Chapter 12

12

DES

A lex messages me a day after the awning cuddle and says he's under a lot of pressure at work and asks if we can move our lunches to evenings. And so for the next two weeks every few days Alex comes to mine and we cook and hang out before he heads back to Great Neck. He confessed to me that he lives with his family, and I get it: living in the city is expensive and I understand the desire to save money.

TV thrillers become our thing. And these soft warm evenings very quickly grow into my favorite nights of the week and the hours at the office are calmer and pass easier when I have this to look forward to. One night in April, I bring his food over to him on the couch, and when I peer over his shoulder at his phone I catch a picture of an attractive-looking dark-haired girl. His sister?

"Who's that?" I say, plonking myself down next to him and handing him his bowl.

He rolls his shoulders and clicks his phone off, staring out the window, a tick in his jaw.

"Alex?"

"She's a candidate for me to meet."

"A candidate?"

He presses his lips together, brows scrunched up over his eyes.

"For what?" I ask, though I'm getting an inkling from his expression.

"From a matchmaker," he says.

And then suddenly it all clicks into place. The reluctance, the covering up. Not only has he not told his parents, but they're expecting him to marry a nice Jewish girl. Who knows, maybe even cement some connection. Does that even happen now? Maybe not formally, but … my heart stutters: I couldn't be further from the kind of person that Alex's family wants for him.

"You're kidding me, right?"

His eyes are a storm of fall leaves when he turns back toward me.

I hold up my hands. "Okay. Sorry."

His shoulders slump. "No, it's me who should apologize. I'm sorry I'm not brave enough to do anything about my parents looking for a relationship for me." Throwing his phone onto the couch, he leans forward and buries his fingers in his hair. "Sorry, I don't have the courage to rock the boat."

Putting my hand on his shoulder, I unwind a little when he doesn't shrug me off.

"Hey, I understand. It's a big thing, telling your family. I'm guessing there's a lot of pressure and expectations."

He snorts. "Like you wouldn't believe. But you're allowed to be mad, Des. If I was seeing a guy, I'd be annoyed if he was getting pictures of girls like that." He throws his hand out toward his phone.

I grin at him. He just said he's seeing me when so far he hasn't defined what this is at all , and warmth bubbles up inside.

"I just know there's no competition. No one is better than me," I say with a smile.

He groans. "I think you might be right."

And—oh!—the desperate clench in my chest almost makes me gasp. Did he really say that?

With a wave of his hand, he says, "How did you tell your family?"

"It wasn't so much a case of telling; it was just obvious from an early age. I was surrounded by women. All my sisters …" I take my hand off his shoulder and hunch forward, picking at a piece of skin by a nail. "I always dressed up with my sisters and had crushes on guys alongside them and loved it. My mom saw that and thought, What will be will be . My dad was such an asshole, she was desperate for me not to turn out like him."

"What did he do?"

"He was a drunk. He laid into her and us with his fists. Disappeared with other women. Each time he went we all hoped like hell he wasn't coming back."

"My dad doesn't do anything like that, but he's obsessively strict. There's a lot of pressure on us to conform to his agenda, his expectations."

That explains a lot. "In what way?"

"Everything is done as he wants it, to his timescale. When we were growing up, that was what was required, and it didn't occur to any of us to rebel. We'd be dead to him if we didn't conform. And in a way it's worse for me as I'm his only son." A sigh shudders through his body. "We're all terrified if I'm honest. It's difficult to throw off."

Being terrified. Yes, I remember that. And something about what he's said makes me want to share, too.

"I used to lie in bed and listen for my dad getting home. You could always tell how drunk he was by how long it took him to fumble his key into the door. If he was wasted, that was a huge relief because he'd pass out on the couch before he had a chance to lay into anybody. We'd lie there and wonder who he was going to pick on, and my mom"—my throat seizes up and I can hardly force the words out—"my mom used to go out to talk to him because she knew that he'd hit her first rather than hitting one of us." My voice drops to a whisper.

Alex scoots over and pulls me into a hug. It's a completely nonsexual, friendly gesture, but, God … Resting my head against his, I take a deep breath as he tightens his arms around my ribs, hair soft on my cheek.

"Jesus, Des, I'm sorry that happened to you," he mumbles in my ear.

He smells like apples and dish soap, and a faint linger of coffee.

I swallow. "I'm sorry, too," I say, patting his knee. "You're a good listener."

Maybe all this going slow is about his family? And it seems so obvious when I think about it. My competition isn't other guys or even women, it's his parents, his family's expectations … and disapproval. How can I persuade him that it's all worth it, that coming out will be the best thing that's ever happened to him? How could I show him how amazing this could be?