“Someone is staying at Irma’s? With Juliet?”
“Yes, a woman,” my mother says. “That your son likes quite a lot.”
“You’re dating this woman and I’ve never even heard about her?”
My head stops bouncing between the two.
“You have heard about her, old man. Juliet’s friend, Lou,” I remind him.
“I thought that was a man.”
“Nope. A woman,” my mom says. “I bet she’s pretty.”
“If Grady’s dating her, she would be,” he says.
“We’re not dating. We’re barely even friends.”
“He wants to be, though.”
“Friends or dating?” he asks her.
“Well, both, obviously,” she tells him.
“Right. You shouldn’t date anyone you wouldn’t be friends with,” he tells me.
“Learned that already, but thanks, Dad,” I say. “Again, we aren’t dating.”
“But you’d like to be,” Mom says.
“It’s too complicated for that.”
“What’s so complicated about it? You ask her out on a date,” my dad says. “She says yes, then, you’re dating. Simple.”
“Oh, yeah? It’s that easy?”
“Of course not,” my mom says at the same time as my dad says it is.
They’ve been here thirty minutes and I’m already exhausted. Not that I’d have it any other way. The banter between them has always been a favorite part of my life. Being an only child, the three of us were close. I found the way they speak with each other entertaining. I still do.
It’s been like this my whole life. I used to wonder if it was this sort of word volley that made them fall in love. Or was it something else? First sight. A friendship that slowly tindered into love. I never asked. For the life of me, I don’t know why.
“How did the two of you fall in love?”
They wear matching looks of surprise at my question. I suspect most people would learn this sort of thing from family chatter at big holiday dinners or family reunions where everyone sits around and reminisces. Neither of my parents had large families, though. All my grandparents passed by the time I was in high school. My dad had an older brother who was in the Army and was killed fighting while deployed. They don’t talkabout it much. My mother, like me, like Juliet, was an only child. There was never anyone for them to reminisce with.
“That’s an embarrassing story,” my mom says.
“Not really,” my dad says.
“Why?”
“I was dating his best friend, Brian.”
“I was dating her roommate, Jennifer.”
“Shut up, really?”
“They weren’t meant to be,” Mom says.