Rm w/a Vu(16)

Okay, that just invites a whole new rush of fantasies that are bound to get me in trouble.

Shaking them off, I tell myself that I’m probably just reading too much into it—seeing signs where there are none—but when I see Greyston standing on the porch as I climb into my car, I start to wonder if maybe Mom is onto something. He waves, and I return the gesture, pulling away from the curb and heading for home.

Dad’s cruiser is in its spot next to Mom’s SUV when I arrive. He’s home early, and I feel dread knotting in the pit of my stomach. There’s no way I’ll walk away sane if I have to see them going at it a third time. Even though I don’t actually want to acknowledge that it’s a possibility, I grab my phone and text my mom to let her know I’m right outside.

She responds almost immediately. A good sign, for sure.



Yeah…right. She thinks she’s so funny with that little winky-face.

Knowing that she probably wants to be caught just as much as I want to catch them—which is not at all—I head for the house. I’m happy to see that they’re sitting in the living room, Dad in his recliner and Mom on the end of the couch closest to him.

“Hey, honey,” Dad says as I lean down and kiss his cheek first, then Mom’s. “Your mother tells me you went to look at a place today?”

I take a seat next to Mom, nestling up against her as she wraps her arm around me and hugs me close. “I did. It was beyond perfect…and the price was more than reasonable. I probably won’t even need you guys to help out,” I tell them excitedly.

“Oh?” Mom inquires.

“Yeah, it’s only five hundred a month. For a house. It even has a pool…and my room has a balcony that looks out toward the desert. It’s stunning.”

Dad’s inner-cop suddenly shows. “Sounds a little too good to be true, don’t you think?”

What I think is he just likes having his baby girl home again. “That’s what I thought, but that’s what the guy said he wanted,” I tell him, shrugging slightly.

Mom squeezes me supportively. “Well, that’s great, sweethear—”

“Wait a minute,” Dad interrupts, his voice low and interrogating. “He?”

Shit.

Mom must not have caught it until he repeated my slip-up. Slowly, she loosens her grip and sits up. “You told me this person was a woman,” she says, her eyebrows rising. The look in her eyes is the same one I had seen when I was sixteen and lied about sleeping over at Katie’s house so I could go to a party.

“Technically,” I say, going back to our conversation earlier in the day, “you assumed the landlord was a female, I just failed to correct you.”

Before she can say anything else, my father launches himself out of his La-Z-Boy and booms, “Absolutely not! It’s out of the question!”

“Dad, he’s a really great g—”

“I don’t care if he’s the King of England; you’re not moving in with some guy you found through a classified ad,” he orders. “I raised you better than that, Juliette.”

I hate when he talks to me like this. There used to be a time when I’d roll over and just submit to whatever he demanded because I knew he loved me and was just looking out for me. But now? Well, I know he still loves me, and that’s where his little outburst is coming from, but I like to think that he’s raised me to be a pretty good judge of character.

“You’re right,” I tell him, forcing him to stop pacing the floor in front of the flat screen and look at me. I stand up so I don’t feel about three inches tall while I try to tell him how I feel. “You raised me to know better than to just move in with a stranger. But, isn’t that essentially what one does in college when they get a new dorm mate? I didn’t know Delilah from Eve, and she wasn’t cra—” I stop myself mid-sentence when my father crosses his arms and raises his eyebrows in challenge. “Okay,” I continue, “bad example.

“My point is, I asked this guy all sorts of probing questions. I think I know more about him than I even knew about Ben, for crying out loud.” My dad still doesn’t look convinced, so I cross over to him and look up into his stern brown eyes. “Daddy,” I say softly, and I can see his resolve beginning to break. “I’m twenty now. A grown up. I need to do this. I don’t know how everything will turn out, but isn’t that kind of the point of life? We wouldn’t learn anything if we knew what was going to happen next.”

“I just… Juliette, if anything ever happened to you because I failed to protect you…” The poor guy looks absolutely terrified. Will he stay up nights worrying that my new living situation is dangerous? I don’t want that, and I start to wonder if my moving in with Greyston is something he can even handle.