"That's the style."
"It's dusty."
"It's dramatic."
"It's dusty and dramatic."
Amani came into the kitchen and dropped his keys on the counter. Nero followed him, slightly hesitant, his hands in his pockets. It was his first family dinner. Amani had warned him. Lady Leo had invited them for Sunday brunch, which at Lady Leo's house meant Sunday lunch that started at noon and went until people stopped eating, and Nero had accepted because refusing an invitation from Lady Leo was something only people who didn't value their lives did.
"Amani," Lady Leo said, turning from the curtain debate. Her face softened. "And our chief of security."
"Just Nero, please. I'm not on duty."
"Nero," she amended. "Come in. Bethany, stop fussing about the curtains. They're staying."
"Fine, but we're getting them cleaned."
"That’s acceptable."
Bethany threw her hands up and came over to hug Amani, then stopped short of Nero and stuck her hand out instead, with a formality that was almost a joke. Nero shook it, and Bethany's gaze went to Amani over Nero's shoulder with a look that saidwe will be discussing this one later.
Amani pretended not to see it.
Brunch was frittata, because his mother had not yet forgiven Amani for his stated inability to cook anything more complicated than eggs, and was determined to continue demonstrating what a properly made egg dish looked like. It was, as always, perfect. Bethany drank too many mimosas and got loud. Lady Leo asked Nero three polite but surgically pointed questions about his childhood, his career, and his intentions, all of which Nero answered with the calm directness of a man who had faced down worse than a lioness matriarch and understood that the correct response was to tell the truth in a complete sentence.
After the third answer, Lady Leo set down her coffee and said, "You will do."
Amani choked on his orange juice.
"Mom."
"What? I'm approving him. I thought that was what you wanted."
"I don't need you to approve him, I need you to be polite to him."
"I was polite. I said he will do."
Nero's mouth twitched. He looked like he was going to laugh. He looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh. Amani kicked him under the table. Nero's expression flickered but didn't fully break. Bethany, who had been watching this whole exchange with a grin, lost it and snorted mimosa out of her nose.
"I am surrounded," Lady Leo said, to no one in particular, "by children."
It was the best meal Amani had eaten in months.
After, while his mother and Bethany fought over who got to do the dishes, because at the Leo household even chores were competitive, Amani took Nero out to the back garden. The garden was a small miracle of Lady Leo's making, a pocket of green in a city that did not reward green, shaded by mesquite trees and surrounded by stone walls. A wrought iron bench sat in the corner. Amani led Nero to it and they sat.
"Your mother is terrifying," Nero said. “She’s almost worse at home than she is at work.”
"I know."
"She's going to be my mother-in-law someday and she's going to terrify me forever."
Amani went still.
Nero didn't look at him. He was looking at the garden, at the mesquite leaves moving in the slight breeze, at the small koi pond with two fat orange fish drifting near the surface. He said it casually. Not a proposal. A statement. The offhand acknowledgment of a future that he had apparently been thinking about for longer than Amani had realized.
"Mother-in-law," Amani said.
"At some point. Not soon. I'm not asking you anything. I'm just telling you what I've been planning around. Someday. When you're ready."
