A Deal with the Bossy Devil by Kyra Parsi
16
By dinner time,my heart was coiled into a tight, anxious mess of uncoordinated beats.
I didn’t understand why I was so nervous. If shit hit the fan (which it undoubtedly would), Adrien would be the one with all the explaining to do. I’d just slip out of here and book a flight right back to Toronto. I already had it all in writing.
“Okay, we gotta go. I’m not letting you stall anymore,” Adrien said, shutting his laptop. We’d spent the last two hours mostly ignoring each other while he worked. “I don’t want to show up late to dinner.”
I was tempted to ask him for just five more minutes, but I’d done that three times already and he was clearly running out of what minimal patience he possessed. So, I let out a resigned breath and forced myself off the recliner I’d curled up on.
The “bedroom” we’d been assigned was the size of a small studio apartment and decorated like a luxury hotel suite. There was a big four-poster bed with rich blue draperies, a large balcony, a cozy little living area with a traditional fireplace, a small bar, and a dedicated workspace Adrien had immediately monopolized.
Oh, and there were two walk-in closets (both of which were twelve times the size of the linen closet Adrien had stuffed us into), and two walk-in rain showers.
Under normal circumstances, I’d have been ecstatic to stay here for just one night. These were not normal circumstances.
“Fine. Let’s just get this over with,” I grumbled, wiping my nervous palms against my jeans. I’d spent the last hour looking up formal dinnerware settings, determined not to make a fool of myself by mixing up a salad spoon with a soup fork or whatever. (Jamie had forced me to watch Shrek 2 multiple times. I knew how many utensils rich people used.)
“That’s the spirit,” he muttered dryly.
We made our way downstairs with Adrien in the lead. There was a voice in the back of my head that kept telling me to run. That it still wasn’t too late to make a break for it. And I was so concentrated on trying to ignore it, that I didn’t hear the soft chatter of voices until everything exploded into shouts and barks and laughter, making me jump.
“Ah, there he is!”
“Finally! What the heck took you so long?”
“Bark bark!”
“Lookin’ sharp, kid. I like the shirt.”
“Uh, he looks old as fuck. I can see the crow’s feet from here.”
“Thanks, Lice.”
“Alice, language. Adrien, don’t call your sister Lice.”
“Bark bark grrr bark.”
“That nickname doesn’t even make sense. My name’s Alice, not Alice. No creativity and literal rocks for brains. Zero out of ten.”
“Bark bark bark!”
“Everybody calm down. You’re going to scare her off.”
“Agreed. Y’all are hella embarrassing. Especially you, Maxipad.”
“Where’s your girl? Did she run off already?”
“Bring her in. I need to warn her.”
I’d frozen behind Adrien as soon as the commotion started, my heart hammering in my chest. We were standing in an archway leading (presumably) to a living room, and Adrien’s broad back blocked the majority of my view into the space. Until he stepped aside.
“Everybody, meet my fiancée, Ria.”
Four pairs of wide eyes peered at me as I took a tentative step into the room. Julie was standing beside a big stone fireplace, grinning from ear to ear. She reached out a hand, motioning for me to join her. “Come in, come in. Let’s get you introduced.”
I walked over with my heart in my throat. Julie placed a comforting hand on my back when I reached her, visibly unable to contain her excitement as she motioned to her husband, the former CEO of Cloutier Hotels.
“This is Anthony, my husband.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand.
Anthony was an incredibly handsome man, and he looked so much like Adrien that it almost felt like I was peering into a time machine.
“The pleasure is all mine, Ria. It’s so nice to finally meet you.”
“And this is my daughter, Alice,” Julie said, swerving me to the right.
“Hello.” Alice bounced off of the couch, holding out her hand. She was gorgeous. In her very early twenties from the looks of it, with the same raven hair and green eyes as her brother. “It’s so nice to finally meet you! Adrien’s been so secretive about you that I was seriously starting to suspect you weren’t real. Like I definitely thought he was either dating a dude and being weird about it for some reason, or he was getting sick of all the blind dates that Mom kept insisting—”
“Okay, that’s enough, Alice,” Adrien cut in. Alice giggled and slumped back into her seat on the couch.
I liked her already; and not just because she’d told Adrien he had rocks for brains.
“And last, but certainly not least, this is Robert, my father,” Julie said after throwing her daughter a chiding look.
