3. Paige
3
Paige
I click the green button to answer the next call while Rhodes drives. “Hi, Mom.”
“Paige!”
“Yes, hello.”
“Where are you?” she asks.
“Ten minutes from home. Had to stop for a pick-me-up.”
“Please tell me that isn’t code for drugs,” she demands.
“Coffee, Mom.” My favorite drug. She’s always been one to worry.
“Oh. Well, don’t spoil your appetite. And don’t do drugs. Anyway, I’ve got everything set for dinner tonight. What time will Tucker be coming?”
It’s the very first time my parents will be meeting Tucker in his official role as my boyfriend, and they are treating it as if the King of England is gracing their dinner table, hence the special occasion lemon meringue. Tucker is not royal. He brings more peasant energy with a side of nightclub.
“Seven. Isn’t that what you told me to tell him?” I swear my family has purposeful amnesia and just likes to call and ask the same thing multiple times.
“Did I? ”
See? Amnesia.
“Yes, you did. Tucker will be there. Promise.”
There’s a loud clapping noise on her end of the line, and I immediately recognize it as the old kitchen cabinets that sound as if they are breaking every time you open and close them.
“And Rhodes? Is he coming too?”
It isn’t a complete surprise my family keeps asking if he’s coming. Rhodes has always stayed for the meals he’s invited to—which is all of them—since I’ve known him.
And you don’t get that tall without eating multiple meals a day, plus snacks and something about nine essential nutrients. That’s what he tells me since I can barely remember to eat two meals instead of surviving off snacks and coffee.
Maybe he also agrees to eat over a lot because he lives in a studio apartment with too many white walls and top floor views. I hate him for it. Or it’s because most of his food is delivered to his front door and includes things like spinach and microgreens.
Maybe I should start doing deliveries as a side gig.
Nope. I am not going down that road again. Pizza delivery was a fail from the start. I got lost so many times the damn GPS couldn’t even help me. There have been times in my life I’ve held four jobs at once just to afford living on my own, but that was a long time ago in my twenties when I could survive on five hours of sleep. It’s why I now live in a basement.
Dark, cold, and eight-legged roommates are fine when trying to save money.
I pull the phone away from my ear, take a sip of my coffee, and swing my gaze to Rhodes, whose knees practically cradle the steering wheel. Just the right size my ass . “Now Mom’s asking if you’re coming tonight. Are you absolutely positive, or would you like to be asked again?”
“Uh…” His eyes bounce between the road and me. “And Tanner is for sure coming?”
“Tucker,” I correct.
“Right.” He raises his brows. “I don’t know if I should.”
I’m sure I look like I’ve swallowed an entire lemon. “Oh, come on. Since when do you not come to dinner?”
He grips the top of the steering wheel, inching through a few back roads. He still drives like a family of ducks could cross the street at any moment and he’ll need to brake fast.
“Well, it’s Truman’s first time meeting everyone. Maybe you should ease him into it.”
It’s almost like he’s forgetting his name on purpose. “And what if I want you to meet him?”
We turn and drive under an overpass, stopping at a light. His face seems to contort into some pained version of his usual assessing expression. “I’ve met him plenty of times.”
“Yeah, twelve years ago when you both had Spiderman backpacks.” Mom’s hollering through the phone, so I pull it back to my ear. “He’ll be there.”
“What?” Rhodes barks. “Please clarify with Gail I didn’t have a Spiderman backpack in high school, Paige. It was Yoda, and I was in middle school.”
“Light’s green,” I point out to him then return to my call, saying no such thing. “Need us to pick anything up?”
“I think I got everything,” Mom says. “Oh, Gerald. Can you put the leaf in the table? ”
She doesn’t bother pulling the phone away from her ear when calling for Dad. “Gerald?”
She yells a few more times, forcing the phone from my ear, with no response.
“Where is he?” she asks me.
“No idea.” He forgot that detail when we talked ten minutes ago.
She gasps. “That’s right. He’s in the attic. Forgot he was here.” There’s a pause then another gasp. “Shit! I mean shoot ! I took the ladder down! I should go help him.”
“Okay, well, I’ll see you in a few minutes. We’re almost to the house.” A few more turns and my childhood home will come into view.
“Alright, sweetie, I’ll see you soon.”
We both hang up without saying anything. It’s a family thing, but we never say goodbye. Why say goodbye when you could say nothing ? Mom always says.
“So, dinner…” Rhodes throws this out like he has more on his mind.
“Just spit out whatever you aren’t saying.” I wave my coffee around in a fit of annoyance.
His shoulders look like they’re kissing his ears. “ Treat yoself guy is—”
My phone starts ringing again. It’s my sister. “Constance.”
“Your obnoxious cat climbed my curtains.”
I sigh. “Did you let Cleocatra out of my apartment?”
“You mean your room in the basement?”
She likes to remind me I don’t live upstairs with the rest of them anymore and that it’s not a real apartment. It totally is since I only have to come upstairs when I need to use the oven. Everyone else doesn’t mind except for Constance, who only waited 3.5 seconds after I finished college and moved out to convert my room into her office where she spends most of her day as a twenty-three-year-old busting scammers online.
I sip my coffee. “Yes. The basement.”
“No. But I did what had to be done.”
“Constance…” She better hear the warning in my tone.
