I hold up a red jumpsuit. “What about this?”
“Hard no.” Max gazes past me to my closet. “Do you still have that wine-colored wrap dress? You need that and your nude heels.”
I never put this much thought into what I’ll wear to our family lunches, but today is different. Today my parents and Marti are going to meet the man I’m falling for.
I twist around so I can rummage through my closet in search of that dress.
“If he’s not your boyfriend, what is he?” Max asks from behind me.
“My boss,” I say with a laugh.
I glance over my shoulder to see him sorting through the long silver necklaces I tossed on my bed earlier.
“You’re fucking him,” he points out with a grin. “That widens the scope of what he is to you. It puts him in at least the lover zone. If your heart is invested in this, he’s crossed over to the boyfriend zone.”
Scratching my head, I turn my attention back to my overcrowded closet. “It’s somewhere between lover and boyfriend.”
“He thinks he’s in the boyfriend zone.”
I push my well-worn white robe over so I can peek in the back of my closet. “He doesn’t think that.”
“Who is the last guy who asked to meet your family?”
I spot a sliver of wine colored fabric. Leveraging my shoulder against the doorjamb, I tug on it hard. “No one has ever asked to meet my family. Emil didn’t want to.”
“Emil was a jackass.” He laughs. “Your boss wants to meet your family because he’s your boyfriend, Bella.”
I stumble when the dress finally comes free. “I’ve got it.”
Max tosses me a wink. “You’ve got a hot dress and a boyfriend. Admit that you can see a future with this guy.”
I can see forever when I look at Barrett. Giving a voice to that scares me. It feels too good to be true.
“I admit that I can see having lunch with him,” I counter. “We can talk a
bout the future after Marti interrogates him.”
“He’ll pass with flying colors.” He tosses a necklace at me. “Get ready, so we can go. I’m dying to see what your family thinks about boyfriend boss.”
***
I stand and stare out the window of Calvetti’s. At least half of my extended family is already here. I’ve opened a few bottles of red wine, and more than a dozen cans of soda for those who don’t partake of alcohol.
Marti always makes up a batch of her fruit punch for my younger cousins.
The joyous laughter behind me fills me with a type of comfort I can only find with my family.
They’ve always been there for me.
I can’t remember a time when they weren’t.
Every time I see my Uncle Robbie, he reminds me that I was bald until my first birthday. My cousin Arlo always mentions that he was responsible for my Halloween costume when was I four. It was a combination of a princess and a pirate.
Cybil, my aunt, never tires of telling me about the time when Gina got hold of one of the red permanent markers Marti has always used to write on the brown paper take-out bags. My sister was eight at the time. I was five. I emerged from the kitchen of this restaurant with red cheeks, red eyelids, and a bright red nose.
I don’t remember any of it.
Marti tells me that’s because I’ve lived so much life since then that newer memories pushed out the old ones. Each memory I do have is a treasure to me.