He nodded.
“Then tell her you’re going to do it anyway,” Irina said.
He paced to the television, stopped, turned. “You don’t get it… No one tells my mother no. About anything. I thought I could avoid her until the wedding. Figured the boys could play interference with her and Dad while we did our thing. Then I—we—can get married in peace and I—we—can escape before I have to say anything other than, ‘Glad you made it.’” He bit at his knuckles.
His cell started up again.
Maybe he should toss it? But then he’d have to get a new one and that’d be a whole thing.
Irina picked up the phone with no understanding at all of the matches she held in her palm, or the fire they could start.
“She’s only a person,” Irina said.
Irina had no idea. None. Zippo. Zilch.
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’m not entirely certain she’s human. I think she’s mostly bulldog.” His mother was a bulldog who tore apart anything in her path, and Dad was an old man trapped in a younger body. He lost his filter early on and said the first thing that came to his brain. Most of the time this was a bad, bad thing.
“Let’s go take her out for a drink on neutral ground,” Irina suggested like a madwoman seeking to be destroyed.
His cell continued with the chirping.
“Nowhere is neutral when it comes to my mother.” Perhaps he sounded a touch overdramatic, but he’d lived his whole adult life avoiding her whenever he could. Sure, she seemed nice enough. But whenever she came around, he ended up unhappy, and she’d get what she wanted. That’s why he avoided her, like the grown-ass man he was.
“You also have parents,” he said. In times like this, the best course was to show the other person how totally wrong they were, using their own life as example.
She nodded, gestured to the nude in-process statue near the window. “My folks are eccentric, too. I get it.”
He shook his head. “No matter howeccentricthey are, they have nothing on the two-person tornado that created me.”
Birds kept right on chirping from his phone.
“Can I please answer your phone?” Irina asked, already reaching for the device.
You know what? If she wanted to play with fire, he might as well let her. She couldn’t say he didn’t warn her.
“Answer at your own risk.” He shivered. “But I wouldn’t do it.”Didn’t do it. Same difference.
She held it to him to unlock and then, without the necessary hesitation, Irina lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello? Is this…”
“Yes, this is…” Her eyes went wide. “So nice to finally—” She stopped speaking.
Mom tended to do that to a person.
“…uh…hi…” She made a c’mon motion with her hands to Knox.
Call him dense, but he wasn’t sure what that meant and he wasn’t about to get involved in the conversation.
“You’re my future mother-in-law so I call you…” She tossed a panicked look to Knox.
What the hell did he know about this type of thing? What did she call her?
“Can I call you Mom or Ms. Dillion?” She gently whacked him with the back of her hand on the biceps. “No, of course I know your name. I understand you didn’t use your ex’s name because he’s a…right. There were substantial differences.”
Oh, okay, she wanted to know Mom’s name?
He tilted his head a little to the right. Wait…he’d already told her his parents’ names when they were doing the invitation. Had she forgotten? Or was she not listening when he spoke?
Well, well, well, pot meet kettle. He crossed his arms like a line in the proverbial sand.
