I hold still.
She looks. She nods, slow and satisfied. “You’re sharp.” A pause, weighted, like she’s awarding something. “I told my husband. I said it twice on the plane.”
I blink. I’d been told this was coming. I’d been told it was the highest compliment she gives. I didn’t think of what I would say back.
“Thank you, Margaret.”
“You’re welcome, honey.”
And then Stanley walks in.
He stops short when he sees his mother’s hands on me — but I’m the one who loses my breath, because he’s in the Navy Oxford now, sleeves rolled, tie hanging loose around an open collar. I have genuinely never once, in all our time knowing each other, seen him look like this, like a grown man somebody dressed on purpose, and I have to look at the floor for a second.
I’m still finding my feet when his father shatters the quiet with a clap that cracks across the room like a slap shot off the boards.
“There he is!” Robert is up and out of his chair, arms flung wide, bearing down on his son. “Bring it in, son.”
They’re the same height, the two of them, and they crash together and swat each other’s backs. Over Stanley’s shoulder, I’m fairly sure I see Robert’s mouth moving low against his ear. Then they break apart and launch into a handshake that has, very clearly, been rehearsed: clasp, slap, knuckles, a forearm thing, an elbow thing, a sound a grown man should not be able to make with his mouth, and a final double point at each other like they’ve just closed a business deal.
“Still got it,” Robert chuckles.
“Never lost it.” Stanley’s laughing, and it’s a real laugh, loose and young.
Margaret beams at the pair of them, and then she catches me watching, and my nerves spike, but she only smiles and turns to fuss at her boy, reaching up to pat his cheek with one hand. “Always so handsome.”
“It’s the suit.”
“It’s your face.”
“Mom. Be honest with me.” He bends down to peer at her. “Are you getting shorter?”
“You grew.” She bats at his arm, laughing.
“No.” He shakes his head, deeply concerned. “You’re shrinking. We should get you measured. I’ll find a chart.” And then he straightens, and his eyes come up and land on me, and the grin sharpens to a point. “So. You’ve met my girlfriend, then.”
Heat floods my whole face. I shake my head at him — small, pleading, don’t — because I do not want him to do whatever he is about to do.
He clocks it instantly. He grins wider.
“Mom. Dad.” He crosses the room toward me in two long strides.
“Ermington,” I mutter under my breath. He’s broad enough now that his shoulders block my entire face from his parents’ view.
He leans down into my line of sight and mouths, “Sell it.”
And then loops behind me, plants both big hands on my shoulders, and walks me forward a half-step like he’s wheeling out a prize on a game show. “This,” he announces, “Mom, Dad — is Aspen Linwood. The girl of my dreams.”
My heart slams against my ribs as I try to arrange my face into a woman who finds him charming and not like the most annoying man to walk this planet. He’s acting as if they haven’t known me my whole life for God’s sake. His mother is beaming, and his father has the full Ermington grin locked across his face, and I just — I go full lobster. Absolutely cooked.
“Oh —” Margaret presses a hand to her chest, lighting up. “Remember when you kept that picture of her —”
Stanley’s hands clamp down over my ears. “Mom. Not now.”
Margaret throws her head back and laughs. There’s that infamous laugh I’ve been dreading. Once she starts, she doesn’t typically stop.
Stanley says, “We do not declassify material within five minutes of meeting my girlfriend. There are boundaries.”
He’s left my ears uncovered just enough to hear every word of it, which I am fully certain is on purpose, because Stanley Ermington has never successfully hidden a single thing in his entire life. When I tip my head back to look up at him, his ears have gone pink.
