve kept saved in a wooden chest from my mom. I thought Ryder might want them someday, when he meets a nice girl and has kids. But these days, I think he’d rather pretend we’re not even his family.”

“Oh, I—” Quinn hesitated, clearly unsure of how to respond to that, but my mom kept right on talking.

“I don’t suppose you would want one?” she asked. “I know it must be hard for people who don’t have big families to support them.”

Quinn’s brow furrowed, and I looked at my mom in confusion. The topic of Quinn’s family hadn’t come up at all tonight, but I knew for a fact it was huge.

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