Perfectly Unmatched (25 page)

I nod and swallow. “Yes,” I whisper. “Let’s try.”

He pulls my face down and kisses me. “So, if I pull you down next to me and we fall asleep in perfect contentment, what price will I have to pay for our one night of absolute bliss?”

I lie down close to him and melt as he snakes one muscled arm around my waist. “You’ll have to meet my parents.
For breakfast.”

He goes completely still for a few seconds before he relaxes and kisses me on the forehead. “Get some rest then. We’ll need our wits about us tomorrow.” He yawns.

“We’ll just tell them. It will be like...like ripping off a band-aid,” I whisper, my heart seizing.

He yawns again and kisses my neck. “
Mmm...or like facing a firing squad.”

I juggle a sudden chuckle and an icy splash of terror before I fall asleep for the second time in
Cormac’s bed tonight.

Cormac
6

The sunrise is a burst of gold
rosied in pinks and dappled with gorgeous oranges...and it’s igniting a napalm burn in my liquor-battered brain. I wake to the soft, sweet length of Benelli in my arms, but know we’re already running behind for a meeting with her parents...a meeting I’m half positive will end up with me bashed over the head by Hungarian goons, weighted with cement shoes, and tossed into the local lake.

I take a long moment to enjoy the view of
Benelli, naked, dreaming, in my bed, before I shuffle to the bathroom and try to scrub away the worst of last night’s encounter. I can’t do much about my bloodshot eyes and overall pallor, but I clean up as best I can and shave. Nothing screams ‘hippie professor with no potential’ like sloppily tended facial hair. I’m searching through my clothes for a responsible outfit when Benelli stirs awake.

I stay still for a moment just watching her rub her feet together and stretch first one, then the other, fisted arm over her head.

Ridiculously adorable.

She blinks sleepily.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” I greet her. “Are you ready to run away with me, purchase fake passports, and herd reindeer in the northern reaches of Finland like we agreed to last night?”

She rolls her eyes and smiles. “They’re not so bad. You’re psyching yourself out,
Cormac.” She gets up and walks, stark naked, to the bathroom. “They’re going to love you!” she calls over her shoulder.

“I appreciate you offering a lovely view of your rump to try to distract me and make me actually buy into that lie, but I know
it’s horseshit. What parents would be happy to have their daughter dating me?” I put on a pair of trousers and shoes. Real shoes. Real shoes are important. “The last time I met the parents, they were encouraging her to use me in an elaborate jealousy plot. I have a pretty shit track record with this kind of stuff.”

She pokes her head out of the bathroom. “Her parents were idiots.” She’s using her finger to smear toothpaste on her teeth.

“You can use my toothbrush,” I suggest, and she pops her head back out, eyes wide with shock. “It that such a strange suggestion?”

She draws her mouth to the side. “It just seems...so personal.
Sharing a toothbrush.”

I button my shirt and grin at her. “I hate to be crass, but when you think about what of yours I’ve had in my mouth and what of mine you’ve had in yours...”

She throws a comb at me before I can finish, but I see her pick up my toothbrush and use it.

It was my own suggestion, but now, watching her take it, it does strike me as exceedingly personal. Nina and I were planning to get married and I wouldn’t have considered lending her my toothbrush or borrowing hers. We were also together for five times longer than the time I’ve known
Benelli, but, when I look back, Nina seems like an acquaintance I barely knew. Benelli is like a perfectly fitted piece of me I never knew I was missing to plug up a gaping hole in my heart I never knew existed.

“What are you thinking about?”
Benelli asks, slipping her clothes back on.

“Plugging up holes,” I answer.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Is that another lame attempt at a dirty joke? Because it’s seriously pathetic.”

I just shake my head, because now, in the light of the morning, she feels even more real, and that makes this whole thing feel even more nerve-wracking. What if she slips through my fingers? What if her parents hate me? There’s a very, very good chance they will.

On the other hand, what if they love me? Embrace me? Clap me on the back and tell me I’m ready to join the ranks? Will I ever be able to do what they do? Be whatever it is she and her family expect me to be?

“What are you thinking about now?” she asks, pulling her hair in a neat ponytail. “I can tell it’s not a dirty joke. You look...you kind of look like you’re going to puke. Are you okay?”

She sits down by me and lays a cool hand over my forehead.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to pull this particular bow back, is all,” I confess, taking her palm and kissing it.

“Are you talking about Odysseus again?” She rubs her nose on mine. “You’re Odysseus, okay? I know you are. You’re going to pull the bow back. No questions.”

“You’re just trying to get into my pants again, aren’t you?” I grab her by the hips and swing her onto my lap.

She wraps her arms around my neck and inhales a long, deep breath. “You smell so good. You look so cute, all buttoned up and freshly shaved. But I can’t have sex with you right now.” I slide a hand inside her shorts and love the way her breath gasps out. She puts a hand on my wrist and shakes her head, raising her eyebrows high. “No. I need to get back to my aunt’s. I need to change.”

So I take her back through the new dawn of the first day we’re officially together. When we get to
Abony’s house, I automatically go to the back. She tugs on my hand.

“No.
Probably the front. Right?” Benelli presses her lips together and wrings her hands over and over. “Or the back is okay I guess?”

I pull her in my arms and kiss her, but she only pecks back. “Don’t worry. Listen to me, don’t worry. I’ll go down the road, right where the shrine to the Virgin is. You know the one?” She nods. “When you’ve talked with your parents and are ready, text me, and I’ll show up.”

“But...I don’t want to lie anymore about this,” she says, chewing on her lip.

“We won’t be lying,” I assure her. “I mean, we will be lying about some things, like the fact that I had crazy sex with you all night. Your parents don’t need to know that little detail.
But no lies about anything important. Nothing big, okay?”

