Page 9 of Dirty Nasty Billionaire: Part 4

Chapter 4

It’s strange being on the other side of it. We spent so long hiding, it was like we didn’t know how to be together outside of his apartment, not at first.

As soon as we got back to Boston, Nixon had his PR person at Scour release the statement about our impending nuptials. What with the very public proposal, we figured it wouldn’t be long before it got out, so we wanted to get ahead of the story.

Once it hit, we were officially free. There was nothing keeping us from going out to dinner or seeing a movie. We could travel, or just go for a walk. And we did it all. We ate out at all the restaurants where Nixon usually ordered in from. We went to the theater. I joined him on his runs along the Esplanade. He even had Chinese takeout at my old apartment, where Elise finally got the chance to interrogate him.

It was great, except for one small detail. There was one place we hadn’t been. One place we’d been avoiding.

But now, as we speed down the Mass Pike, Nixon clutching my hand as he steered the Tesla, I wondered if maybe this was one we should have left undone.

“Are you sure about this?” I ask.

He flips the turn signal and steers us off the Pike onto the exit ramp for Worcester.

“I need to do it,” he says. “I think I also need you to see it. To really understand.”

Nixon’s childhood home is nothing like the world he inhabits now. Where his apartment is spacious and grand (if sparsely furnished), gazing out over the wide expanse of the city, this house is small and inconsequential, like it’s trying to hide itself from view. The little yellow house, one story with a pitched roof, practically disappears behind overgrown bushes that flank the front door. When we get out of the car and approach, I see that the paint is faded and peeling.

We stand there on the crumbling front stoop for a moment, both of us just staring at the door.

“Really, we can go,” I tell him. I worry that he’s doing this just for me, and I want him to know I don’t need it. From what he’s told me, his parents have no place in his life, nor should they. So it really doesn’t matter to me if I ever meet them. But he’s adamant.

He reaches out and grabs my hand, squeezing tightly.

“No,” he says. “We’re doing this.” And then he uses his free hand to knock firmly, loudly on the door.

It feels like an eternity before I hear the slide of a deadbolt. The door creaks open. A tall, gray-haired man stands there, his shoulders hunched like the world has beaten down upon his head for far too long. He looks first at Nixon, then at me. Then he sighs.

“Come in,” he says, like he’s resigned to this fate. Then he turns and walks back into the house, not even waiting or beckoning us inside.

“How long has it been since they’ve seen you?” I whisper to him.

“Thirteen years,” Nixon replies.

Inside, the house is dark and dusty, the beige carpet taking on a sort of grayish hue where decades of steps have worn it down. The walls are covered in a fading striped wallpaper, but like Nixon’s apartment, there are no photos on the wall. Nothing to prove that an entire generation of life happened here. No baby Nixon, no Nixon playing tee ball or graduating from high school.

I follow Nixon into the living room, where his father is now sitting on the couch beside a gray-haired woman who I know is Nixon’s mother. Though hers are faded and dull, she has the same blue eyes. His mother has a cannula in her nose, the long plastic tubing snaking down to a wheezing oxygen tank placed at her feet.

For a long time, no one says anything. Nixon and I are standing in the middle of their living room. They haven’t seen their son in over a decade, and he’s here to introduce his fiancé. But they have nothing to say. They just glare at him, like they’re affronted that he’s bothering them by taking up space in their house. And in that instant, I can perfectly picture what it was like for Nixon to grow up in this house, one where he was loathed for daring to take up space. To exist.

Beside me, I can feel Nixon starting to tense, so I squeeze his hand. I can be what he needs right now. I can try to make this ok.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. And Mrs. Blake,” I tell them, trying to put an approximation of a smile on my face.

“And you are?” His mother croaks.

“I’m Delaney Masterson,” I tell them. I reach out a hand to shake, but Mrs. Blake just stares at it like I’ve offered her a bag of dog shit.

“She’s my fiancé, Mom,” he says, the word sounding foreign on his lips.

“Oh,” his mother says. And that’s it. That’s all she has for the news that her only child is engaged to be married.

“We already had lunch,” his dad says, as if we asked for them to feed us.

“It’s ok, we ate on the way,” I tell them. At this point, I just want to smooth this over and get the out of here. I don’t know what Nixon was hoping to get out of this experience, but I hope he’s gotten it. Because I’m ready to leave here forever.

“Actually, I was just here to show Delaney where I grew up,” Nixon says, his voice full of anger and resentment. It strikes me as odd, the way he makes it seem like the house was the important thing, not the parents who raised him. “I’ll just show her around, if you don’t mind.”

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