Chapter Two #2
“Oh, good, this is going to be a great ride in the limo.”
She grinned. “I know, right?” Glancing at her watch, she smiled. “We do need to get going soon. Your date is going to meet you in the hotel lobby. They’ll wait by the fireplace until they see mom and dad head into the ballroom.”
“How will she know who mom and dad are?”
“I described my dress and told them to wait until I ushered them into the ballroom.”
“You are a devious little thing,” I said.
“Come on, let’s get this over with.” She motioned with her head down the stairs.
Dad was waiting by the door, as usual, with his hands in his pockets. He was always the first one ready to go and ended up waiting for the rest of us. Snapping his pocket watch shut, he turned and looked at the two of us standing at the bottom of the stair.
“Holy Jesus H Christ on a raft,” he breathed. “Sofia, what are you wearing?”
“A dress.”
“Is that backless?!” Mom yelled from the top of the staircase.
“Yes,” she answered.
Mom tried running down the stairs, but she was in three-inch heels and that was just not going to happen. Instead, she walked down with cautious anger—a trick only my mother could possibly carry out.
“Sofia, where did you get this? Why do you think this is a good idea?” Mom circled her slowly.
“I got it at Bergdorf before I flew back for the summer. I knew that we would have at least one party I had to wear a fancy dress to, and this just called my name.”
“Bergdorf?” It wasn’t so much my father asking that question as much as his wallet using his mouth. “Sofia, we’re well off, but you can’t just pop into Bergdorf—”
“I didn’t use your card, dad,” she said. “I bought this with my money. I’ve been working as a transcriptionist. I make a nice salary, and I get to work from my dorm, on my terms, when I have time between classes or when I’m bored. It’s great. And it got me this dress. Cash.”
“I hope you didn’t pay a lot for that little material,” Mom mumbled.
“I’m not twelve, mom,” she said. “I’m twenty-one, and I’m one year away from graduation. You can’t keep putting me in those Dilophosaur dresses.”
“In what ?” I asked.
“Dilophosaur dresses. Big ruffly collars.”
I cringed. “I’m going to go wait in the car,” I said, and marched out the front door. Sofia could hold her own with our parents and I had to get away from her insulting our mother’s taste in clothes.
Which was, admittedly, bad. I’d had to ask my friend to go with her to pick it out. He was a professional personal stylist, and he’d make sure that she didn’t end up in yards of fabric with white ruff and a hoop skirt.
Mom was definitely partial to volume.
Paul was waiting at the limo in the driveway and smiled at me. We weren’t rich enough for a personal driver, but the local livery had us on the ‘always accommodate’ list. They also knew that we really like Paul, and they would send him over when they could.
“Ready?” he asked, opening the door.
“Yes, but they might be a few minutes since my sister has decided to push boundaries.”
“About time,” he said.
“Right?”
I climbed in and sat in my usual seat and settled into wait for the argument to wrap up. It would take about ten minutes.
I hoped that this rent a date that my sister had set up wasn’t an uncouth and disinteresting person.
Half the reason I hated casual dating was how boring other people could be.
I loved to talk about all kinds of things, places I’d been, places they’d been, vacations, museums, history…
but the last one had been giggly and vacuous, though sweet.
The sweet had snagged me, the giggly was endearing and vacuous was unendurable.
Whoever it was I did end up seeing, dating, marrying had to be someone I wanted to spend time with away from my science and engineering. I loved those, they thrilled me and enchanted me.
I had the feeling that the person who could get me away from my computer and lab bench was the person I would have to marry. As long as they didn’t mind me being a nerd.
Oh, was I a nerd.
Almost to the minute, Dad pushed the front door open and motioned my sister and mother out. I could see he was exasperated by whatever had been going on in there. Mom was shaking her head in amused defeat and Sofia was grinning from ear to ear, wearing The Necklace.
I ran a hand down my face. So that was why it was taking so long.
Not the dress, but the fact my sister wanted to wear Great-great-Grandmother Rothschild’s necklace with her dress.
The big family tanzanite that had been the only thing to make it this far down on mom’s side of the family.
And Sofia had paired it with a pair of tanzanite earrings she’d bought in St. Martin on the last cruise and that purple liquid-satin dress.
She did look amazing. I couldn’t deny that.
