Page 38 of Text Me A Kiss

Chapter Fourteen

Katy

Both my parents were here already. Great.

Really, they’d probably been here for at least an hour already. I couldn’t blame them after that call I’d had with my mother the day before.

Before, I’d always been so adultlike. I’d handled my bills, my personal business, and the delicate scheduling of my school semesters dutifully and well. Most of the time, I’d been honest to myself and the people around me.

When had I become so childish that I couldn’t tell my parents a secret and forced my boyfriend to quit his job?

It was okay, because today, right here, right now, I was going to fix everything. Mistakes? Rectified. Secrets? Out in the open, where they should have been a month ago. Trust? That one might take a little longer to mend, especially with my dad.

Dad could look pretty intimidating with his fitted suits, smattering of steely, gray hair, and impressive glare that I’d seen him turn both on disobedient daughters and business rivals. Right now, he looked as intimidating as I’d ever seen him.

“Hi Mom and Dad,” I said, managing a smile as I sat down and scooted close to the wall so Graham could sit next to me.

“Hi honey.” At least Mom would talk to me. Dad said nothing.

“So, um….” My mind slipped and slid through viable ways to start a conversation. Instinct urged me to introduce Graham. Stupid, stupid! Both my parents knew far too well who the man consorting with their daughter was. Tell them we were together? They knew that after I’d called my mom yesterday. I glanced at Graham, looking for some sort of help. His reassuring glance was comforting, but didn’t give me any sort of inspiration.

“Graham Emerson?” Suddenly, whatever had been holding my father back exploded. I winced and took Graham’s hand under the table. “Really, Kady? He’s more than ten years older than you! There’s probably not a single woman in the entire Midwest building that man hasn’t slept with. Walking around, bragging about all the women he rolled around with all night—”

“Allen,” my mother said sharply.

Before my dad’s tirade could continue even through my mother’s calm, I spoke up quickly. “I didn’t know it was Graham at first, okay? We started talking through a dating app—Dad, don’t look at me like that! I’m 22. I can use a dating app if I want to. He came to visit me in March, and then we started dating—

“This has been going on since March? When were you planning to tell us?”

“Now! If I’d told you sooner, would you have been any less mad at me?” My chest tightened and pressure built up behind my eyes. Why couldn’t my dad just be quiet and let me explain? “He’s been flying to Manhattan to visit me at Juilliard. Do you really think he’d do that if he didn’t care about me?”

“Kady, he just resigned! How can he take care of you with no job?”

“He resigned because of me! And because of you!” I fired back, the urge to cry vanishing into anger. “I was too afraid to tell you about us and he knew how much it was hurting me to keep that secret. Would you have let him keep his job if I told you? No! You would’ve fired him!”

“Calm down, both of you,” my mother ordered sternly. When she looked at me with the brown eyes I had inherited, I knew she was a little hurt by the secret I’d kept from her, but she also understood me better than my father. “Graham’s right here, Allen.”

Graham’s hand tightened in mine at being suddenly included in the conversation. “I love Kady, Allen. And I want what’s best for her.”

“What’s best for her is to focus on her career, not to fall for a manwhore.”

Now, I knew my dad was really angry. He never used language like that. “Dad, he’s not a- a- that. He was looking for the same thing as me—a steady relationship with someone he could love and have—”No, stop, that’s not the way I want to do this—

“And have sex whenever he wants?” my dad remarked caustically, ignoring my mother’s hiss of reproach.

“No. And have—and have kids.” There. I said it. “A family.”

My mom got it. Her eyes widened and her favorite pair of earrings that my dad had bought her for her fortieth birthday sparkled as her head snapped away from her husband and to her daughter.

My dad didn’t get it. “Kady, you can’t already be thinking about having a family with Graham. Do you know how long your mother and I waited before we—”

“Allen.” My mother’s voice was so quiet and opposite of the tense, angry atmosphere of the table that we all looked at her. “Kady, honey, how are you?”

All choked up, I said thickly, “I’m fine, Mom. A little nervous, but….” Throughout the conversation, mostly to keep my dad from diving across the table to strangle Graham, I’d avoided any sort of touching that would look like clinginess. Now, I scooted closer to Graham and leaned against him. The reassuring arm that reached around my side and held me against him sent a wave of warmth and comfort straight to my heart. “I want this. We want this.”

The animosity died from my dad’s voice as he looked between me and Mom. “What?”

My mom laid a hand on my dad’s arm. “Kady’s pregnant, Allen.”