Page 69 of Meeting Mr. Adorkable
“I’m sorry, Arlo. I didn’t mean to question you, but I was taken aback. By you saying your home belonged to both of you. Because he’s going home soon, right? I remember him saying he was only going to be here for a few months. Did he mention up to Thanksgiving? Or was it Christmas? The holidays are coming fast. He’s such a nice boy, even if he is a little quirky, but hey, he’s been good for you. He’s taken you out of yourself, and that’s got to be a good thing.”
The food in Arlo’s stomach curdled.
“Plans have changed. He’s not leaving. He’s going to stay on in the Creek. We haven’t talked too much yet about the longer term—”
“Excuse me?” Francine stared at him, mouth agape.
“He’s not leaving.”
“I heard you, Arlo. But what do you mean, he’s not leaving? I thought he lived in some big old castle back in England.”
“It’s a manor, not a castle. He does. Or did. But now he lives here.” And soon he’ll be living with me.
“But—”
“Francie.”
The hard note of caution in Hank’s voice cut across them, plunging the kitchen into a prickly, awkward silence.
Arlo put down his spoon and pushed the unwanted food away. Whatever was going on here, it needed to stop. Now. It was time to collect Peanut and leave. But he had one more thing to say before he did.
“Francine, Lucian’s not a boy. He’s twenty-four. And he’s not been some kind of temporary diversion.”
“That’s not what I said. I agree he’s been good for you. Didn’t I just say that? But I’m sorry, if I called him a boy it’s because he feels like little more than that to me. He’s about the same age as the twins, so how else am I to think of him?”
The twins… Jesus Christ. Kyle, still plagued with acne and hardly more than monosyllabic, obsessed with gaming on his computer, and hardly ever leaving his bedroom. Jed, jock extraordinaire, his brain as muscle bound as his body. They were as different from Lucian as it was possible to get, and Francine was comparing Lucian to them? He bit his tongue, tasting the metallic tang of blood, anything to stop himself from launching a full on attack. Francine was his friend, even if at the moment it didn’t much feel like it.
“Arlo,” she said with a heavy sigh, as though scolding a child who should know better. He gritted his teeth. “We worry about you. Don’t we, Hank?”
“Francie, leave it. It’s not our business.”
It sure wasn’t, but whatever warning Hank thought he was giving, she refused to heed it as she turned back to Arlo.
“We do worry. I’m not going to deny it. We’ve worried about you since the day you came back to the Creek. You were so down and defeated after Tony. And I’m not saying Lucian’s the same—”
“Then what are you saying?” Arlo gritted out.
Francine flinched at the steel in his voice, but she was determined. “Tony was a nice boy, too, or so I thought. And what did he do? He crushed your heart and threw it away. He was too young to be settled down—”
“The difference in our age had nothing to do with why we parted.” His stomach clenched, what he’d eaten of the rich stew laying heavy and fatty, making him feel sick.
The age difference, which had never been a factor early in the relationship, had later become one, as Tony had grown to want something different from the life they’d shared. But Tony and Lucian were not the same, as different from each other as the ocean and the desert.
“Oh, Arlo, can’t you see you’re going down the same path? I know it’s flattering when somebody who’s so much younger shows you attention. Why, that nice boy who works in the bakery, he’s always flirting with me—”
“What’s that?” Hank lifted his head out of his hands.
“And I’ve got to say I rather enjoy it,” Francine said, taking no notice. “Because it’s validation that I’m still worth flirting with. At my age, too. But it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a little playfulness. And that’s how you have to see this thing you have with Lucian.”
She lurched forward and covered Arlo’s hands with her own, holding on tight.
“We don’t want to see you repeating the same mistakes. Another much younger man? Really? Arlo, I know you think a lot of him, I can see that, but the plain truth is he’s not for you. So this boy’s extending his time here, but he will leave. He’ll go back to his own home, to his own friends, to his own country, and to his real life. Arlo, he’s not for you. Don’t you see that?”
Arlo pulled his hands out of her grip. Francine’s words were a hurricane, flattening everything in their wake. Everything except for him.
“What gives you the right to talk to me like this? Who are you to say who is and who isn’t good for me?”
“Arlo, I’m only—”
