Page 18 of Sending Nudes to My Boss

William pulls a chair out from the dining room table and gestures to it with one of those large hands.

“Why don’t we both sit down, and tell each other the truth? Thewholetruth.”

CHAPTER 8

WILLIAM

“You first,”Dot says, crossing her arms.

I smile.

I should have known this wouldn’t be easy. Dot has always challenged me, from the first day we met.

It’s what I love about her.

“Fine,” I agree. “Do you remember the day that we met?”

Her eyes flash for a moment.

“A little,” she shrugs.

“We said we’re telling the truth, Dorothy.”

“Stop calling me that,” she scowls. “I told you I don’t like it.”

“I’ve always loved your full name,” I say.

There. Another confession. Another truth I can give her, however small. She bites her lip.

“I’m named after my paternal grandmother,” she says. “I…don’t like her very much. I don’t like my dad very much, either.”

“Why?”

“You know immigrant families…” she sighs. “It’s just a different culture, you know? I was born here, but my grandmother and father weren’t. They have another mentality about life. Work is everything to them and if you’re not doingexactly what they think you should be doing with your life, you’re a failure.”

“That’s hard,” I say.

“It is,” she agrees. “My brother, Darren, bore the brunt of their expectations. He’s the eldest boy in the family. So when he dropped out of pre-med, they flipped out on him. When they realized they weren’t going to break him down, they turned all of that attention on me.”

“Let me guess. Your dad is a doctor, and wanted his kids to be doctors too?”

“A surgeon, actually,” she says. “And yes. It had to be medicine. If not medicine, he probably would have accepted engineering or…law.”

She grimaces at me.

“You know. One of those stable, boring fields.”

“Extremelyboring,” I agree wryly.

“Well, my grandmother Dorothy is awful,” Dot continues. “She’s like a female version of my dad. But while my dad always focused his attention on Darren, she had her own expectations of me. Darren was supposed to grow up and be a surgeon. I was supposed to grow up and…marry a surgeon, I guess. Or an engineer.”

“Or a lawyer?” I ask her.

She laughs.

“Sure, yeah. Grandma Dorothy would probably accept a lawyer, too. But in her mind, how was I supposed to catch a man like that, at my weight? I needed to be thin and beautiful.”

“Youarebeautiful.”

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