The older gentleman sitting on the red recliner stood up, using his thick walking cane for support. He was wearing a lime sweater vest that matched his socks, and the lenses of his oval glasses were so thick, they made his eyes look like tiny little almonds. Oh, and he had an African grey perched on his right shoulder.
“Hello,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you, Robert.”
“Ah, call me Gampy. Robert makes me sound like an old man.”
I really didn’t want to. This was already so awkward. “Gampy it is,” I said.
“And this is Maxwell.”
The parrot tilted his head at me curiously, then barked.
“Did he just…” Had he been the one barking this whole time? I’d thought for sure there was a dog in here.
“Some days he likes to pretend he’s a dog,” Alice informed me. “And he gets super sulky if you correct him, so please don’t. Comforting him is a whole process and I can’t do another forty-eight hours of aggressive Eminem.”
“He’s got good taste,” Gampy claimed, his white mustache twitching with pride. “Gets it from me. Lice is just jealous.”
I bit down on my cheek as Adrien laughed.
“Bark. Rap God. Rap God.”
“He talks?” I didn’t know why I was surprised. He was a parrot, of course he talked.
“We’re not playing Rap God at dinner,” Alice told him. “It’s not your music time.”
“You shut up.”
“Manners, Maxwell,” Julie chided as Anthony placed a chuckling kiss on her temple. She was starting to sound slightly exasperated. “We have a guest.”
“Tell me to shut up one more time and I’ll have you spit-roasted right in your cage you little shit. Bet you taste real good with garlic sauce.”
“Alice!” Julie was horrified.
Maxwell’s feathers fluffed up, wings spanning. “You shut up.”
Alice lunged, but Maxwell was quicker. He jumped with a squawk, flapping his wings all the way up to the small chandelier. It started to sway back and forth with the weight of his landing.
Julie had a palm pressed to her forehead, a flush rushing to her cheeks. “I am so sorry. They had a big fight just before you got here, and he’s still not calm,” she said to me before ordering Maxwell to get down. He wasn’t supposed to be up there, and he knew it.
The bird barked at her, refusing to cooperate.
Alice called him a glorified chicken.
He lost his fucking mind.
“I’m hungry. What’s for dinner?” Adrien said, leaning a shoulder against the wall with his hands stuffed into his pockets. Like this was just another regular evening with his family.
Maxwell chirped something about his mom making spaghetti, and Alice swatted at the chandelier with a throw pillow. “No quoting Eight Mile!”
Maxwell squawked manically, wings flapping as he swayed. There was a chance that the chandelier was going to fall right onto Gampy’s head. Yet he stood there calmly, smiling.
“I actually did make spaghetti,” Julie admitted, sounding entirely resigned. “There’s also a variety of grilled meats and a few vegetarian options. We weren’t sure if you had any dietary restrictions, Ria, but I hope there’s something you like.”
I shook my head, clearing my throat. “That all sounds great. Thank you.”
Alice spun on her heel, throwing the weaponized pillow back onto the couch. “Yeah, I’m hungry too. Can we eat?”
Anthony rubbed his hands together. “Yup. Let’s go.”
Gampy looked up at Maxwell. “Come Maxy, dinner truce is on.”
The bird obeyed right away, flying down to his right shoulder.
And then they all started to file out of the room, laughing and chatting. I blinked after them, slightly dumbfounded.
“C’mon.” Adrien nudged my shoulder softly and we followed suit, the chandelier continuing to swing behind our backs.
* * *
Dinner was turning out to be… kind of epic.
There were a normal number of utensils, the food was incredibly delicious, and the entertainment was unrivaled. It was the opposite of what I’d been expecting.
Maxwell was smarter than most humans, and he knew it too. He and Alice had a hilarious rivalry thing going on, and when they weren’t butting heads, it was her and Adrien.
Or Addrain as Maxwell called him; also known as Poopy Shithead.
Alice cackled when that one came up. “I taught him that when I was six,” she claimed proudly, much to her grandfather’s amusement and mother’s visible dismay.
Adrien started to tell the both of them to go choke on a word that started with a big fat D but was cut off by the end of his grandfather’s cane poking into his ribs.
“Dinner truce,” Gampy reminded him. Maxwell—who had his own place set at the table beside Gampy—continued to eat his mangoes, completely unbothered by all the ruckus.
