Page 76 of Santa Has a Six-Pack
“There’s my boy,” she says warmly. She closes the book she was reading and places it on the small table beside her.
When she opens her arms to Matt, he hesitates before crouching down and accepting her hug. It’s only a split-second hesitation, but I notice it.
“And who is this?” she asks when Matt stands back up and her eyes fall on me.
“Hi, Mrs. Barbera,” I say, then immediately panic. Is she Mrs. Barbera? She very well could have a different last name from Matt for all I know.
There’s so much I don’t know about him and his world.
If I got it wrong, though, she doesn’t correct me. “Well, you’re a real beauty, aren’t you?” she says, staring up at me.
“Um. I don’t?—”
“She sure is,” Matt answers for me. “Mom, this is Penny.”
With everyone else he introduced me to today, I was “my friend Penny.” But with his mom, I’m just… Penny.
I wonder if that was intentional.
“Come closer, would you?” his mom says to me. She pats the cushion to her left. “Here. Sit beside me. Plenty of room.”
I check in with Matt, and he encourages me with his eyes.
The moment I land on the cushion, his mother reaches out to stroke my face. “Well, you’re a real beauty, aren’t you?” she says in the same tone and cadence as she did a moment ago, like it’s the first time she’s saying it.
“Thank you so much,” I say this time.
There’s something nice about being wrapped up in this warm, maternal energy. It’s not a feeling I’m used to.
“Tell me something, sweetie. Is my son treating you right? Is he a good boyfriend?”
Matt’s posture stiffens, his eyes flicking briefly to mine, then back to his mother’s. “Mom, Penny and I actually aren’t?—”
“He is,” I say before Matt can finish speaking. “Your son is the most wonderful boyfriend I’ve ever had.”
Chapter 20
Matt
My tea kettle screams from the kitchen.
I bolt up from my bed where I’ve been lying, staring at the ceiling, going over the unexpected events of the day, and head to the next room to make myself a cup of tea.
“The next room” is a generous way to describe my kitchen. With the exception of my bathroom, which has its own door that shuts and locks, there are no actual rooms in my studio apartment. It’s all one big room. “Big” is probably too generous a term, too. It’s all one… medium-sized room.
I’m certainly not complaining, though. I love this place, and the dirt-cheap rent—for Manhattan anyway—is just right.
As the steam rises from my cup, I flash back to when Penny met my mom today. Talk about surreal. Introducing Penny to my mom was not something I even contemplated doing ahead of time. We were just standing there outside the memory care building after rehearsal, and suddenly, I didn’t want to pretend with Penny anymore. Not that I was pretending exactly. But I was withholding. I told this woman I wanted to be her friend, and then I purposely withheld a very big part of my life from her.
Part of me thought Penny would be freaked out by the situation, either by my mom’s behavior or the fact that I even asked her to join me in the first place. But she didn’t seem put off by any of it. In fact, she was completely at ease. Softer and more relaxed than I’ve ever seen her, really.
I’ve been taking all my cues from her since the makeout-session-we-dare-not-speak-of and generally keeping my physical distance. Though today, she took my hand in hers. I wasn’t the one who reached for her first. She pulled me even closer to her at one point, and I thought she was going to kiss me.
Then when my mom assumed we were a couple, Penny let her believe that.
She called me her boyfriend.
“The most wonderful boyfriend she’s ever had,” to be exact.
