Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
As they waited in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport on Thanksgiving morning for their connecting flight to Tucson, Kate wondered about their visit.
Chris seemed positive his parents would welcome their threesome enthusiastically.
She wasn’t sure, although he swore he’d told them he was bringing two women.
“Relax, Kate. My mother has wanted grandchildren since I left home. She’s going to be thrilled to have us there.” Chris turned his head so that he could gaze into her eyes.
“You seem awfully sure about our reception. I never came out to my parents as bisexual. I didn’t think they’d handle it well and just let them think what they wanted about my single state,” Kate responded.
“I know my parents. They’re kind of conservative, but they’re okay with gay marriage. Why not us?” Chris raised a brow.
Kate watched Yvonne slip her tablet into her bag, calm as ever, while Chris adjusted the strap of his carry-on for the third time.
He didn’t look nervous, just… keyed up. Almost eager.
That part baffled her. Meeting a partner’s parents was one thing.
Meeting them as a triad was something else entirely.
“Your mother really won’t freak out?” Kate kept her voice low, aware of the couple beside them listening for their own boarding group.
Chris huffed a soft laugh. “She might fuss. She always fusses. Last time I came home alone she tried to set me up with the neighbor’s niece before I’d even put my duffel bag down.”
Kate tilted her head. “That sounds like a woman who wants a daughter-in-law, not two.”
He shrugged, thoughtful. “She wants me happy. That’s the part that matters. She’ll have questions, sure, but she won’t bite.” A beat passed, then his mouth curved in a rueful grin. “Dad might stare for a bit. He stares when he’s thinking.”
She tried to imagine a staring father and a matchmaking mother and didn’t know whether to laugh or brace. “And you told them. Everything.”
“Everything important,” he said. “They just want me to bring the people I care about home once in a while.”
Her stomach tightened. The people he cared about. He said it like it was the simplest thing in the world, but she felt the weight of it settle in her chest. Yvonne slipped a hand lightly against Kate’s back in a silent, grounding touch.
The loudspeaker crackled, and the gate agent called their group.
Chris straightened. “That’s us.”
Kate exhaled, gathered her bag, and stepped forward with the other two, hoping the knot low in her belly would loosen somewhere between Dallas and Tucson.