She sighs. “I took scissors to your curtains.”
“You what?”
Constance hangs up without explaining.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Rhodes says.
“Nope.” I stare at my phone wondering if she would have taken scissors to Cleocatra, too. Not to hurt my Calico cat meow-muffin-baby, but because Constance likes to leave her initials in things for me to find later. I half expect her to have shaved Cleo’s fur.
“Tanner is in for a delightful dinner tonight with Wednesday Addams.”
“Tucker!” I scream. “And my sister isn’t that bad.”
He scoffs. “I’ve never seen her smile. I might question if she even has teeth, but I’ve heard her talk.”
“She smiled in her baby photos.”
“And that was the last time?”
I shrug. “Probably.”
“She’s like one of those moody teenagers in that vampire movie you made me watch. I swear the same depressing music plays every time I’m around her.”
He isn’t wrong. “That classic is called Twilight, and Constance is nothing like Bella. But she does give I’m going to suck your blood vibes.”
“See!”
My phone starts ringing again, and I groan. I answer it without looking at the screen. “Mom, we’re turning onto the street now. ”
“It’s Dad. Again.”
“Oh.”
“You’re almost home?” he asks.
“Pulling onto our street now.”
“Great! Mom let me out of the attic and confirmed the boyfriend is coming to dinner tonight, so I got the projector down. I made a slideshow.”
“What?!” I almost spill my coffee, but Rhodes rescues it and sets it in the cupholder. “I thought I told you no slideshows?” Or maybe that was Mom?
“It’s not a long one. Should only be five minutes,” he says like this is helpful. “Unless there are questions.”
“Dad! No!”
“I’ll let you preview it before dinner.”
He hangs up before I can tell him that a five minute slideshow is five minutes too long. Tucker is going to run the moment he meets my family. There’s a reason I haven’t brought boyfriends home to meet them. They’re quirky in their own right, and I mostly love this about each of them, but it really becomes noticeable when another human enters the mix.
My parents are the kind of people who could weather any storm, like the MLM I signed up for to sell makeup, the crystal phase I went through two years ago, and a very brief CrossFit obsession I regret with every muscle in my body I didn’t know existed. They nodded and listened in rapture to me drone on about whatever I was currently into while asking questions and telling me they’d support me no matter what. I’m sure if I asked them to participate in a backyard séance, they’d join for no other reason than to find the most awkward moment to clap for me. They love without restraints, a trait that might explain why it’s hard for me to settle on one person.
There’s a lot of pressure to find the one . Out of all the men I’ve met, I’ve seen at least some potential with each of them. Except for Rhodes. But he’s just…well… Rhodes . We’ve never dated or come close to anything other than friends. Sure, there’s some flirting, but it’s harmless. It's hardly anything to start a relationship over.
Dating is fun—the new feelings and possibilities when everyone is still putting their best self forward. But then something happens. Reality? Fear of commitment? Indigestion? I don’t know what to call it. All I know is I’ve never had a long-term relationship, and I’ve never been single for long, either.
“Your dad made a slideshow?” Rhodes steers us into the last curve before we’re on my street.
“Yes,” I gripe. “The one boyfriend I’m finally bringing home, and Dad decides a slideshow is the best route.”
“I can’t say I’m mad about it,” Rhodes murmurs. “Go, Gerald.”
I’m about to protest when he starts to slow.
Upstairs Closet isn’t far from home. We live up the hill past Old Towne, through a few meandering tree-lined streets closer to Point Defiance. We don’t have an impressive water view like some, but it’s hard to live here and not see at least a sliver of the Puget Sound even if ours is only visible on one corner of our deck and when our neighbor’s bush is trimmed to a reasonable height. But from Rhodes’ apartment, he can see and hear it. He lives in the apartments that are part of the new development at Point Ruston, which has shops and restaurants outside his front door, others that are right below him.
I’ve heard the walls are paper thin there, so he can enjoy the loud sex noises or Agnes’ latest reality TV binge next door .
“Look,” he says, “Machete Lady is on her front lawn again.”
I adjust my glasses and spy her through the windshield. He’s right. My neighbor, Machete Lady, has lived here longer than we’ve been in our house and has been doing some sort of martial arts with a machete the length of my outstretched arm since I was a child. Recently she added a second machete and spawned a thousand memes. No one knows why she does this. It could be for exercise or fun, but she’s become sort of a local celebrity around town. More popular than that mini horse who gained notoriety in the next town over. His photo is still hanging in their city hall.
So sad he's no longer with us.
She has pictures and videos that surface on local social pages, all with my house in the background. Love that for us . She’s very kind and lovely, but I would never cross her. She’s been training for something I’m clearly not privy to. I’ve talked to her enough times, but I can never remember her real name, and I think it’s been too long to ask now. Even Mom and Dad don’t remember. She’s always just been Machete Lady.
And my spirit animal.
“Do you think she ever gets hurt?”
Rhodes eyes me. “Hurt is equivalent to death with those things in each hand.”
“I guess you’re right.” Maybe I should take up martial arts wielding. She looks like a badass with short cropped hair and sunglasses that hide where she’s looking. I need some badassery in my life right now.
I could probably buy a leather jacket instead of Samurai swords at Upstairs Closet.
Scratch that.
I’m sure they have both.