CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Mother
We didn’t hear anything about the DOD contract the next day. Not that I expected to or anything; Nakamura had said it might take up to a week. The waiting was torture. A few custom orders had trickled in overnight—that was when our East Asian customers were awake—but I let Korrapati and Wong have them. I reviewed the DOD specs and compared them to my hasty notes about our dragons’ performance, trying in vain to guess what was coming.
The evening after, Summer had come over to my place for dinner. For reasons not entirely clear, she’d decided that the dragonets needed to be eating more vegetables, so she brought a huge tray of carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, and cucumbers over for them to try. We figured we’d start with Octavius, since all of the other dragonets tended to follow his example. Granted, I’d never known him to eat a single vegetable in his life, but Summer wanted to try. So we were trying and thus far had had zero success.
When Connor called me out of the blue, it was almost a relief.
“C-monkey,” I answered.
“N-circlement.”
“Really?”
“Been reading about Genghis Khan.”
“Ugh, you’re such a nerd,” I said, though I’d been slowly reading a long book about the battles of the Hundred Years War. I was more into the longbow than pincer movements.
“Yeah, that’s why my girlfriend named her dog after a Star Trek character,” Connor said. “Oh wait, that was you.”
I grinned. “I knew it was a lie when you said that first part, about having a girlfriend.”
“I date plenty of girls.”
“It has to last more than a week to count as dating, dude.”
He chuckled. “That’s kind of why I’m calling, actually. You know how you met Summer’s dad and he inexplicably didn’t hate you?”
“Yeah . . .” I said. That wasn’t exactly how I’d have put it, but I hadn’t forgotten.
“Well, it’s come to the attention of our parental unit—”
“Connor,” I said warningly. He’d better not have.
“. . . that if you and Summer are at the meeting-of-parents stage, then maybe it should be a two-way street.”
My mouth worked for a moment until I remembered some useful words. “What— I mean, how did this happen?”
“Well, Mom and I were talking today over lunch.”
“You went home for lunch?” I asked.
“No, we talked on the phone. Stop interrupting me. Anyway, I didn’t realize that this meeting Summer’s dad thing was confidential information, and it sort of came up.”
“It came up?”
“Yeah, you know. Conversation drifted your way and it was out before I even knew what was happening.”
Oh hell. This was bad. Mom was a believer of parity, especially for herself. Now I was two offenses deep: not offering parity, and not telling her. “This is what happens when you go and talk to Mom on the phone voluntarily.”
“We talk most days. She knows when I take a lunch break.”
I groaned. “Why can’t you be a normal person who dodges his mother’s calls?”
“Why can’t you be a better son who doesn’t?”
I suppressed a sigh, because there was no putting the cat in the bag once it was out. It wasn’t entirely Connor’s fault that he was a mama’s boy. He lived at home as an adult, and before the gene therapy it looked like that might be a permanent scenario. “Well, thanks for the heads-up.”
My phone beeped. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was. “And now she’s calling. Talk to you later.”
“Nice knowing you.” He hung up.
I flipped over to the new call. “Hello?”
“Noah, it’s your mother,” she said, with that immediately chastising tone of voice that moms have perfected: the perfect mix of hurt and accusation.
“Hi, Mom. I’m on the other line,” I lied. “Hang on a second.” I put her on hold before she could raise a protest and ran to the door of the balcony, where Summer was playing with Riker. Apparently she’d given up on the vegetable-feeding the moment I took the call from Connor.
“Hey,” I whispered.
She must have seen something on my face that caused concern. “What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath. “Is there any chance you’d like to meet my mom?”
“Um, sure. When were you thinking?”
“I don’t know, kind of soon.”
She wrenched a rope toy away from Riker and held it up so that he’d have to rear up on his legs to reach it. “We have a lot going on right now.”
“I know, but I really want you to meet her.”
That won me a look and a lovely smile. “Then set it up.”
“Bless you.” I shut the door and took my mom off hold. “Hey, Mom, what’s shaking?”
“Who was on the other line?”
“Wrong number,” I said.
“How are you doing? We haven’t seen you in a while.”
“It’s been crazy busy, but the aerial dragons did well.”
“Did they reach a decision yet?”
“Nope. Still waiting.” As long as we were talking, I figured that the best defense was a good offense. “Why don’t we get together this week. Maybe for dinner?”
“That would be wonderful.”
“What about El Poblano?” It was a Mexican place on the super-busy road near her house; as a kid I’d eaten there too many times to count. “I haven’t been there in a while. I assume it’s still good.”
