The Queen & the Homo Jock King (At First Sight 2)

“Thanks,” I said. “You did too.”

“Yeah?”

I shrugged, trying not to show I was having dirty thoughts about his forearms. “Yeah.”

“You’re really going to text my mom?”

“Sure,” I said. “She’s great. She’ll fit right in, I think. I mean, unless you don’t want me to.”

He shook his head. “No you can—I mean, you can do what you want. You always do.”

“Which means….”

Darren sighed. “It’s just—I don’t know. I like it? Maybe.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, because I wasn’t sure we were talking about the same thing.

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, like he couldn’t get the words to come out. Finally, he blurted, “I’m nervous too.”

I blinked. “What? Why?”

“It’s my mom, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

He looked embarrassed, like he wasn’t going to say any more. Then, in a rush, “And it’s your family too.”

“What?”

He flushed even more and looked down at his hands. “Your family. I’ve met them before, but not… like this. Okay? They think I’m your…. I know I’m not the best….” He huffed out an angry breath. “I’m just nervous too,” he finished quietly.

And instead of thinking about it too much, I reached out and took his hand in mine. His fingers entwined with my own like we did it every day. It was… nice. Good, even. Possibly great. Well, greater than it had any right to be. And I didn’t know what was happening and I—

“What are we doing?” I asked, because maybe I was tired of this weird little game.

I thought he might try and deflect with his stupid Rule Ten bullshit, but instead, he said, “I don’t know.”

I nodded, swallowing around the lump in my throat because it was something. Years, his mother had said. He’d been talking about me for years. I wondered if she knew how terrible he’d been. At the beginning. The things he’d said. The way he’d laughed at me.

And then Darren looked at me, and there was something in that look, some sort of resolve that hadn’t been there before. I shivered at the sight of it because—

He said, “But I know I want—”

“All ready to go?” Sherry asked, coming back into the room with what was possibly the worst timing ever. “Those pies won’t keep much longer in the car.”

Neither of us looked at her.

I screamed at Darren in my head to finish what he was saying.

Instead, Darren smiled tightly at me, squeezing my hand once before letting it drop. He turned toward his mother and led her toward the door.

“PAUL FORCES his gayness on me!” the parrot known as Johnny Depp screeched at Sherry as he watched her from his wooden perch.

“Oh my,” Sherry said. “That’s certainly illuminating.”

“It is,” Nana said, who’d said she was going to give Sherry a tour, but instead had led her directly to Johnny Depp. They’d spent the last ten minutes hearing all the phrases that Nana had taught him recently. “If only Paul wasn’t so mean to Johnny Depp.”

“I heard that!” Paul shouted from the kitchen, where he’d been suckered into making mashed potatoes. “I don’t do anything to that stupid asshole!”