Attraction - 15. Chapter 15 – A serious affair

We slept till late after the early morning sexual romp. Kent woke up before me, and placing a kiss on my shoulder (I was sleeping on my front) he went about his morning business. After a few minutes had passed, in the state of half wakefulness I heard him from the other room.

“Two O’clock? Yes. You don’t have to do that. Are you sure?” Who was he making plans with? Then I recalled what he’d said earlier. “Great. We’ll be on time. Thank you, Mom. I’ll see you guys at lunch then. I love you. Ba-bye!” Oh my God! He was talking to his mother, making plans for lunch. I sat up suddenly and in my attempt to jump out of the bed, got entangled in the sheets and fell to the floor with a loud thud. Kent came rushing in and it must have been difficult to tell looking at our face, which one of us was more shocked then.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I fell.” He rolled his eyes.

“I can see that! But how?”

“I heard you talking. We’re meeting your parents?”

“I told you in the morning.”

“But you didn’t give me time to think it through.” I was quite agitated.

Kent did not say anything for a second and just looked at me. “Fine! I’ll call her and cancel.”

“Yes.” I replied. Wait a second. “No, you can’t do that now. She’ll think badly of me even before we met.”

“What do you want me to do, Jon?”

“Nothing, just… Don’t do anything.”

He left the room. I was actually very angry at him and did not want to blow up. After pacing about for a few minutes I went to look for him, he was sitting on the couch.

“I didn’t bring any good clothes.”

He suppressed a smile. “What you have is fine. We’re having lunch at my parents’ house. No need to dress up”

“Holy shit! Their house? Oh man. Please take me shopping, I need a nice formal shirt. There’s no way I am going to their house looking like a punk.”

Kent came to my side and held me by shoulders. “We can do that. I don’t think you need to, but we can go buy whatever you want. It’s only ten. We can grab a quick breakfast, buy your shirt, if you want you can change in the shop itself. What say?”

What was I to say? I didn’t have any other choice. “We need to get dressed and head out soon though? Why don’t we take a shower together to save time?”

He knew I was pissed off at him and was trying to get on my good books. I did not let him cajole me totally and sulked through the breakfast, shopping and much of the drive to his parents’ place. I was utterly unprepared, did not know what to expect and in that stunned state my mind wasn’t letting me ask for any last minute tips. Kent let me be and stuck to giving my hand a squeeze when he could. At one of the stop signs he tried kiss my hand. I pulled it away vehemently, which made him smile.

“Go ahead, mock me”, I said, “we’ll see who’s laughing later tonight.” He just carried on chuckling at my threat.

When we stopped in the drive way of a two storied Mediterranean villa in what seemed to be a fairly upscale neighborhood, my mouth dropped open.

“This is where they live?” He never told me his parents were rich, which meant technically he was rich. My parents were comfortable, but we were decidedly middle of the road. This seemed to be a house of plenty.

“Yes. I grew up here. Look at me, Jon.” Kent turned my face to him and looked into my eyes with an expression of great earnestness, “There may be a million things here that would make you uncomfortable. But I want you to know, at no point do you have to pretend to be someone you’re not. I would never want that. I love you for who you are. Remember that ok? My parents can come off as distant, but that’s who they are. Let me know at any point if you’re not able to take it, ok? I am asking you to do this because my parents are important to me. Not more than you, however. You understand that right?”

I nodded and took a deep breath. He pulled me in for a kiss before we got out of the car. We let ourselves inside the house with Kent’s keys and walked right into the living room. It was sunny and needless to say, expensively decorated albeit in a slightly glossy style. Mix of antiques and 20th century furniture and artwork, all done in the beige, white hues. Paintings on the wall and the plants brought liveliness & color to the décor.

“Why don’t to you get comfortable here? I’ll go and fetch my mother, she must be in the kitchen directing the lunch arrangements. Dad’s car was in the driveway so he must be somewhere inside as well.”

I sat down obediently on the vintage couch, not daring to occupy too much area lest I leave some unhealthy imprint. Kent had just left from one door when from another came a tall clean shaven man who could only be my boyfriend’s father. I stood up hastily and produced my hand,

“Hello, you must be Jon” my introduction was cut off by the belligerent giant. His cheeriness seemed as polished as the porcelain on the fireplace mantle. “I am Kent’s father, Pat. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Where’s Kent? Did my son leave you stranded in a strange house?”

“He went to look for his mother, and you, Sir. And I’m very pleased to meet you too.” .

“Oh call me Pat” he said genially, “we don’t stand at formalities here.” Didn’t we?

Right at that moment Kent came back into the room with an elegantly dressed lady in tow, his mother of course. She came up and took both my hands into hers. Giving Pat a sideways look she said,

“Has my husband been bullying you already? Pat, you did not even offer Jon a drink. It is Jon isn’t it? I am terrible with names; I hear so many of them in my line of work. I am Lydia, Kent’s mother. So happy that you two came to meet us old people today. Thank you very much”

When Kent had told me that his parents were distant, I had a mental picture of very reserved individuals. These people were definitely not reserved. However, despite the friendliness of my reception, I could not disagree with his description of them. Their entire demeanor, even inside their own home was entirely too civil.