I take her hands in mind, and they’re clammy and shaky.

Not a good sign.

“Okay. Okay.” She nods and gives me one quick kiss, then slips into the house.

I wait on the bench, staring at the chipping statue of the Virgin, arms spread wide, fading bunches of silk flowers tied with tattered ribbons at her feet.

If I was a praying man, I’d pray now. And she looks like a nice goddess to pray to.

But I’m not a praying man. I’m a believer in chance and fate and whatever happens happening for reasons that have nothing to do with some all-powerful deity.

All I have to rely on is
myself, and that’s not exactly the most comforting thought.

My phone buzzes with a single word:

“You”

I head to
Abony’s feeling like there is a ton of stones in my gut. Benelli’s father is the overlord of this family, and I know his opinion of me will be the absolute ruling.

I feel like Odysseus facing a god. I just don’t know if it’s Zeus or Poseidon I’m about to stare down. Am I about to get a curse or a reprieve?

From the doorway, I can see Abony’s formal dining area is set up with platters of fresh breads and rolls, cheeses, deli meats, bowls of cereals with serving spoons, pots of honeys and jellies, urns of coffee, pitchers of milk, and one incredibly gorgeous, intimidating family seated around the banquet.

Benelli
looks transformed. Her hair is piled on top of her head in all these little coils, she’s wearing a white and blue striped dress with this wide neck that makes me think of garden parties, and her face is made up, the makeup covering the dark circles and the sweet, pink blush of her true skin tone.

I recognize Winch sitting next to a beautiful, somber-looking girl with black hair and a grimly held mouth.
Abony puffs on her cigarette with a dreary, bored expression, and Benelli is staring at the table, waiting. It’s a relief to know some people at this table.

Though I wish the three people I
do
know weren’t made up of someone who’d carried me home after a night of debauchery, someone who added further debauchery to said night in the form of sexual amazingness, and someone who seems to want to dabble in some illicit cougarish sexual craziness with me.

They don’t form any trinity of very positive possible first impressions, and I’m desperate to make a good impression with
Benelli’s frightening parents.

I muster all my courage and step into the room, armed with a handful of wildflowers that I hold out to
Benelli.

She stands up and comes to me, and when she takes the flowers, I focus on her face, because otherwise, I think I might pass out.

“Thank you,” she whispers and her lips curl into an encouraging smile. “Breathe.”

“
Cormac, what lovely flowers,” Abony purrs throatily, looking very much like she’d rather skip the spread on the table and take a colossal bite out of me. “Someone should get a vase. Ithaca?”

Abony
takes a drag of her cigarette and throws a curt nod to the dour-looking teenager perched at the end of the table. I recognize the willowy blonde as Benelli’s little sister, one half of the twin set, and, though their coloring is completely different, feature-wise Ithaca could be Benelli’s sour younger double.

I give the girl a wave, but she only growls as she swipes the bouquet out of
Benelli’s hands with a rough yank.

Benelli’s
mother, gorgeous and poised, grits her teeth through a practiced smile as her eyes follow her daughter’s receding stomp. “Cormac, how nice to meet you. Please excuse Ithaca. She’s...jet lagged.”

“You can just say she’s an asshole,” a guy who looks like a younger, leaner version of Winchester speaks up.

“Watch your mouth,” the patriarch barks from his throne in the center.

“Sorry,” the young guy quips, clearly not all that sorry.

“Welcome, Cormack,” the headman says. “Excuse my children. They’re at that age.” He rubs a hand over his thinning, silvering hair.

I shake first
Benelli’s mother’s hand, then her father’s, and am invited to sit between Benelli and her aunt and directly across from her father, an imposing overlord of a man.

Abony
and Benelli and her mother shovel ridiculous amounts of food onto my plate, pour me coffee, and generally fuss over me. I have to admit, it’s a nice change. My mother was a surgeon who took positions at various naval hospitals during my father’s deployments. I was adequately fed in my youth, but a nice bowl of cold cereal or an unmushy banana was feast-like for me on my average morning. And I’d been serving myself meals since I was a young boy. This is pure decadence.

“So,
Benelli tells me you’re real smart,” Mr. Youngblood says bluntly. His wife looks at him and then me with interest, and Evan tries to hide the smile that’s probably the requirement of a young, most likely brash, woman coming in contact with any foreign family’s particularly domineering head.

But I’m very used to military life and the eradication of social lubricants in order to get to the root of any problem.

“I am currently working on completing my thesis work,” I explain after I swallow the most glorious piece of raspberry bun known to man. “I will most likely defend my thesis in the winter, and then, yes, I’ll be very smart. On paper. And only in the realm of things that have to do with antiquities and the classics. Other than that, I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I’m mostly an idiot.”

The entire table stares at me, and I feel the general prickle that comes just before I assimilate with new people. I’m, by and large, a friendly and easy-to-get-along-with guy, but I realize full well that I have my own eccentricities, and this is a family who seems to appreciate
brevity. And manliness. And pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps work ethic. Not that I don’t work, of course.

But side jobs filling in baptism certificates with looping calligraphy probably don’t rank very high in the Youngblood stratosphere.

“And what about after that?” Mr. Youngblood looks at Benelli with clear fondness. “My daughter tells me you don’t necessarily have any plans as far as a job goes but might be...open.”

“Oh.” A second bite of raspberry bun is mid-way to my mouth and
Benelli is staring into her coffee cup and I’m a little confused about where this is going even though I’ve had so much warning. I expected this to be, at very best, a nice introduction and judgment day and, at worst, an uncomfortable brush off. But this feels like...like I’m on to the interview stage. This is too far along in the process. “Well, uh, after my thesis, I would most likely try to find employment in a college.”