“Your mother and I were wondering if we could talk to you.” I look down at Kylie. “We can come there or you can come here.” I wait a beat. “It will only be the three of us,” he answers the question I would have asked him about my sister, “if you have time.”
“I can be there in about thirty minutes, but I can’t stay long. I have lunch with Kirby,” I tell him.
“We’ll be waiting for you.” He hangs up.
“I have to go to see my parents,” I tell her.
“Good.” She smiles. “I think you guys need to have this talk. For all of you.”
“I want you to come with me,” I inform her, and she shakes her head.
“Not this time. It should be the three of you.” She avoids looking at me. “Next time though.” I nod, not wanting to push her to come with me.
Twenty minutes later, I’m walking down to the front door wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “If you want, I will go to Kirby’s and you can either meet me there later or not at all and then—” I stop her from talking by kissing her lips.
“I’ll be home in thirty minutes,” I assure her. “We are going to Kirby’s and we are going together.”
“I just—” she starts to say. “Okay, fine.” I kiss her goodbye as she walks up the steps, going to shower.
I nervously make my way over to my parents’ house, parking at the curb and ringing the doorbell for the first time in my life. Usually I would just walk in, well before that is, now I feel like I’m a stranger.
My father opens the door and smiles at me. “The door was open.” He says nothing else to me. “Come in.”
“Thank you,” I reply and I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin. “I don’t have much time.”
I hear footsteps coming down the hall and my mother joins us. “I made us lunch,” she announces and I shake my head.
“I’m having lunch at Kirby’s,” I tell her and she just nods.
“You could have cancelled your plans to eat with us,” my mother starts, “we haven’t seen you in months.”
“Next time,” I tell her as I walk over to the living room and sit down. “You said you wanted to talk to me.” I sit and watch my father put his hand on my mother’s back and makes her walk to the couch first, then he sits next to her.
“We need to talk about this whole thing,” my father starts. “Your sister—” I hold up my hand.
“Listen, Dad, I don’t have anything to say about that.”
“She’s your sister,” my mother snaps, taking her side. “You can’t just not talk to her for the rest of your life.”
“She’s my sister,” I begin to say, and my voice stays calm, “and we both went through a traumatic life experience that I don’t think many people go through.” I look at them. “But when we were going through it, all she did was think about herself. She blamed me.” I put my hand to my chest. “As if Jeremy cheating on her was my fault.”
“Well, if you hadn’t depended on him,” my mother starts, and I get up to my feet as my father puts his hand on her knee.
“I’m not going to sit here and defend myself against him. I asked him to help out, I didn’t ask him to fuck my wife!” I roar. “Now, she forgave him, good for her. I don’t. I never will. I don’t have to.”
“You could forgive Josephine,” my mother says. “She made a mistake.”
“Wow.” I put my hands on my hips.
“She’s sorry and she regrets it.” My mother defends my wife instead of defending me. “You didn’t even try and forgive her.” She gets to her feet. “Instead, you parade a whore?—”
“Watch yourself,” I warn, my voice tight and then I look at my father, who gets up.
“That’s enough,” he says. “We said we wanted to talk, this isn’t talking.”
“I have nothing to say anymore. Whatever I did have to say obviously doesn’t matter to you.” I look at my mother, who is glaring at me. “Kylie is the woman I’m going to marry,” I inform her, and she gasps as her hand goes to her mouth. “So if you are going to have any relationship with me from this day on, you have to know that I come with her as a package.”
“That gold digger,” she accuses, and I burst out laughing.