We got started on lunch after some more idle chat that goes with introductions. It was quite a generous spread of salad, cold sandwiches, grilled chicken, sautéed veggies and what looked like a casserole. Apparently my host did not think it was enough, “I am sorry about the lunch, Jon. Kent gave me such short notice, it’s basically just what we were going to have for ourselves. Since it’s just the two of us we never go for much fancy affair. I promise to compensate for it next time.”

“Oh no, Mrs.. I mean Lydia. This is great. I mean, it would be the best meal I’ve had all month.” Could I not stammer please?

“Such a polite young man!” She turned to give her son, who was seated to the opposite side of me, a significant look as if to say, ‘I approve’.

Pat’s father began another line of conversation.

“So Kent, son, have you heard from the McKinsey folks yet? Are they making you the PPO?”

“I haven’t, dad.”

“But you are going to take it up if they did right? Or were you considering something else.”

Kent gave me a swift look before answering his father.

“It depends on a lot of things. I’ll make my decision based on where I want to live after finishing.”

His father nodded at the response.

“So Jon, dear, tell us about yourself, what do you do? Where did you grow up?” Lydia asked me.

I wiped my mouth before answering.

“I work as a product manager. Did my engineering in Computer Science from Chicago and have been working ever since. I grew up in Illinois, in a suburb of Chicago actually, but moved to Portland seven years ago”

Her eyes went up as I mentioned my qualification.

“I am not certain if Jon has mentioned, I am a Computer Science engineer myself” said Lydia, a little pompously perhaps. “In fact I went ahead and got my PhD. That’s how my teaching job at Berkley came about.” Holy shit. Kent never told me all this. Was she trying to diss me? “It’s great to meet a man of science. These two” she gestured at the other men on the table, “sadly belong to the world of money making.”

I gave Pat a nervous look but he seemed fine with his wife’s put down on his career. I’m sure he was a big shot in corporate somewhere, but was bowing willingly to his wife’s claims of intellectual superiority in front of a stranger. It was then that I realized that these were genuinely people. May be a little on the showy side, but hey, if you got it flaunt it, right? The afternoon became easier for me from that point on. Kent and I both stuffed ourselves. Afterwards, he showed me around the house, including the room he grew up in. It was surprisingly normal. He showed me his collection of games. Later, when he left me in the living room with Pat to have a private conversation with his mother, I did not feel scared at all. I should have. Pat, it seemed, was looking for an opportunity to talk to me,

“Jon, I hope I’m not out of line here, I’ve been meaning to talk to you alone. If you did not mind, shall I go ahead?”

Alarm bells started ringing in my head but I gave a polite “Certainly, please do.”

“I understand Cara introduced you two. In my books that alone recommends you highly. You see, I'm sure Kent must’ve told you this; he did not have an easy time in understanding what he wanted in life and made a few mistakes along the way. I am proud of him, that’s for sure, but he has had a slower route than some others. He is a remarkably talented man nevertheless, and stands to achieve a lot in life. All I ask of you is to provide him with a lot of support. He may not show it and say he needs it. But he requires someone to stick up for him. I’m saying this assuming what’s going on between you two is serious. If it’s not, you’ll have to excuse my forwardness to silliness of old age.”

I tried to express that whatever he said was totally fine with me. If I could get a word in edgewise,

“Oh! Another thing. Part of the reason Kent struggled so much, I think, was because of his attachment to his mother. Firstborn’s they say are always mother’s pets. Anyway, don’t take it to heart if anything she did offended you in any way. She’s been trying hard to come to terms with the fact that her son… well that he’ll not marry a woman. If she’s not entirely there, do be patient with her.”

Before I could wrap my head around this tirade that I had been subjected to, Kent and his mom came back into the room.

“Babes!” Kent addressed me and I winced thinking of his mother, “Ready to go?”

“Oh stay a while longer” Lydia pleaded charmingly, seemingly unperturbed with her son's endearment for me. “I’m sure Pat would like to show Jon around his club.” Oh man!

“Next time mother. We’ll come early so we could all go for a round of golf and spend more time together. What say dad?”

“Sounds like a plan, son. You’ll have to choose some weekend before Thanksgiving though when it isn’t rainy.”

“Speaking of,” Lydia interjected addressing me, “Kent told me that you don’t want to leave your mother alone for the holiday and I for one would be loath to part a mother from her son on Thanksgiving. Please invite her to join us on my behalf. In fact, I could call her myself if you gave me her number.”

“Oh that won’t be necessary.”

“Darling,” Pat chimed in, “you haven’t invited Jon yet. Don’t you think you need to do that first?”

“Trust you to catch my mistakes, dear” Lydia said mockingly. “Pardon me, let me do this properly. Jon! Would you and your mother do us the honor of joining our family for the Thanksgiving dinner this year? We would be thrilled to have you.”

I sighed and giving what was hopefully my graceful smile nodded, “It would be our honor for us to be here. Thanks you very much, Lydia, and you too, Pat.”

As we said our goodbyes and thank you-s I thought, this ‘meet the parent’ could not have gone any better. It meant, now that my mother had got what she wanted - I had much more to lose.