Page 8 of Going All In

“Your mom?” Ally asked.

“Of course,” she said before she swiped her phone on. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, darling. I had to call and tell you that I met the perfect man in the frozen food section earlier today.”

“Mom. Really? You’re picking up men at the grocery store now? What about Dad?” Darcy tried not to bang her head on her desk. She knew exactly where this was going.

“Really, Darcy.” Her mother huffed. “Obviously I was on the hunt for you.” Her mother played the exasperated mom role perfectly.

“Mom.”

But the woman kept going. “His name is Derek and he’s over six feet. I know you like them tall. Anyway, he’s a second-grade teacher. Loves science documentaries, so you can talk about science stuff, and has the cutest rescue puppy. Super fluffy. All white. I think a Samoyed. Is that what they’re called? Anyway, just the cutest.”

“Back up there a minute. First. Why are you accosting men at the grocery store?”

“What? I would never.” Her mother gasped. Darcy shot Ally a glare when her friend’s laughter could no longer be contained.

“You managed to find out that a stranger had a rescue puppy, the breed of said puppy, and his job title while looking for frozen lasagna?”

“I would never buy frozen. I make my own, and you know it.”

Darcy could picture her mother, hand to chest, as she clutched the phone in her free hand. These calls never failed. At least it’d been a while, but she’d been waiting for it. Her mother would never stop.

“We just got to chatting, and he was very nice.”

More like he was cornered by a crazy woman looking for his dating résumé and showed her a picture of his puppy to get her to back off.

“You’ll be here for dinner at five thirty tomorrow night, right? Or I could give you his number,” she continued.

“Mom. You have to stop.”

“What? You’re busy with school and your job and I’m just trying to help.”

Yeah, help by bringing every available man she stumbled across to dinner. The first time Darcy had shown up and there’d been a surprise addition had been awkward, but the five guys after that, ranging from one of the residents that worked with her father at the hospital, to one of the neighbor’s nephews who’d just moved to town, to more than one random stranger mixed in had been more embarrassing each time. She’d started finding excuses to skip dinner, afraid that her mother might bring a minister to dinner too in case Darcy hit it off with random number whatever and wanted to get married on the spot.

“Darcy, I love you and I want you to be happy. Like me and your father. Like Charles and Bianca.”

Her mother conveniently left out Darcy’s older sister—the middle child—Lydia. Lydia had horrified her mother with a quickie wedding in Vegas to some man named George, and an even quicker annulment. Lydia had also managed to scare more than a few of the men her mother had brought over for dinner. Lydia was a loose cannon and her mother had given up. Darcy needed to learn to be more like her sister in that respect.

Now Lydia just showed up to watch the fun; she’d made a drinking game out of it. One shot every time their mother mentioned something that Darcy had in common with her “date.” Two shots for any comments about how nice Darcy and her “date” looked together.

Last time, Lydia had been wasted before dessert even hit the table.

Honestly, Darcy wasn’t sure how her mother got these men to agree to come over for dinner. Maybe she paid them. That thought was even more horrifying than them showing up for a free meal. She was tired of the looks from her siblings every time she was blindsided. She had enough on her plate already.

“Mom. I am happy. I’m working toward my degree in a field that I love and—”

“Don’t you want someone to share it with? Derek seems really nice.”

“I’m seeing someone,” she blurted out.

Then she pulled back the phone and stared at it. What the hell had just come out of her mouth?

“What?” her mother and Ally said at the same time.

“Ah, I’m dating someone. It’s new,” she said, not looking at her roommate.

“It’s not on Facebook or Instagram,” her mother said, and Darcy heard the skepticism.

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