Page 21 of If I See You Again
Gah, the way David’s whole damn face lit up when he smiled. This was a horrific idea. An entire week stuck sharing my bed with him? I was screwed. There was no way I’d be able to keep any kind of boundaries.
Throw in the towel, Fisher, you’re done.
David dragged his suitcase behind me as we went back into the house. We should have brought everything in the first time, but I wanted to get my mom to shut up before she kept implying more was going on. She’d been dying for a son- or daughter-in-law for years, and here I was, dangling it in front of her face. And David was an amazing choice. He was sweet, sexy, and outgoing. And while he still flirted, he’d been more than accepting of my backing off recently.
As soon as everything was in my bedroom, that anxious feeling returned, the itchiness that David was judging my space. I moved around the room, carefully taking down the posters and rolling them to put them aside for storage.
“What are you doing?” he asked after I took down the third one.
“I’m trying to make it look like a grown-up actually lives here.”
He snorted a laugh. “I don’t know. I think it’s sort of endearing.”
And then he was up in my space, leaning in close and trailing his knuckles down my face. My breath caught at his nearness, but I didn’t pull away. That would be dumb. No, in reality, this had been what I wanted. I just wanted him to see something a little more respectable than a room a teenager would live in.
“Malcolm! Your father just got back from the store. Can you help him carry things in?”
My mother shouting up the stairs was like ice water over our heads. It felt like we were back to being teenagers, and we snapped away from each other.
“Shall we?” David cleared his throat, pointing to the doorway. He shifted from side to side, pulling at the sleeves of his shirt as he looked quickly around the room. During the short time I’d known him, I’d never seen him flustered. He was always so poised and sure of himself that it was alarming to see him so off balance.
It made me like him a little more.
“Yeah, Dad had to have his knee replaced last year. He thinks he’s Superman and can still do it all, but Mom and I keep trying to make him slow down.”
Dad was just walking in the door as I was explaining this, walking down the stairs.
“You make it sound like I’m broken. I paid good money for this piece of titanium. I’m going to put it to use.”
“Watch it, old man,” I laughed, rushing to take the bags from his arms. Once again, he’d tried to do it all in one trip. He rolled his eyes at me before he waved at David.
“You must be the guy.”
David nodded. “The guy? Possibly.”
A tense silence filled the room for a moment before we all laughed. It was crazy how one question could throw everything off. Mom and Dad were really going to push it. I wasn’t going to survive the week. There had to be a way for me to pull them aside and ask for them to cool it.
David followed Dad out to the car while I took the bags into the kitchen to Mom. Mixing bowls and measuring cups covered the counters. There was flour on the floor, and something sweet wafted out of the oven.
“What are you making?” I asked, setting the bags on the floor near the fridge.
Mom lifted her chin with pride. “I’m making a pineapple upside-down cake. I found this recipe online, and it just looked so tasty…”
“Mom?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Are you watching those cooking videos on social media again?”
She laughed, throwing her head back and then motioning around the room. “You can tease me all you want, but I’ve tried so many of them now, and they’ve all been amazing. I don’t know why you think it’s so strange.”
I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that people sometimes upload false information to trick others, but thankfully, no one had tricked her yet. She was a smart woman, but she could be gullible about some things.
David and Dad brought in the rest of the groceries, and we put them away in the cupboards. There was enough food to feed a small army. Mom had Dad pick up one of the larger turkeys. It was way more than the four of us would ever need. Almost all of it was. She didn’t know how to cook small meals, something about being raised in a large family.
By the time I’d pulled out the spiral ham and loaded it into the overflowing fridge, I was growing more suspicious.
“Mom?”
