Page 64 of The Invitation
“The snack selection was sparse, so I got popcorn,” he says. “It looks the freshest. Open up.”
I open my mouth, and he feeds me a piece.
He’s laid-back and relaxed, with his hair not perfect and his five o’clock shadow giving him a slight edge. I don’t see him like this often—not even with our friends.Maybe I don’t want to see it …
“I had to answer a call from my mother at the snack stand,” he says, feeding me another piece of popcorn. “One of my brothers wasn’t answering her calls, so she was doing a welfare check.”
“That’s adorable.”
“You think?” He wrinkles his nose. “Maybe it just feels odd to me because she wasn’t always like this. It’s hard getting used to it when you’re thirty.”
“What was she like growing up?”
He pops a few kernels in his mouth and thinks. “She was busy. She had a lot of kids, so she was running someone somewhere all the time. There was a lot of charity work, too, and she traveled with my father a lot when we were younger. If we were home, we were usually with a nanny.”
“Oh.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
He places another piece of popcorn on my tongue, making my stomach flutter.
“I guess I had this vision of big family meals and holiday traditions,” I say.
“Would’ve been nice.”
“So, are you close to your mother now?”
He nods. “We’re closer than before. Although, my brother Renn just had a baby, and now he’s the star of the show.”
I laugh at the look on his face. “Babies usually draw all the attention for a while.”
“Yeah, well, he’s a cute little shit. So, I get it.”
“Do you want a big family?” I ask before sipping my cocoa. “Or has having a bunch of siblings been enough for you?”
He pauses to think.
We’re sitting quietly side by side on the cold bench, our breaths billowing in front of us, and there’s a strange calmness between us—an almost cocoon of sorts. If I think about it too much, I’ll panic. So, I don’t.
I know none of this isactuallyhappening. I’m rational. But the way he’s opening up about some things, and the look in his eye has me momentarily forgetting that this is for Canoodle.
My stomach twists at the realization that I’m slowly starting to slip into a gray area. That must stop.
It would behoove me to focus on why we’re here and not get sucked into the pretend world we’re intentionally creating. While he’s probably telling some truths here, he’d never show me a hint of vulnerability. He’s showing me what he needs to show me for the show, and probably to make me start to question things between us.
Because he’s a sadist.
“If I have a family someday, I do probably want a large one if my wife is on board,” he says, staring across the ice. “But the big difference is that I want to be involved. I want to be there. I want to have big meals and holiday traditions like you were talking about. On Saturdays, we go to soccer practice or ballet lessons—whatever the kids are into.” He looks at me. “I want to be everything my father wasn’t.”
My heart swells in my chest. I had no idea that Ripley was so deep, or so thoughtful. That he’s thought this through is such a green flag.
“I think that’s a nice dream,” I say.
He throws a piece of popcorn at me, hitting me in the nose. “What about you? Do you want a big family?”
I grimace before taking another long sip of my drink.
“What?” he asks.