“Oh, it’s fantastic. Great margaritas, too.”
Uh-oh. “You know, maybe we should go somewhere else.”
“No, El Poblano sounds good. How about tomorrow?”
When it rains, it pours. “Sure. Why not?” There was no sense putting it off anyway. “Do you mind if I invite someone?”
“Boy or girl?”
Oh my God. “Jeez, Mom. Does that have a bearing on your answer?”
“Of course not.”
“You know quite well that Summer is a girl.”
“Summer or Sumner, it makes no difference to me.”
This was exactly why no one should call their mother every day. “Will you stop it?”
She laughed. “All right. I can’t wait to meet her.”
“She can’t wait to meet you. How about seven?”
“I’ll be there with bells on.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“Wedding bells.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Stop it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The next day at work, all I could do was obsess over the coming meeting of the two most important women in my life. It felt a little different from when I’d met her dad; when that happened, I was the one who had hoped to impress. If her dad had hated me, given their relationship and how close they were, I’d have faced a long uphill road to stay in a relationship with her. In contrast, I generally kept my mom at arm’s length. I was worried about two possible bad outcomes here. First, that they wouldn’t get along and I’d spend the rest of my days scrambling to maintain healthy relationships while keeping them mostly apart. Which, if I was honest with myself, I didn’t have the organizational skills to pull off.
The second outcome, the one I didn’t want to admit worried me, was that Summer would get a good look at my gene pool and decide to cut me loose. Mom had a bit of a drinking problem. It was hardly a secret; Connor and I had been dealing with it our whole lives. She never hurt anyone other than herself, but it was still embarrassing. And it was something I hadn’t told Summer much about.
Maybe it was silly, but moms are permanent and for all I knew, she was worried about what she might have to live with long-term. All this was a long way of saying that the stakes felt high and I’d been somewhat rushed into this at the worst possible time.
I convinced Summer to let me drive to El Poblano, which helped. I was glad to have an excuse to take the Tesla somewhere other than work. It seemed like every other time Summer and I went somewhere recently, we had reason to take her Jeep. Which was fine I guess, but I felt like arm candy most of the time when I wasn’t busy hanging on to the oh shit bar. Driving my bright red coupe with a pretty girl in the front, that was the American dream.
Naturally I kept these thoughts to myself.
“Thanks for doing this,” I told her.
“Why are you thanking me?”
“You thanked me for meeting your dad.” I cleared my throat. “Multiple times, if I recall.”
“That’s different. My dad is intimidating.”
“Hey, my mom is not exactly a picnic.”
“We’re meeting her at a Mexican restaurant during happy hour. I’ll take my chances.”
I bit back an unpleasant word. “It’s happy hour?” This is going to be fun.
We parked in the lot, which was crowded—always a good sign—and walked in the front door. The interior was cramped and dimly lit, but the smell of delicious things fried in hot oil pervaded everything. I inhaled deeply. “Oh, that’s the stuff.”
“Oh my God, I can already tell it’s going to be good,” Summer said.
I took her hand and pulled her close to me. “You know the best part?”
“What?”
“We’re going to smell like this for the rest of the night.”
“Ooh. Tell me more,” she whispered.
I pulled her deeper into the interior. There were diners crowding every table. The waitstaff wove their way between them, depositing baskets of chips with salsa, taking orders, ferrying sizzling platters of fajitas past groups that were just getting ready to order. They really pulled out all the stops when it came to getting fajita orders. In fairness, the food lived up to the hype. I was rather hoping my mom would do the same.
We squeezed our way down the main aisle past a short divider wall to the only not-full table, and there he was.
“Connor!” I said.
“Hey, bro. Hey, Summer.”
“I didn’t know you were going to be here.” Seeing him was actually a pleasant surprise. He already knew Summer and they got along. I felt like some of the pressure had shifted off of me. “Glad you came, though.”
He leaned back, dipping a chip casually in the salsa. “Not sure you will be for long.” A nearly full beer in a frosted glass sat in front of him. In front of the other booth seat were two empty margarita glasses.
“What have you done?”
“So, Mom called me and said that she got here an hour early.”
“Oh, delightful,” I said. “Where is she?”
“Getting another drink from the bar.”
“Do you not have a waiter?”
“He was making them too weak.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course she’d say that.”
“Oh, it was true. I bribed him while she was in the restroom.”
“Clever.”
