“So we’re really goingto have dinner with your parents?” Brea asked, eating a chocolate muffin and perching on a stool while I cleaned up the dishes.
“You do not have to go.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“I don’t want any of us to go,” I said, kissing her and tasting the chocolate and sugar. “I would rather both of us be on a plane to somewhere nice, like Iceland.”
“Iceland? What about the Caribbean?”
“What’s wrong with Iceland?” I protested. “It’s beautiful in the spring, and it’s only dark ten hours a day right now.”
“You don’t want the beach with all-you-can-drink piña coladas, fancy hotels, and bright-blue water?”
“That’s a honeymoon destination,” I retorted. “Iceland is where you go when traveling as a couple. Think about the hot springs. There are also glass-walled cabins you can stay in out in the wilderness and watch the northern lights. It feels like it’s just the two of you alone in the world.”
“And they say Wall Street bros aren’t romantic!” Brea teased.
“I’m not a Wall Street bro!” I protested. “I only dabble in stocks. I made my real money in robotics.”
Brea raised an eyebrow and popped the last of her muffin into her mouth. “That is totally something a Wall Street bro would say.”
I took a deep breath. “Seriously though, if you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”
“I’m going. You suffered through my family. I promise I won’t set anything on fire though,” she said and checked her phone. “I need to go home and find something to wear though. What time do we need to head over?”
“We can buy you something here so you don’t have to go all the way back to your apartment.”
“Here where?”
“There are shops around the corner.”
“He shops, he does dishes,” she quipped.
“See? Totally not a Wall Street bro,” I told her. “I’ll gladly come with you to buy a dress.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I actually make my own clothes. I don’t think I’ve worn anything I’ve bought at a store in years.”
“Now who’s the snob?” I said, tipping her back and kissing her.
40
Brea
Shit shit shit!
I ran inside my parents’ house. I almost wished I hadn’t been so snobby in declining Mark’s offer. I was going to be late! The train had been delayed, and we’d sat in the tunnel for twenty minutes while I impatiently looked at my watch.
“Emergency! Emergency!” I called, running into the apartment.
Ivy, Elsie, and Grace were at another wedding, but Amy and Sophie were waiting for me at my parents’ apartment. My dads were regaling them with the latest saga in their quest for a Louis Vuitton steamer trunk. All of us wanted one. It had been imparted to me since I was young that we needed to be on the lookout for one of these antiques at every estate sale we visited. Of course, even if there had been one, we could not afford it.
“It was there in the back of the room,” Todd was saying. “A Louis Vuittonmalle secretaire bureausteamer trunk. There was another guy there, evil, with a mustache. We both saw the trunk—”
“Did you not hear me yelling ‘emergency’?”
“But we saw a trunk in the wild!” Beau protested.
“I’m assuming you didn’t buy it?”