“So, Ria, tell us a bit about yourself,” Anthony said as soon as his kids had enough food in their mouths to be quiet. “And start from the beginning. Adrien has been annoyingly secretive about you so far. Wouldn’t even give us your name until a few days ago.”
“Wait, wait,” Alice interjected before I could say anything. “Do you wanna hear our theories first? They started to get pretty wild after a while.”
“Hush, Alice.” Julie tsked at her daughter. “Ria, darling, ignore her. We’ve just been so excited to meet you. Adrien had been so secretive about your relationship… and the engagement news was so sudden. Naturally, we’re all very curious.”
Everyone’s eyes seemed to be on me now, anxiously waiting. And I was suddenly very aware of what my left nostril was doing. Because if Adrien had been able to spot my tell, who was to say the rest of his family wouldn’t pick up on it as well? I bet he hadn’t thought that part through when he’d come up with this brilliant little scheme of his.
You don’t have to lie, just… give them as much truth as possible and omit the rest.
I placed my fork down and took a small sip of water. “Um, well, I’m sorry to say that the real thing is probably a lot less interesting than your theories,” I started, averting my gaze. They were going to be so incredibly underwhelmed. I wasn’t very well-versed in Adrien’s dating history (mostly because I’d never cared enough to keep up with the media coverage), but I was willing to bet he’d dated some interesting women. “I was born in Toronto—grew up there. My father was originally from Colombia, my mother from Sicily, and… uh, let’s see… I have an older sister...”
And what else? There was Olive and Ben, and… why couldn’t I think of anything else to say about myself other than listing off members of my family?
“Oh, come on,” Gampy complained when I paused for a beat too long. “That’s not it. That’s just a brief, incomplete overview of your family. Tell us about you, kid. Where’d you go to school? What d’you do for work? Any sports or instruments you play? What’re your hobbies? And how many of them include dead bodies?”
Alice snorted. “That was part of his theory.”
The air around me had slowly started to thin. I knew this conversation was going to come up, and I thought I was somewhat mentally prepared for it. I wasn’t. The last time I’d met a significant other’s family was just over ten years ago. And I’d… had a lot more to talk about back then.
I looked down at my half-empty plate, my fingers fiddling with the cloth napkin on my lap. “I actually, uh, didn’t go to college,” I admitted quietly. “As for work… I’m currently in-between jobs. And as far as sports and instruments are concerned…” I dipped my head a little more in case my nostril was going to disagree with me on this next one. My words were chosen carefully. “I don’t currently play anything.”
A bout of silence fell over the table as they all started to undoubtedly wonder what Adrien even saw in me. What we had in common.
The answer was, of course, nothing. Adrien and I had absolutely nothing in common. We made no sense as a couple.
“She’s being modest.”
My fingers stilled in my lap, my blood turning cold. Adrien was going to start lying about my accomplishments to save face and make our relationship more believable. Because it was glaringly obvious that he’d never actually end up with someone like me, and his family knew it.
“She was elected as valedictorian of her class in high school and graduated with a near-perfect GPA.”
My head snapped in his direction, my eyebrows leaping.
“She was student council president and has more academic awards than everyone at this table combined. She plays the saxophone, was captain of her school debate and soccer teams, and we run together every morning.” He stopped, tapped the table with his index finger. “She also left out a whole lot of volunteer work.”
My lips had peeled apart. What the actual hell? How comprehensive was the background check he’d run on me, exactly? Did it include my blood type, too? What shampoo I used?
“Wow,” Alice said, crossing her arms as she leaned back. “You reallyunderplayed that.”
Had I? Or did I just not like to admit that my most recent and relevant successes dated all the way back to when I was a teenager.
High school was over. I wasn’t that person anymore. All those awards were sitting in an unmarked box in Alba’s basement, gathering cobwebs and dust. And the only reason they weren’t in a garbage dump somewhere was because she’d caught me trying to throw them out and had intervened.
I didn’t play soccer anymore, I wasn’t a runner, and I hadn’t touched a saxophone in ten years. Not to mention… I didn’t miss Adrien’s careful wording around the valedictorian thing. Just because I’d been elected as valedictorian didn’t mean I’d made it to the podium.
But how the fuck would he have known that?
