I push through the door and the hostess smiles at me like she knows something I don't, and I weave through the tables until I spot them in the back corner. My mother is in her nice blue dress, the one she wears when she's trying to impress someone. My father is in his usual sport coat, looking slightly uncomfortable the way he always does in restaurants that don'tserve beer on tap. Sitting across from them is an alpha I've never seen before.
He's handsome. Of course he's handsome. My mother has a type she picks for me: tall, dark-haired, well-dressed, with a strong jaw and the kind of effortless confidence that comes from never having to question your place in the world. This one is maybe thirty, thirty-two, with broad shoulders and a pleasant smile that he aims at me as I approach.
"Miles, sweetheart." My mother stands up and pulls me into a hug that smells like her perfume and hairspray. "You remember I mentioned Garrett? He works with your father at the firm. Garrett, this is my son."
I don't remember her mentioning Garrett, because she definitely didn't, because she knows I would've cancelled. I shake his hand anyway. His grip is firm and what he puts off is something woodsy and clean, and I feel absolutely nothing.
"Nice to meet you," I say, and sit down.
"Garrett was just telling us about his new house," my mother says with the kind of enthusiasm she usually reserves for when I tell her about a promotion. "He bought a place out in Westfield. Four bedrooms."
Four bedrooms. She might as well have saidroom for children. I pick up my water glass and take a sip.
"It's a lot of space for one person," Garrett says with a self-deprecating laugh. "But I figured I'd grow into it."
"That's smart," I say. "Planning ahead."
My mother beams at me like I've just said something brilliant. My father nods approvingly at his steak menu. Under the table, I press my thumbnail into the pad of my index finger hard enough to leave a mark.
"So, Miles," Garrett says, leaning forward with genuine interest. "Your mom mentioned you're at McKenzie and Randall. How long have you been there?"
"Seven years. Since law school."
"That's impressive. It's a brutal firm."
"It is." I take a bite of bread because it gives me something to do with my mouth.
"He's up for partner," my mother adds, reaching across the table to squeeze my arm. "This year. We're so proud."
"She's jumping ahead," I say. "It's not a sure thing."
"Of course it's a sure thing. You've given everything to that firm." She says it with pride, but there's something underneath it that I've learned to hear over the years—the relief.He's given everything to the firm, which means he's not thinking about the other thing, the thing we don't talk about, the thing that happened when he was sixteen and changed the shape of his whole life. As long as I'm working, I'm fine. As long as I'm achieving, the rest of it doesn't matter.
My father clears his throat. "The partnership would be good for the family," he says, which is his way of saying he's proud of me without using any of those words.
"Partner before thirty," Garrett says. "That's really something. You must not have much of a social life."
He laughs when he says it, like it's a joke, but it lands weird and the table goes quiet for a second. My mother jumps in.
"Miles works very hard," she says. "But he's learning to make time for other things. Aren't you, sweetheart?"
"Sure." I have no idea what other things she's referring to. This dinner, probably. These monthly setups that she pretends aren't setups and I pretend I don't dread.
Garrett is nice about the awkward pause. He pivots into a story about a case he's working on, something about a property dispute that went sideways, and he tells it well. He's funny in a low-key way that makes my parents laugh. He doesn't talk over me. He doesn't do that alpha thing where they angle their body toward you like they're trying to physically claim the spacearound you. He's polite and normal and if I were a different person, I'd probably find him attractive.
I am not a different person. I eat my salmon and nod in the right places and feel nothing at all.
My mother keeps glancing between us with this hopeful expression that makes my chest ache, like she's watching a plant she's been watering and praying it'll flower.
It won't. But she doesn't know that, or she does and she's decided not to.
"My sister just had her second," Garrett mentions, pulling up a photo on his phone. A baby in a yellow onesie, red-faced and screaming. "She's a handful already."
He holds the phone across the table and my mother takes it, making the sounds women make at pictures of babies. My father leans in to look. It's a nice moment for all of them. I pick up my fork and move a piece of asparagus from one side of my plate to the other.
"Do you want kids?" my mother asks Garrett, and her voice has that careful casualness she uses when she's steering a conversation somewhere specific. I know where she's going. She wants him to say yes, and then she wants to look at me, and then she wants to imagine a future where this nice alpha and her son and a couple of grandchildren fill up that four-bedroom house.
"Definitely," Garrett says. "Not right away, but yeah. Someday."