CHAPTER SIX
If seeing her editor was like being inside the fourth circle of hell, seeing Joe’s parents was heaven. James Hall, Joe’s dad, was hugging her so hard she feared her ribs would crack, while Tina, his wife, kept trying to elbow him aside so she could hug Marie as well.
“It’s so great to see you!” Tina said happily.
“You’re looking good there, kiddo,” James crowed. “You do something different to your hair?” “I—” “
Joey!” Tina bellowed, startling no one (Marie was well used to the lady’s ways). “Marie’s here!”
“I know,” Joe said sourly, coming down the stairs. His parents’ love for his former girlfriend was aggravating only because it let them remain comfortably in denial about his sexual orientation. “I heard the celebration. How’s it going, Marie-the-Great?”
“It’s—”
Tina saw Marie was holding a copy of Love’s Tender Fury and grabbed it. “Is it signed? I’ll add it to my collection.”
“Don’t you mean the shrine?” Joe asked.
“Don’t be bitchy,” Marie said under her breath, hiding a grin. She noticed another copy of her book on the couch; there was a bookmark two thirds of the way through it. “Tina, how many times do I have to tell you not to buy my books? I get a hundred promo copies...you don’t have to plunk down nineteen ninety-five. No one should have to,” she added frankly.
“It’s okay, hon. I didn’t want to wait. Is the paperback coming out soon?”
“This new one’s pretty spicy, kiddo.” James clapped her on the back, hard enough to jolt, then winked.
“Maybe you been doing some research with my kid here, eh?”
As always when teasing her about Joe, he was a little too hale and hearty. It was painfully clear he was praying the answer would be yes. Marie didn’t know what to say.
“Dad, please. You’re embarrassing yourself and humiliating me. Again.”
“No,” she said kindly, “I didn’t research with Joe.”
“You outgrew him,” Tina declared. “He was just a high school fling for you.”
“Uh, sure, that’s one possible explanation...”
“Mom.”
But Tina was headed toward the mantel, where the Joe and Marie photo collection took up most of the wall space. As she had a thousand times before, Tina pointed to their high school prom picture: a much younger Marie, grimacing for the camera, and a teenage Joe, eyeing the prom dress—not Marie—appreciatively. The photographer had caught Joe feeling the fabric with his fingers. “Is there a cuter couple on the planet?”
“Couple of what?” Joe muttered.
Enough of this. “Can I get a drink of water?”
“Sure, hon.”
Tina and Marie walked into the kitchen, leaving Joe staring at the photo shrine and shaking his head. In the kitchen, Tina deftly produced a glass and filled it with ice-cold water from a pitcher. “Here you go. You’re looking so good. And the books are doing well.”
Marie managed to finish her water without choking. “Yes. Thank you.”
“We’re so proud of you, dear. James and I talk about you all the time. It’s like you’re our own daughter.”
“Which is kind of gross, given mine and Joe’s romantic history...never mind. You’re very good for my ego. What I don’t get is, neither of you like the romance genre. But you can’t wait for my books.”
“They’re about good men falling in love with good women and having good sex. It’s nice to know you’re so normal.” Tina gave her a pat.
“Uh...thank you?” This woman, she thought, was insane. Nice, but nuts.
“I don’t mean to be a buttinsky but have you ever thought about settling down? Maybe what you need is right in front of your face. And Joe needs you...this phase...it can’t last. He’ll get over it soon.”
Marie stared at Joe’s mother, startled, and there was a long silence while she thought about what Tina just said. Then she took a deep breath and spelled it out for the woman, as tactfully as she could. Explained a truth she herself had spent years facing.
“You ‘get over’ the chicken pox. Not this. If you’re hanging onto this hope that he’ll come home one night and present you with a wife and two-point-three children...well...you’re really kidding yourself. And I say that as a friend. His and yours.”
Tina took Marie’s empty water glass from her and rinsed it out, too thoroughly. She couldn’t look at Marie; instead, she concentrated on scrubbing the already-clean water glass.
“Haven’t you ever thought about trying again?” she asked wistfully.
“I’m crazy about your son. But we’re better as friends...we knew that when we were seventeen. We were each other’s first. And that’s always going to be special. But we can’t go back.”
“You don’t date much. And you and my son are always together, it seems. That’s why I thought—”
Marie spoke the hated, bitter truth, mouthed the worst words in language. “We’re just friends. Once, I thought...”
Unfortunately—or not, depending on how you looked at it—James entered the kitchen right then. He went straight to the fridge and began rooting around for a snack. “Thought what?”
“That her new book is much better than the last one,” Tina lied smoothly. “What was it? Passion’s Sweet Fever ?”
“No,” James said thoughtfully, “I think it was Pirate’s Lady.”
“It was Sweetest Desire,” Marie corrected. “And thanks. But Tina, I could publish my grocery list and you’d rave about the pathos I evoked with my superb characterization.”
The doorbell rang, surprising them all. James straightened up from the fridge. “Are we expecting anyone else?”
Puzzled, Tina shook her head and headed for the living room. Marie chewed her lower lip, dreading what was coming. “Joe said something about his date meeting us here.”
James turned toward her so sharply his hip slammed into the corner of the fridge. “He’s bringing a date? When he’s going out with you?”
“He likes me to meet them,” she explained, knowing she sounded lame, but helpless to stop. “The men he likes. He values my—he’s not going out with me per se. We’re just friends.” Ugh! She’d had to cough up the hated phrase twice in two minutes. Worse, she could have cried at the crestfallen look on James’ face.
“I thought...something else,” he said stiffly, and abruptly stalked out of the kitchen. Marie trailed after him unhappily.
In the living room, Tina was greeting Joe’s date, Curtis something-or-other, and the reception was chilly.
“So nice to meet one of Joe’s little friends.”
Marie had to smother a laugh. Curtis, shaking Tina’s hand, was clearly a bit taken aback, but rallied gamely. “So nice to be one of Joe’s little friends.”
Dead silence, which Marie broke. She could hear the false note of cheer in her voice, and hated it, but what else was there to do? Stay in the living room and stare at each other? Watch Joe lose his temper (again) at his parents’ refusal to accept him for who he was (still)?
But, by staying in love with him for this long, wasn’t she guilty of the same thing?
She put that thought out of her mind in a hurry. “We’d better get going, you guys. I don’t want to miss sitting in the theater for half an hour with nothing to do.”
“Goodbye, honey. It was just wonderful to see you again. Are you coming over for dinner this Friday?” Tina’s invitation held all the warmth she had withheld from Curtis.
Marie stole a glance at a tight-lipped Joe, at the silent Curtis. “I’ll let you know.”
Probably not.