Their reactions made her rethink the past couple of weeks. Did she forget to tell them about Caledon?

  “Oh, yeah. He’s the guy over there,” she said, pointing at Caledon, who was approaching them with Sylvie and Jordan.

  Her father was still gawking at her when they all arrived. “Since when did you have a boyfriend?”

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes!” Sylvie waved at them. “This is Jordan, my boyfriend.”

  Jordan also greeted them.

  Her parents returned their greetings and smiled at them both.

  All of Michelle’s best friends had already interacted each other’s parents multiple times over the years, and they all were very comfortable with each other’s parents.

  “I told you a couple of weeks ago that I was going on a group date, didn’t I?” Michelle asked them.

  Her mother’s frown deepened. “No, you said it was with a group of friends.”

  Michelle was confused for all of two seconds when she recalled that she hadn’t yet explicitly told her parents that she had a boyfriend.

  They had asked her about whom she would be going out with, but all she’d told them after giving them names was that it would likely be boring apart from the movie they were watching. And it was true.

  Now that she gave it some thought, she realized that she also hadn’t mentioned the date that they had st weekend, since it took pce directly after her shift at work and she usually either hung out outside with her friends or by herself for a few hours afterwards. Besides, it wasn’t as if it was some kind of exciting news.

  “Oops,” she said. “Sorry? Well, here he is. Mom, Dad, this is Caledon. Caledon, these are my parents.”

  “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes,” her boyfriend said politely. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Caledon was a clean-cut guy. Today, he was dressed in a blue crew neck long sleeve shirt and bck jeans, a very unoffensive outfit. Michelle was sure that her parents would be pleased with her choice in guys.

  Instead, they looked entirely bewildered. They snapped out of it for a few seconds long enough to greet him back, and then they turned back to Michelle.

  “When were you going to tell us about him?”

  “To be honest, I forgot!”

  Her purpose of getting a boyfriend was solely for the sake of introducing him to her friends. It hadn’t occurred to her that she might have to introduce him to her parents, although now she was beginning to realize it.

  She ughed, but they didn’t seem amused. Beside her, Sylvie looked like she was trying to keep from ughing.

  “Michelle!” her mother said sternly. “You told us about your part in the py but somehow forgot to mention when you got a boyfriend?”

  “It was an honest mistake!” she insisted. “I didn’t think about it. Sorry!”

  “Excuse us for a moment, please,” her mother said to her friends before pulling her aside.“Michelle Elizabeth, how can you remember to tell your friends but not tell us?”

  “When did you get together?” her father demanded, still with the same thunderstruck expression.

  “Like, almost three weeks ago? I think.”

  “You think?”

  Michelle lifted one shoulder. “It was during one of our shifts. I think it was Sunday? Oh, yeah, I’m pretty sure it was Sunday.”

  She remembered that she’d gone to that amusement park with her happily coupled up friends and ended up having to sit beside strangers on rides because everyone else was in a pair.

  Seeing as her mother had opened her mouth again, she quickly spoke up. “Mom, it’s not a big deal. I told my friends because they had to know. In the first pce, we got together so that we wouldn’t be third wheels when we went out with our friends. Don’t you remember me telling you about my friends bringing their boyfriends every time we were supposed to hang out?”

  To her credit, her mother barely flinched at the mention of it. Since her friends had started getting into the annoying habit of bringing tagalongs to meet her, Michelle had spared no effort in making sure her frustration about her friends and their respective boyfriends was properly conveyed in its entirety.

  Of course, both of her parents had suffered her venting with much patience, gently pointing out that her friends were probably excited about their new retionships, and that she could try waiting for the sense of novelty to wear off.

  Michelle was sure that they had no idea what they were talking about.

  It had been a couple of months since this had all begun, and there was no sign of it losing steam any time soon.

  “We remember that, Michelle,” her father said. “You were very vocal in your opinions. But what does that have to do with this?”

  “Everything,” she said earnestly. “It’s the reason we got together.”

  Her mother looked at her as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean by that?” her father asked.

  “His friends have been doing the same thing to him, so we thought that it would be perfect if we got together. That way, we can bring each other around. Then we won’t ever have to sit alone while everyone else sits in pairs!”

  Both her parents were struck dumb by her expnation.

  “So yeah, that’s why I told my friends. It wasn’t some big news or anything, that’s why I didn’t mention it to you. I wasn’t going to bring him home or anything.”

  Her mother opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “Sylvie and Jordan want to get pizza,” she said. “I want to go with them. That’s fine, right?”

  Her father narrowed his eyes. “And is your boyfriend going along too?”

  “Yeah,” Michelle said in a tone that sounded like it was obvious. “I already told you—that’s the whole reason he’s my boyfriend in the first pce.”

  “Well, if Sylvie is going to be there, I suppose that would be okay,” her mother said, exchanging gnces with her father. “Remember, you have to be home by eleven.”

  Michelle beamed at her. “Thanks, Mom! Yeah, I know.”

  “But,” her father added in a stern tone, “don’t think that we aren’t going to talk about this when you get home.”