Climbing in, everyone took their regular seat, and the door closed behind us. Sofia scooted close to me and her conspiratorial grin showed itself again.
“What have you done now?” I whispered.
“Your date is going to meet us on the promenade. Once I go in with mom and dad, they’re going to be over by the windows across from the stairs. Just introduce yourself.”
“You really did this?”
“Of course I did. Mom and dad were on it again last night when you were upstairs screwing around with your…whatever. They were on it about me, too, but I have plans for that.”
“Plans?”
She blushed hard.
“Oh, you have a date.”
“He’s meeting us at the table.”
“Do mom and dad know?”
“Nope, we’ve been quiet for the past six months.”
I gasped. “Six months? And you didn’t even tell me?”
“You’ll see why when you get there.” She glanced at our parents. “I really just hope this doesn’t all come back to bite me in the ass.”
“I’m sure it will,” I said, confidently.
The limo made its way up the island to the I-90, across Lake Washington and into downtown where the glass wall of the Benaroya Hall appeared lit up and glowing in the darkness.
The building was very technologically advanced, and my engineering brain loved to visit to check out what they were doing to keep up with the tech they’d been given and had the chance to advance.
The Chihuly chandelier was lit up at the end of the hall we walked into, and the hall that usually had tables on the right was full of trees draped in white lights and tulle.
I realized I wasn’t even sure why we were here. It was just another obligation that my mother and father wanted to fulfil, but it felt wrong that I had no idea what was going on.
Sofia was already in my ear. “It’s a fund raiser for the Matthew Shepard Foundation.”
“How do you do that?”
“You might not say anything, brother, but your face has subtitles. You should work on that.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. She grinned and walked ahead of us. I didn’t know how she did that, either, with three-inch heels.
“That girl is trouble,” my father sighed, but there was nothing but love in his voice.
The hall was gorgeous for the event, with white being the main color, but the pops of rainbow were everywhere, and it was obvious that this was an LGBTQ event.
“How much are you giving, dad?” I asked.
“Quite a bit,” he said. “About ten. I just think about Aunt Gem and Laura and how much this would have helped either of them growing up.”
I nodded. Dad had infamously stayed in contact with Gem after his father had kicked her out of the house for being lesbian and masc.
He hated it. Which was hilarious because I had based a lot of my late teens, early twenties fashion on her and grandpa had kept complimenting me—as often as we saw him.
“Why is there paparazzi?” Mom asked, looking out the windows. “I didn’t think that there was anyone here who warranted that level of interest.”
I heard Sofia clear her throat softly but kept walking.
This was going to be interesting.
When we reached the top of the stairs, she nodded me off to the left of the stair by the windows and made sure that Mom and Dad walked down. I casually walked over toward the windows and looked around as inconspicuously as I could.
Typical of Sofia, she didn’t give me a description of what the date looked like. I shook my head and had to hope that my date had a clue what I looked like.
I grabbed one of the cocktail glasses that were sitting on the tables lining the balcony.
Sipping it, I tried to look casual. I hated this part of the whole scene, waiting for someone to find me and being out in public.
I wanted my room and my calculations, but this was something that came with being a part of the Krastins family.
The symphony hall was gorgeous, all decorated for the gala, and the windows sparkled in the dying twilight. I loved the idea that my parents were so supportive of the foundation; we all adored Gem.
I wondered, as I did now and again, what it was like to be attracted to the same sex. What would I look for in a man, both in personality and looks.
As usual, it was not all that different from what I wanted from a girl.
Intelligent, kind, funny, not afraid to be themselves.
Looks weren’t nearly as important, but I had always been fond of dark hair and light eyes.
I also guess that height didn’t matter at that point.
I could be taller, or they could be… I kind of felt the same way with girls.
It was much more important to me that she was real.
I turned to look at more of the hall, and my eyes fell on the most gorgeous human I had ever seen. Exactly as I had imagined just seconds before, tall, dark hair, light eyes, a hell of a built in a tux that was perfection.
…In a tux. In a tux?
Oh, shit.
He walked toward me.
Double oh shit.
“Hi. Are you Andrej?”
I glanced up, deciding whether to answer or defenestrate myself through the building’s ample windows.
“Yes, I’m Andrej,” I answered.
He held his hand out. “Quinn. I’m your date for the night.”
Hell and damnation.