Page 67 of One-Star Romance

Rob and Natalie caught each other’s eyes. Without thinking it through, she winked at him. Rob seemed startled, momentarily lost for words, then said to his father, “She didn’t attend an MFA program, but she’s very successful.”

“Hmph,” Rob’s father said. “Well, I always think it’s good to have the educational underpinnings, but good for you. Nonfiction?”

“No, fiction, mostly,” Natalie said.

“When’s your next novel coming? I’ll buy it for Rob’s mother.”

“I’m actually in TV now. I think I’m done with novels.” Writing a novel took so much from a person. You had to pour your heart out for hundreds of pages, and she didn’t know if she could ever bear the vulnerability of that again, not after how badly it had gone before.

“Really? Done forever?” Rob asked, with a strange expression on his face. If she hadn’t known better, she’d think it was disappointment.

She swallowed, a confusing swirl of feelings inside her. Making her tone bright, she continued, “Rob here is one of my most regular readers, even if he doesn’t always enjoy the work.”

Rob cleared his throat. “I do always find it…interesting.”

Rob’s father had been looking back and forth between them. Now, he put his fork down. “The maid of honor!” he said, pounding the table. “That’s how I know you!” He chortled, then indicated Rob. “Oh, you smoked him with your toast, didn’t you?”

Rob raised his eyebrows in outrage.

“Hey now,” Natalie said, “Rob’s toast was nice too.”

“Thank you,” Rob said.

“But, yes, I did smoke him.”

Rob shook his head, but a small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I’m not the professional writer. You had an unfair advantage.”

“Well, not a competition,” Natalie said, then grinned. “So what if people are still talking about your defeat all these years later?”

Rob’s father laughed, and Rob sighed. “You two. I go to all this trouble of making you dinner, and this is how you repay me.”

“You’re right,” Natalie said. “We should be grateful. You boiled water.”

“I am nourishing you,” Rob said.

“Thank you,” Natalie said, and the two of them held each other’s gaze. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind lay the ghost of the night she was supposed to be having: sparkling and mingling at a party, accepting well-deserved praise for all her success, friends pulling her aside to ask what was really going on with her and Tyler. Despite the circumstances, it seemed more right, more natural, to be here at Rob’s old kitchen table.

After dinner was done, Natalie cleared their plates as Rob helped his father up to bed. The dish soap had run out, so after looking in the nearby cabinets, Natalie walked upstairs to ask Rob if he knew where the extra was.

The primary bedroom was at the top of the stairwell, the door open a crack. Natalie peered in silently, not wanting to interrupt. Rob was flipping through channels on the TV as his dad settled into bed.

“And remind me when the wedding is?” Rob’s father was saying. “She’s a good match for you.”

“The wedding. You mean with Zuri?”

“No, you and the maid of honor.” He paused for a moment at Rob’s expression, rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. Something…something is wrong, Robert.” His voice was leached free of bravado, of anger, of charm.

“I know, Dad,” Rob said, his own voice so gentle. So full of grace for a man who had given him so little of it.

At that, Natalie walked farther down the hall out of earshot, swallowing a lump in her throat. She looked through another open doorway, then couldn’t stop herself from going inside. Because this must have been Rob’s childhood bedroom, unless he had a sibling she didn’t know about who also hated fun. She turned the switch on a lamp, revealing dark green walls and a twin bed. A big framed poster of Einstein dominated one wall, a display shelf of fancy dictionaries on another. As if Rob hadn’t been allowed to be a fan of anything that didn’t further his education. There didn’t seem to have been any updates to the room since high school, except for some framed diplomas hanging on the walls, heralding Rob’s impressive degrees.

His footsteps sounded in the doorway and she turned.

“Ah. You found the most important and most embarrassing room in the house,” he said quietly, not wanting to disturb his father’s rest.

“Where are the sports posters? The movie stars?” she asked, indicating his walls.

“I didn’t really go in for all that.”

---