24. Rei #2
An older Black woman with brown curly hair corralled two men from the dining nook, dragging them to meet us. One appeared close to Quentin’s age and the other old enough to be his father. She beamed at me, saying, “Welcome to our home, Rei.”
I smiled back at the warm welcome. “I’m so glad to be here... This is for you.” I handed her the wine, and she fawned over it, saying how sweet I was. Thank you, George.
Quentin’s dad extended a large hand to shake. “Great to meet you,” he said in a low rumbling voice. He didn’t smile, not quite, but the crinkles around his eyes and lips deepened in a warm approximation.
The younger man, slimmer than Quentin and dressed in a Henley shirt that tugged around his biceps, shook my hand next. “Tyrone,” he said.
Apologetically, the woman said, “I’m Coretta, and my husband’s name is Charles.”
Charles nodded as if confirming the information.
“It’s so good to meet you all,” I said. Usually I wasn’t nervous around new people, but I found myself wondering if they liked what they saw.
If they’d expected someone different for Quentin.
That must be because of the stakes. This marriage wasn’t just about saving Quentin’s company; it was about protecting mine.
“Dinner’s ready,” Coretta said, gesturing toward the line of trays on the counter along the back wall. “Fill a plate and let’s eat, get to know each other.”
I nodded. “Sounds great.”
Charles said, “Ladies first.”
Coretta and I walked through the line, and I commented on how good the meal looked. She’d made everything from baked macaroni and cheese to biscuits and honey-roasted ham. “You must be a great chef,” I said to her.
“You’re a sweetheart, aren’t you?” She patted my shoulder. “I make the mac ‘n’ cheese. Charles makes the ham, and I wrangled Tyrone in the kitchen for the biscuits. With as much as these boys eat, I can’t be the only one doing the cooking.”
I chuckled at that, a weight unexpectedly falling off my shoulders. Sometimes, when growing up, you thought your family was the norm and forgot there were all different kinds of ways to run a home. “And what did Quentin contribute?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at him.
She sucked in a breath and winced, then loudly whispered, “He’s better at doing the dishes.”
“Mom,” he muttered, embarrassed.
I let out a surprised laugh. “Really?”
He gave a bemused shake of his head. “It’s even worse than she says.”
“Are you a good cook?” she asked me.
“Only when my mom orders me around the kitchen,” I replied honestly, and that made her laugh. The warm sound was putting me even more at ease. I could see why her opinion mattered so much to Quentin.
Eventually, we were all seated around the table, plates filled to the brim. We grabbed silverware from a holder in the middle, along with paper napkins. It already felt more like home than my parents’ place did.
For a moment, we did the dance of first bites, commenting on how good everything tasted. Coretta took a sip of her sweet tea and said, “Can you believe this? Seems like yesterday he was practicing his words, and now he’s got a girlfriend?”
I asked, “Spelling words? Those were the worst.”
“Oh no,” Coretta said. “Words, period. He had a terrible stutter. Wouldn’t say a peep if he didn’t have to.”
“Mom—” Quentin protested, but Coretta said, “Nothing to be embarrassed about.” Then she faced me.
“He was so shy back in the day, he didn’t even want to go to Grandma’s house for Easter, so we gave him a photo album of all the family and said, ‘Pretend you’re seeing them.
Practice what you’ll say.’ And it worked.
” She wiped her hands like that was that. “Practice made perfect, right, Q?”
His gaze was turned down toward the table as he said, “Right.”
I could feel the embarrassment of his flaw rolling off his shoulders. “I think that was a great idea,” I said. “You know, since I was adopted from China around four, I really struggled with English going into kindergarten.” He looked up at me with a mix of confusion and understanding.
“You’re adopted?” his mom asked.
I nodded. “And I didn’t know a word of English. Kids made so much fun of me. I would talk to my teddy bears when I was supposed to be sleeping so I could get better, and they didn’t make fun of my accent or the phrases I said wrong.”
Quentin looked at me in that understanding way only someone who went through a similar experience could.
Tyrone said, “At least you had stuffed animals. The dog chewed up my teddy bears.”
“Still mad about that?” Charles said, laughing.
“Will be ’til the day I die,” Tyrone half-joked. He seemed to know when to lighten the mood, and I appreciated that about him.
By the time our plates were emptied and we stuffed ourselves with the best pecan pie I’d ever had, I thought we’d talked over every subject.
But then, Coretta folded her hands under her chin and asked, “Tell us the story of how you two met.” There were stars in her eyes as she leaned forward like she was preparing for the best story ever told.
I looked over at Quentin, unsure how to answer, but his large hand gripped my thigh, rough against my bare skin. Heat bloomed from the contact as he began telling the story.
“She didn’t know I existed,” he began.
“I knew who you were,” I said.
“You knew my name,” he said with just a hint of sadness in his voice. “But from the moment I saw you, I was hooked.”
My cheeks blushed while thinking I should have paid more attention. Boy, was I paying attention now.
He spoke mostly to his mom, but the entire table was rapt.
“That first day she was at MyHome, she walked up to my office and introduced herself to Daniel.” There was a glossy look to his eyes, like he was lost in the past. “She was wearing this hair clip shaped like a strawberry, matching earrings too.”
“Cute,” Coretta said, giving me a wink.
“Rei said something to Daniel, and he laughed. That’s when I started to get jealous. Then he replied, and I heard her laugh for the first time...” He looked me straight in the eyes, his words swirling around me like a warm blanket. “I thought, I want to hear more of that laugh.”
“Quentin...” I said, genuinely touched.
“Of course, I was too nervous to actually talk to her. Didn’t have a picture or anything to practice with.” He winked at his mom. “So I wrote her letters.”
“Letters?” Coretta said with a dreamy sigh while Tyrone said, “Letters? You couldn’t text her?”
His dad swatted Tyrone. “Not everything needs to happen on a phone, son.”
“Well,” Quentin continued, “she got tired of me writing notes. She wrote one back and told me to do something about it or quit writing to her.” He grinned at me. The smile was brighter than anything I’d seen. His voice warm as he finished, “Now here we are.”
“Here we are,” I echoed, realizing... I liked him.
Shit.
It was one thing to use a contract marriage to save my company.
It was another thing to start our relationship on a lie.