“So sorry!” she yells, knocking Gilbert into the doorframe as she reverses blindly. “We thought Fox would be alone in here!” Gil grunts as she runs into him a second time. “We’ll be in the living room!”
“We can hear you,” Fox grumbles, propping himself on an elbow to glare at them. “Gracious, no one is naked. You don’t need to cover your eyes. You’re going to give dad a concussion.”
Carefully and slowly and cautiously, she peeks between her fingers. Finding no one sans clothing, she drops her hands altogether, but her gaze remains strictlyavertedand her cheeks stay particularlyrosy.
“The living room,” Gilbert says, rubbing the back of his head while aiming a gracious smile at his wife, as if she is not the sole reason for the massive goose egg forming there. “We’ll let youkids get ready. Then, we’d like to have a little family meeting in the living room.”
Fox grunts, dropping to his mattress with athunkdespite the blooming blush crawling up his neck.
I squint bleary eyes at the alarm clock on his nightstand, blinking against the neon orange bells atop it to decipher the time in analog like some kind of ancient clockmaster.
“Seven,” I whimper once the puzzle reveals itself to me. “Fox, it’sseven.”
The whole family is insane. All of them.
He groans a curse.
“Five minutes,” he tells his parents. “Give us time to brush our teeth, at least.”
Five? Minutes? I’m supposed to be up and relatively hygienic in a mere five minutes? If I weren’t already lying down, I’d fall over.
“Take your time,” Belinda says. “We’ll turn on the TV. No rush!”
“Mom,” Fox hisses. “Stop that. We’ll be out in five.”
I grimace, but agree. I amnotletting them think anything besides tooth brushing is going on with them a single doorway away. Nope, nope, nope.
Belinda and Gilbert leave, making a hair-raising point of shutting the doortight.
“I’m going to die,” I inform Fox. “That was mortifying. And horrifying. And, also,way too early in the morning.”
He shrugs, squinting against the morning light filtering through his gauzy green curtains. “On the embarrassment scale, I’ll give it a four, but that’s only because no grown man wants the woman he’s hoping will fall in love with him to know that his parents occasionally burst into not only his apartment, but his bedroom first thing in the morning.”
I gape. “This happens regularly?”
The pink covering his cheeks deepens. “Yeah,” he answers. “They like to check up on me. I’m usually up before they get here, but if not…” He trails off, throwing a hand out toward the door. “Well, you see. They must have thought you were back at your house.”
Goodness. “They love you so much,” I mutter. “I think that’s sweet. Not embarrassing. The only embarrassing part is that they think we’re going todo thingsright now.”
He blinks very, very slowly as his head turns, wide blue eyes incredulous. Ignoring what his parents may or may not think about his current presumed actions, he says, “You think it’s sweet that they use their emergency key in non-emergency situations to make sure I’m up and being a Responsible Human?”
I frown at his abysmal take on the situation. “Your view of what’s happening here is marred by your belief that they don’t know you are a capable, trustworthy, incredible man.”
“Correct,” he agrees. “That’s because I’m right. Why else would they be hovering? Watching me? Judging when I wake and what I do once I’m up?”
“Because they love you?” I suggest. “Because they missed you while you were gone, and they want to spend what time with you they can now—beyond the family events thateveryoneis at? They want two-on-one time with you. So they get up with the sun and come over in the hopes that they’ll catch you before you go off for errands or office work or a workout or rec league softball practice or whatever else it is you do in the wisps of free time you have?”
His face blanks as his gaze drifts to the pointedly closed door.
I sigh, force myself to sitting, and kiss his cheek. “Think about it,” I suggest. “Try to see the world through a different lens for a minute. I think you’ll find that it’s much brighter.”
I leave him lost and unsure, but I hope that he listens to me. I hope that when he meets us in the living room, it’s with brand new eyes to see the outpouring of love that his parents are trying to give him.
After brushing my teeth—and sneaking into the guest room to change into less crumpled clothes—I join Belinda and Gilbert in the living room. I plop onto the couch next to Belinda and valiantly pretend like they did not just find me in bed with their son and that they are not giving melooksbecause of it.
“Nothing happened,” Fox grumps, slumping into the room seconds after me. Fox, it seems, has not chosen the valiant path. Or the fully-clothed path, either, since the man didn’t bother to throw on a shirt after getting out of bed. Apparently he desires me to drool over his physique in front of his parents.
I cannot fully say that I mind.
