Page 11 of Necessary Time

Fighting back a twinge of nausea,I popped open the top button on my collared shirt and tried to breathe without looking like a dying fish.

I should have known my mom was up to something suspicious, and sitting on her couch, I played back through the conversation from yesterday nailing down all of the red flags I’d so willfully overlooked.

“This is awkward,” Amanda, the daughter of my mom’s friend Mary, said to me under her breath.

“Quite,” I agreed.

Lunch, as it turned out, didn’t really have anything to do with celebrating my birthday at all. Instead, it was more of a chance for my mother to shove me at a table next to whichever friend’s daughter she’d deemed the most eligible for marrying and child rearing. The only surprise was that she’d settled on one and not designed a way to run them through the house like a buffet.

“It feels very Victorian,” I whispered.

Amanda made a gesture like she was trying to sip tea and we laughed quietly, hoping that the matchmakers wouldn’t realize we weren’t taking their machinations seriously.

“What did you do to earn the pleasure of my company today?” I asked, flipping my phone over in my palm absentmindedly. The day before, Hendrix had given me his brother’s phone number, as promised. I’d texted Wesley so he could have my number too, but beyond that one message, I hadn’t heard from him at all.

I didn’t blame him. Based on how pushy Hendrix had been about things in the first place, if I was Wes, I wouldn’t want to call me either. I felt sorry for Wes, having a flash of him on a couch, closer to my age than his own, in the same horrible predicament I found myself. Hendrix was a good guy and we were becoming good friends, but he knew how to get the things he wanted. It should have been admirable. Instead it just reminded me of my mom and I found myself resenting the interference.

“I got married at twenty-three and divorced at twenty-eight,” she said.

“How old are you now?”

Subjectively, Amanda was a good-looking woman, younger than me for sure, though obviously not my type.

“Thirty-three. What about you?”

“Thirty-eight.” I shrugged clumsily. “Yesterday.”

“Your birthday was yesterday?” she whisper-yelled, eyes going wide.

She had brown eyes, so dark they were the color of dirt. I didn’t even mean the observation to be a bad one. Her irises were rich, like dark and wet soil, freshly planted in the spring. I tried to think about what it would be like to kiss her, to touch the soft curves that her dress barely managed to hide. Wondered what it would be like to give up and take the easy road. Wouldn’t everyone be happier anyway if I rejected the whole idea of being attracted to men and settled down with a woman?

Everyone but me, at least.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said.

“And you’re here?”

“That was the ruse.” I leaned back and crossed my legs, propping my ankle on my knee. From across the room, my mom shot a glare in my direction, clearly unhappy with the seating, but not willing to say as much. I gave her a confused look before turning my attention back to Amanda. “Come over for lunch for your birthday.”

“No lunch,” she muttered.

“Not even a cake.”

I didn’t care about cake.

“Do you want to get out of here?” she asked.

“Oh, I…Amanda, you’re great, but I…” God, I was painfully awkward, but her question had caught me off-guard.

“Not likeout of here,out of here.” Her stare flickered toward the kitchen where our parents sat at the table…playing cards. “I drove, you drove. We can just…go. We’re adults. They can’t stop us.”

“Right. The only thing holding me back is the debilitating urge to make sure my parents don’t hate me.”

She chuckled under her breath. “Ah, you’re an only child too?”

“That obvious?”

“This is horrible for no reason. It’s your birthday, and you should be with your friends.”