I plastered on a smile, but it wavered and drooped too quickly to be convincing. “It was a long time ago. I don’t do most of that stuff anymore.”
Anthony wiped the corner of his mouth, shaking his head. “Don’t diminish your accomplishments like that, kid. It’s a bad habit.”
I don’t have accomplishments to diminish anymore, I wanted to say. But I bit it back and gave him a quick nod instead. “That’s good advice.”
“Is there a reason you didn’t go to college?” Gampy asked as he started to slice off a second piece of mango for Maxwell. The bird barked and chirped, bopping his head excitedly. “My wife was on the admission boards of a few universities over the course of her career. You’d have easily qualified for a bunch of scholarships if it was something you were interested in pursuing.”
“No kidding,” Alice chimed in, saving me from having to actually answer him. She was still leaning back with her arms crossed, watching me somewhat thoughtfully. Then she glanced over to Adrien. “Hey, you know who she sort of reminds me of? This conversation just unlocked a memory I forgot I had.”
Adrien shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Should we get started on dessert?”
But Alice was still watching me, her eyes starting to narrow like she was trying to recall the details of her foggy memory. “No. Seriously. What high school did you go to, Ria?”
“I don’t think we would have overlapped,” I said with a small smile.
She cocked her head. “How old are you?”
“Alice,” Adrien said in warning.
“I don’t mind,” I said, shrugging. I’d never been shy about revealing my age. “I’m twenty-eight.”
She blinked, the fingers wrapped around her left arm twitching like she was counting. Then her hand suddenly froze, her eyes flared, her lips popped open, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
“Alice, can I talk to you in the other room for just a sec?” Adrien was already rounding the table.
“Holy shit. No wa—”
“Excuse us.” He grabbed her arm and practically dragged her out of the room while we all watched, confused.
“I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to apologize for my children’s behavior today,” Julie said with a sheepish smile.
A door banged shut somewhere in the house.
“Ah, she’ll be joining the family soon enough. She might as well get used to it,” Gampy said. “It’s only going to get worse from here,” he promised me with a wink.
I smiled back at him politely. I didn’t mind this at all. It kind of reminded me of our family dinners when I was a kid, with Alba, our dad, and our abuela. I missed it.
“Speaking of which, have you decided on a date or location for the wedding?” Julie asked.
“We haven’t really talked about it yet,” I said, scratching at my nose. Technically not a lie. We hadn’t talked about those things.
“We’d love to host you here,” Anthony offered softly. “If that’s something you’d be interested in. No pressure.”
“Even if it’s just the engagement party,” Julie went on. “Or if you need any help with the planning at all, you just let me know.”
And that was the exact moment the guilt began to set in. It was in the looks they were giving me. The way they were clutching onto each other’s fingers on the table.
Like this was it.
Like it was finally happening.
Their son was finally getting married, and they couldn’t wait.
And I was the piece of shit sitting here, lying to them about what was supposed to be one of the happiest events of their lives.
I tried to swallow back the barbed clump of shame knotting in my throat, but it didn’t seem to budge. “That’s so kind of you to offer. I’ll discuss it with Adrien, and we’ll let you know.”
They looked pleased with that answer, exchanging an excited look that pulled uncomfortably at my chest. I really hoped Adrien had a plan for delivering the breakup news to them. And I hoped he’d at least be gentle about it.
He and Alice walked back into the dining room less than a minute later with Adrien in the lead. He looked calm and collected, as though absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened. His sister on the other hand looked like a guilty six-year-old who had a secret she was trying her absolute best to hide.
“Sorry about that,” Adrien said as he took a seat beside me.
Alice remained silent and kept her eyes down.
“What was that all about?” Gampy asked, shoving at the bridge of his thick glasses.
“Nothing,” Adrien said coolly.
Maxwell chose that moment to flawlessly spit out a string of Eminem lyrics about Shady being back, and Gampy snorted, scratching the bird’s neck affectionately.
Adrien used the opportunity to smoothly divert the conversation to the arrival of additional family members later this week. Apparently, we were all here to celebrate Julie and Anthony’s 35th anniversary. There was a big party planned and everything, none of which he’d bothered to mention to me before we’d come downstairs.
I tried to keep up with the conversation as best I could, but I was a little too aware of all the glances Alice kept throwing my way. Though every time I caught her eyes, she immediately looked away.
She knew. About me being Waldo.