Page 60 of The Confidant
But when I walked into the kitchen, instead of finding my parents rushing to get out the door for the ten o’clock Sunday service they were never late for, they were sitting at the table sipping their coffee.
And they were wearing regular clothes instead of my dad wearing his church suit and my mom wearing one of her Sunday dresses.
Had the three-day weekend messed up their schedules and they thought today was Saturday?
I checked my watch to make sure I wasn’t the one who’d mixed up the dates. But as I expected, the date at the top corner said it was Sunday, February twentieth.
What was going on? Were they late getting ready because they’d been waiting to give me some sort of a spiritual intervention first?
It wouldn’t be too shocking if that was the case, really, since one of them—usually my mom—insisted on having some sort of “please come back to The Fold and leave the path of darkness” conversation with me whenever I was home.
I considered sneaking back to my room and pretending I was sleeping in until noon, but my dad looked up from the business book he was reading and said, “Oh, hey Hunter. We were just wondering when you’d be up.” He marked his page with a bookmark and set his book down on the table. “Did you get in late last night?”
“Not too late,” I said. “About eleven-thirty.”
Which I was pretty sure was before they did, since I’d heard them laughing about something when they got home from their charity event around one o’clock.
“Do anything fun last night?” Mom turned in her chair to look at me.
When people saw me with my parents and brother, they always said I took after my mom because we had the same chestnut-brown hair and green eyes while Bash took after my dad with his dark brown, almost black hair, and blue eyes.
It used to bug me growing up—to be compared to a woman since I very much identified as a male. But now that I’d finally hit my growth spurt and had inched closer to my dad and Bash’s height of six-foot-two, I didn’t mind it as much.
In fact, I was pretty sure I’d only appreciate it even more the older I got. My mom had what her other socialite friends called “magic genetics” and still didn’t have a single gray hair or need plastic surgery and Botox to take care of the signs of aging that most image-conscious women nearing fifty like my mom did.
“I hung out with Scarlett,” I said.
“Of course,” Mom said, a smile on her lips. “You two are basically tied at the hip.”
“I guess,” I said with a shrug, hoping my parents wouldn’t be able to tell how excited I really was about the time I’d spent with my best friend last night.
They were good friends with Pastor and Sister Caldwell, and I couldn’t have them saying anything to them about Scarlett and me being on a date last night.
I looked at the clock on the wall, wondering when my parents would realize how behind they were on their morning. Mom followed my gaze to the large clock, and when she saw it was nine-forty-eight—just twelve minutes before their church started—she got an uneasy look in her eyes before glancing at my dad.
Was this the moment right before they jumped into their “Let’s save our son so he can be with us in special heaven” chat? Or were they planning to hit me again with their “Do you really want to be on your own without your trust fund after college?” bribe?
I hoped this wasn’t the beginning of one of those conversations because I really didn’t feel like getting into any of that with them right now. It was exhausting, and their attempts to bring me back to church never turned out well, no matter how many times they shared their testimonies or tried to put the fear of God in me.
I still had a whole day and a half to get through with them before I’d be heading back to school. I didn’t want to spend the majority of that time feeling triggered or like none of the people I cared about would ever understand me.
So instead of standing there looking like I was waiting for them to start that conversation, I turned to the fridge and pulled out the whole milk and chai latte concentrate. I grabbed one of the silver pitchers from the cupboard, and after pouring equal parts of each liquid into it, I took it to the espresso machine to steam and froth it.
Once my drink was ready, I poured it into my mug. I was just thinking about sneaking back to my room to work on my column when Mom said, “So Hunter…”
“Yeah?” I looked at my parents, bracing myself again.
“Your father and I were just wondering what you’d like to do today.”
“Umm…” I started, not quite sure what I should say. “I guess I was planning to do some homework this morning. Why?”
Was this some sort of set-up? If it sounded like I was just planning to lie around while they were at church, would they use that as an excuse to get me to go with them?
“Well…” She looked at Dad for backup to whatever she was about to say. “I guess we were thinking about doing some family stuff today. Maybe play some card games or watch a movie before going to lunch.”
Going for lunch?
On a Sunday?