Summer watched this exchange with obvious amusement. “God, you two are so much alike.”
“Don’t you start,” I told her.
“Well, I managed to get some food into her,” Connor said. “Even so, I apologize for what’s about to happen!”
“There he is!” My mom skirted around a server, nearly dislodging his tray full of chips and salsa. She had a full margarita glass in one hand but threw the other arm around my neck. I managed to avoid a direct kiss on the mouth, but just barely.
“Uh, hi, Mom,” I disentangled myself from her grip and held out my arm. “This is Summer.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Summer said, with a smile that made my heart melt even though it wasn’t for me.
“And you. Oh, aren’t you just a doll!” My mom threw her hugging arm around Summer, whose eyes widened as she got a firsthand taste of the strong family tradition of boundary violation.
“Please have a seat, guys,” Connor said. “There’s a huge tray coming through.”
From my peripheral vision, I could tell this was more of a ploy than an imminent concern, but I wasn’t about to challenge the authenticity. Letting Mom swing her arms around with a full margarita in hand was just asking for trouble. We squeezed into the booth and chairs. In the course of this, Mom settled her margarita on the table and Summer pounced.
“Aw, you bought me a drink? You’re so sweet!” She plucked it up from the table, took a drink, and managed to squeeze my leg, all in the span of two seconds.
“Oh, sure. It’s your first time here, after all,” Mom said. “You shouldn’t have to drink alone, though.”
Connor kicked me under the table.
I winced and hopped up. “Next round is on me. Margaritas?”
“Good boy,” Mom said.
“I’m good,” Connor said.
“Two it is.” I dodged two servers on my way to the bar and got the bartender’s attention. “Buenas tardes.”
He was Latino, of course, almost certainly a member of the large family that owned El Poblano. I didn’t recognize him but he was younger, probably just old enough to serve. He looked at me, recognized I was already at the limits of my Spanish, and politely said, “What can I get you?”
“Two margaritas, and I’d like them weak. But they can’t taste weak. Know what I mean?”
“No.”
Oy. “Okay, two margaritas, half power. Does that make sense?”
He nodded and got to work, whisking out two salt-rimmed glasses.
“That’s my table over there, with the pretty girl and the guy who’s not as good-looking as me.” I pointed, made sure he clocked the table. Then I slid a few tightly folded bills across the bar. “Everything that goes to that table is half power, comprende?”
“Comprende.”
So it turns out I did know another word in Spanish. But not as many as Summer. When I got back to the table, she was ordering in it. Like, flawlessly. First it was Tom Johnson, now it was her. Summer even ordered for me, correctly guessing that I wanted my go-to dish, chilaquiles mexicanos. Sure it was a little emasculating but the impression it left was worth it.
“Oh, you speak Spanish so beautifully,” my mom said, with a little sigh.
“I’m glad to have a chance to use it,” Summer said. “This place is amazing.”
I took a long pull from my margarita, enjoying the tang and the mild flavor of the tequila. Even with half strength, this was the only one I’d allow myself. The Tesla had a Breathalyzer built into the steering wheel.
“The same family has owned it for almost twenty-five years,” Mom said.
“Hey, that makes it older than Connor,” I said. “Not to mention more important.”
Connor snorted. “Since I’m considered the newer and better-looking version of you, all you’re doing is putting yourself down.”
“Have they always been like this?” Summer asked my mom.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
The food came soon after that. Summer volunteered to get up mid-meal and get the next round of tequilas—just for her and my mom—which didn’t worry me as much as it might have, mostly because the bartender saw her coming, met my eyes, and winked. I looked back at the table and found Mom staring at me with a stern look.
“What?”
“Don’t screw it up, that’s what,” she said.
My mouth worked for an appropriate thing to say while Connor found it necessary to wipe his mouth with his napkin for an extra long time.
“Two margaritas,” Summer announced, sliding one in front of my mom.
Mom looked at me, and raised an eyebrow in her way of saying See?
Connor gave me the pursed-lips nod, like he agreed that everything was golden.
I grinned and basked in that moment.
“In other news, I’m pretty sure the bartender has a crush on Noah,” Summer said without preamble.
I choked on my drink. “Excuse me?”
“This doesn’t surprise me at all,” Connor said. “The only question is, will his be an unrequited love, or not?”
There was a a good laugh at my expense, and I joined in. “All right, eat your tacos, people. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.” Either a day of self-confidence or my last day of gainful employment. I still didn’t know which.