“Bob, he’s in the house. He can hear you.”
I had to laugh at the way the two of them interacted. Before that moment, I had never really thought about what it would be like to grow old with someone. I hadn’t had an example of that sort of relationship in my house, so it had been difficult to imagine.
Sure, I had seen cute old couples at the mall or out at restaurants, but I never imagined that I might have something like that one day. But Cassidy fired those feelings up inside of me. We were obviously just friends, but she was an all-around great girl who I could see getting to know more. Even if I didn’t end up with Cassidy, I did have the feeling I’d settle down someday, which hadn’t really crossed my mind much before I had gone to treatment.
“Hello, young man. Are you a drunk, too?” Cassidy’s father asked boldly.
“I’m not currently,” I said as I reached my hand out to shake his.
He seemed to value the honesty in my statement and shook my hand firmly before going to the stairs to holler up. But before he had the chance to yell up the stairs, Cassidy had started to descend from the top floor.
It took me a moment to fully realize it was her, though. Cassidy had curled her hair and put some makeup on. Although she clearly didn’t need to do such things because she was beautiful without them – that was the truth.
Cassidy also had on a short, green dress that could be best described as a “fuck me” dress, or so my friends and I use to call them. It was a short dress, with enough movement to slide it up over a girl’s hips while you bent them over and had your way with them. Many of the women who threw themselves at me liked to wear dresses like that.
Of course, Cassidy didn’t look like that was the thoughts she wanted to evoke. The dress she had on wasn’t a body-hugging dress; it was loose around her body and skimmed her curves. But I could only think about how easy it would be to get that damn dress off of her. I stared up at her and watched every i
nch of her body as she moved slowly down the stairs.
“Oh, you look nice, honey,” her mother said.
“Yes, very festive,” I added as I tried not to sound like a total pervert.
“Are we eating?” Cassidy’s father asked flatly.
“Not yet, Bob.”
“Mom, Dad, this is my friend Erik from AA,” Cassidy said as she started to introduce the group. “Erik, this is my mother Katherine and my father Bob.”
“It’s good to meet you,” I said.
Meeting parents had never really been my thing, especially fathers, not that I had met that many. But in high school, my girlfriend had brought me home to meet her parents and I fumbled the whole thing. I tried to tell jokes, which weren’t received well. Then I tried to sit quietly, but when her father asked me a question, I basically yelled at him. It was fair to say that fathers and I didn’t mix very well.
“Let’s go out back for a little bit and sit on the covered porch; it’s fun to watch the skiers wipe out.” Cassidy laughed.
To get away from the anxiety of worrying about everything I said to her parents, I would have done just about anything. I followed her out back to regroup for a little bit before dinner. It was exhausting meeting someone’s parents. I felt ready to take a nap and would have if I had been given a room to sleep in.
“Thanks, I felt like I was failing out there.”
“They aren’t an audience. You don’t have to worry if they like you or not. You’re only visiting for the night.”
“About that…” I started to say and then couldn’t keep my laugh in as Cassidy looked at me with a serious face.
“What did you do?” she replied.
Cassidy was really cute when she was angry. She wrinkled her nose up and had her hands on her hips like she was about to scold me. She wasn’t actually angry with me; I could tell that much. It was hard not to laugh at her as she tried to be stern with me and get me to answer the question about what I did.
“I sort of told them that I was going to be gone for two nights.”
“Two nights!” she exclaimed. “I only told my parents you’d be here for one night.”
“Sorry, I got flustered. You can just send me back when you’re done with me,” I teased her.
“It’s all right. We’ll figure it out. By the way, I told them you were in town visiting a cousin and you were from New York.”
“Why didn’t you just say I was from San Francisco?”
“I don’t know. I got flustered.” She laughed. “I’m not all that great at lying.