Page 6 of For Pleasure Or Worse

I’d told my parents off-handedly a hundred times that they had an open invitation, knowing full well that they would never leave New York, especially not without a place to stay. It was etiquette, pure obligation. Did I think they’d ever show up unannounced and use that invite against me? Never in a million years.

“If that’s not a problem…” Dad added after sensing my hesitation. “We could always find one of those rentals, if it is.”

The saturating guilt was settling like cement in my stomach. I was either the worst son in the world, or I was putting Natalia in a position she wasn’t prepared for and neither of us would survive. I lost no matter what.

My attention swept to her and I could see the cogs turning in my fiancée’s tiny little head. Her lips thinned, the thinking finger came up to rest on her chin, and she glimpsed innocently in my direction, a shrug living on the edge of her shoulder. I knew that look; it was her deciding to be the hero. A muscle in my jaw tensed and my head started a slow, involuntary shake back and forth.

“Natalia, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Our fingers linked and her dangling feet plopped to the floor as I whisked her off the chair. We made it halfway down the hallway and out of sight before I nudged her into the wall and closed her in with my hands on either side of her head.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Oh, my naive, do-gooding, hospitable princess. The worst part of this was that I wished I could welcome my parents with open arms. It would have been so much easier than trying to explain to her that my parents were better experienced from afar and that’s why I’d kept them there.

“You weren’t about to do what I think you were just about to do…were you?” Her lips twisted into a pout and I tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear.

“What was I about to do that you think I was about to do?”

“You know exactly what you were about to do thatI knowyou know you were about to do.”

“Well if you know what I know”—she stuck a pointy finger in the dip at the center of my chest—“then we know the thing I wasabout to do is kind, and helpful, andthe leastwe could do for your parents if they’re going to be here for six months.”

Fuck she was cute, and good-willed, and had a terrible relationship with her own family that made the prospect of entertaining mine seem like a walk in the park. What she didn’t know—but should have been glaringly obvious after the last thirty minutes—was that my family had no boundaries. There was not a statue of couth erected in the Duran house. I wanted to protect her as much as humanly possible.

“Right, well, if you know whatI know, then you’d know that offering to let my parents live in the room across the hall from us for six months is equivalent to castration. Do you want to castrate me, Tally? Do you want to take a sharp knife to the seam of my jewels before I can get you pregnant?”

Her eyes narrowed. “You can’t fuck me with your mother in the house?”

“I can fuck you anytime, anywhere, anyway I please, sweetheart. But if my mother’s big girl bloomers get tangled in the dryer with my T-shirts, my dick will probably turn into a gummy worm.”

“I don’t think that them staying here could get any worse than what happened when they showed up.”

She was probably right, but I knew in my gut that if it could, it very well would. And considering our line of work, the chances immediately doubled. “Why test it?” I shrugged.

“You’re hardly home anyway, and the cam business takes up most of my time. If I’m not filming and editing, I’m usually bored or shopping. So look at this as an opportunity for me to bond with your parents, Matty. They’re part of you, and I want to know every part. I promise to be a perfect host; it’ll barely even feel like they’re here.”

I laughed. She seemed to believe that allowing Anna and David Duran free rein of our house for months was going to belike taking care of a pair of elderly, self-sufficient cats. Cats that disappear outside for a few days at a time and you don’t worry about it because eventually they’ll show back up meowing at the front door in the middle of the night.

“I could really use the help with wedding planning while you’re overbooked at work because Frankie is gone,” she continued. “Plus, it saves them from renting a place. Your mom will get to spend time with her baby boy, and you can take your dad out golfing, drive him around downtown, introduce him to the neighbors…”

My hand scrubbed disparagingly down my face over day-old stubble. It was sharp and graying through the once reddish-brown beard from my twenties. The gesture reminded me I was a thirty-five-year-old man afraid to establish any type of boundaries with my parents because I hadn’t needed to since I left home for the military almost two decades ago. I would rather avoid them than invite them to stay at the house because that's where I was most comfortable. An arm's length away from the overbearing and intrusive love-bombing. Here, I could just call home every week and get an update on which bars Angelo got banned from for being drunk and disorderly again.

My aversion to my parents wasn’t fair to Natalia. She deserved to know the family she was marrying into. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I wasn’t sure if Mom and Dad would be a better fit than her own parents, but I did know that she’d been given a sour hand there, and not allowing her the chance to feel a sense of belonging with the Durans was nothing more than me being selfish. I didn’t want to overwhelm her, but it was me who was really worried about being overwhelmed.

I leaned down and kissed her forehead. “If I agree to this, we need to establish some ground rules.”

“You’re the boss.” She knew I’d love hearing those words slip through her lips.

“First of all, we need a safe word. And not the sexy kind. The complete and utter opposite of the sexy kind. This is one for if and when either of us needs out, and needs out fast.”

“Simple enough.” She nodded. “Coconut.”

“Coconut? You got nothing else? Nothing more original?”

“Palm tree.”

“Seriously?” I parried.

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