Page 78 of Confessions of a Virgin on a Dating App
My gaze flicked up to an art piece of severalCreatures & Cryptsmonsters that hung above him, and I silently prayed he wouldn’t notice it. The scowl on his face was discouraging enough; I didn’t need a full-on lecture on my “Satanic” hobbies.
“Well.” My mother clapped her hands together, trying to dissipate the awkward tension in the room. “Are youhungry, sweetie? Your father and I haven’t had anything to eat other than the road snacks we packed in the cooler.”
“Yes.” My reply shot out of my mouth. I was eager to leave my townhouse so my father could stop scrabbling around my gaming memorabilia. But going to a restaurant meant spending the next hour stuck at a table with my parents, where I’d be forced to engage in conversation about what I’d been doing in Orlando for the past five years.
“Well let’s hop in the car and find a place,” my mother replied, ushering us all out of my bedroom and toward the front door. “I’m sure you know where the best food in town is.”
I did. But as we walked toward my parents’ white pickup truck, I had a feeling the number of places my father would be willing to eat at would be limited.
I was correct, because we ended up eating at a small chain steakhouse not far from my townhouse. It was, in fact, the same chain steakhouse that was in my childhood hometown, being one of the few food options in the rural area besides fast-food chains and greasy breakfast joints.
Not that I minded. I wasn’t a big fan of steak, but they had plenty of chicken and seafood options for me to pick from. Although this was a different location than the one in my tiny hometown, it had the same rustic décor and nearly the same layout. The walls were an earthy clay brown with generic framed photos of cows and farms, with the centerpiece being a giant taxidermy bull’s head over the fake fireplace. At my age, it felt cheesy, but it also felt nostalgic, asbig nights out to this chain steakhouse were a rare treat in my childhood.
“So Avery.” My mother finally broke the silence after a few minutes of us burying our heads in our menus. “Tell me more about Orlando. How’s your job? What do you like to do around here? Have you made lots of friends?”
Oh boy.I set my menu down, my stomach suddenly feeling less eager for food than before. Those were all loaded questions, and I knew I had to choose my answers carefully. Especially since my father was sitting right next to me in the booth. Our elbows were nearly touching.
“Well…” I paused, scrambling for words like I was about to give a carefully crafted speech. “Work is good. I mostly edit manuscripts and do cover design work in Photoshop. It’s a lot of fun. We get all genres of books, but a lot of them are autobiographies. I’ve read a lot of interesting life stories.”
“That sounds wonderful, sweetie. What fun.”
The knot in my stomach loosened just a fraction.So far, so good.
“What about friends? You have a roommate, right?”
“Yes,” I replied, glad that Cassidy wasn’t home when my parents first arrived. She planned on staying with Aaron for the next week to give me some space to recover.Not that she needs an excuse to stay with him,I snickered.
Plus, our tiny townhouse would be crowded with four people. My parents had booked a hotel nearby, but I knew they’d be spending a lot of time at my place since I’d be incapacitated for at least the first few days.
“Her name is Cassidy,” I continued. “She’s my best friend. And I’ve made a lot of other good friends here too.”
“Any coworker friends?”
“Nah. The company is mostly remote and based out of Miami.”
“Ah. So how did you and Cassidy meet?”
Goddamnit.My fingers clenched around the napkin in my lap until my knuckles bulged.
“Uh, at a game shop.”
“Oh, what’s that?”
I wanted to be a smartass and say “it’s a shop where you play games,” but I knew there was no escaping this conversation. My mother wasn’t a stone-faced, judgmental louse like my father, but she was still incredibly nosy. She’d keep digging and digging until she got to the truth.
“It’s uh…where I play games with my friends.”
“What kind of games?”
“Uh, tabletop stuff, like…”
“Creatures & Crypts?”
The sudden, unexpected interjection by my father caused both my mother and I to snap our mouths shut and swivel our heads in his direction.
I was nearly speechless, but I still managed to squeak out a “yes.”
My father scoffed, shifting in his seat as his arms crossed over themselves. “I told you, Maria. She moves hours away to the big city, and now she’s involved in demons and witchcraft.”