  She was confused. What was there to talk about? Hadn’t she been clear enough in her expnation?

  They returned to her friends.

  “We were going to get pizza together,” Sylvie said, her eyes darting between Michelle’s parents and Michelle. “Would you like to join us, Mr. and Mrs. Holmes?”

  It was obviously a courtesy invite, especially since Michelle knew that Sylvie always preferred when they didn’t have parents chaperoning them.

  Thankfully, her parents were able to read the room.

  Her father shook his head. “We’ll be heading off first. You kids have fun. Michelle, remember to keep us updated.”

  “I will.”

  She waved at them as they left. The rest of them started walking when her parents were a little further ahead, such that they weren’t directly behind them, and Sylvie turned to Michelle.

  “Did you not tell your parents?” she asked. “Why did they look so shocked?”

  Michelle made a face. “I guess I did.”

  “How is that possible? You were so excited to tell us.”

  “It just wasn’t relevant to them.”

  At least, that was what she’d thought at that time. Although her parents were a couple, they had never made Michelle feel like a third wheel, except for the occasional dispy of affection in front of her. They always made sure to include Michelle in their conversations when she was present, and when they didn’t, it was always about some topic she wasn’t interested in anyway.

  Considering the reason why she and Caledon had gotten together to begin with, she hadn’t realized that it would be such a big thing to them.

  “Maybe I should tell my parents too,” Caledon mused.

  “Oh, you haven’t told yours either?” Michelle asked.

  “Well, yeah. But after seeing your parents’ reactions, I’ll probably tell mine soon.”

  “Good idea.”

  “To be fair,” Sylvie said, shaking her head, “they probably freaked out because they only found out about you having a boyfriend at the same time as they were being introduced to him.”

  They went to the nearby pizza joint, which was crowded with students and some of their parents. They managed to get a booth, and Michelle and Caledon sat across the table from Sylvie and Jordan.

  “That was an interesting py,” Sylvie said. “I didn’t expect all those missing people to just turn up like that.”

  It always made Michelle’s day whenever someone praised her club. Everyone in her club worked really hard as one big team to put together each py, so she was very proud of it.

  “Yeah, I had a lot of fun when I read the script for the first time.”

  Everyone talked a bit more about their opinions on the py before switching the topic to other things.

  Despite the pce being flooded with customers, their food arrived fairly quickly.

  It didn’t take long after that for Sylvie and Jordan to be all wrapped up in each other. He had one arm around her while he ate his pizza slice with his free hand. She leaned into his side as she munched on a mozzarel stick.

  While they were still—barely—engaging Michelle and Caledon in conversation, Michelle was not impressed with how they had to be draped all over each other to do it.

  “She was so salty that I got the trick right before she could,” Sylvie said zily, talking about someone in her skateboarding club who apparently treated her like a rival. “She looked like she was about to explode when I did it a couple more times.”

  “What’s her problem?” Jordan said. “She’s always trying to compete against you.”

  Michelle picked a pepperoni off her slice. “Isn’t she just jealous that you’re better than her?”

  Jordan brushed her hair away from her face and gazed into her eyes. “Yeah, you’re beautiful and talented. Who wouldn’t be jealous?”

  Michelle just covered the top half of her face with her hand. She couldn’t look anymore. Sylvie was too mesmerized to even notice her speechlessness.

  She started when a mozzarel stick appeared before her lips.

  Caledon looked back at her with a raised eyebrow and a wink.

  “Open your mouth,” he said. “I’ll feed you.”

  She ughed and obliged. When she finished the entire cheese stick, Michelle picked up a slice of pizza and offered it to Caledon’s mouth in return.

  “Say ‘ah,’” she said.

  Grinning widely, he bit a piece off the pizza. They alternated between feeding each other with each bite, but then Caledon accidentally touched the pizza slice to the sides of Michelle’s mouth, leaving a smear of greasiness on her skin.

  “You got it on my face,” she compined. “Don’t put the whole thing to my mouth like that. You have to turn it at an angle—like this, see?”

  “Oh, my bad.”

  She grabbed a serviette, intending to wipe it off her face. Her hand was stopped by Caledon’s.

  “I’ll do it for you,” he said.

  With a shrug, she allowed him to take the serviette. Using a gentle pressure, he carefully wiped the greasy spot off her face, folding the dirtied part of the serviette in before wiping the now clean spot again.

  “Thanks.”

  It felt nice to have someone so carefully wipe her face for her.

  “Do you have to do that in front of us?”

  Michelle almost couldn’t believe the audacity of her friend. Sylvie and Jordan had stopped murmuring sweet nothings to each other and were now looking at her and Caledon with poorly veiled discomfort.

  She blinked innocently at her. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean!”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought it was fine since you and Jordan are basically doing the same thing.”

  “We weren’t feeding each other every bite,” Jordan said semi-defensively.

  “Or wiping each other’s faces after feeding them.”

  They really were a perfect match, being able to finish each other’s sentences like that. Michelle despaired. Besides, they didn’t have as much of a point as they probably thought they did—although they didn’t feed each other every bite, they still spoon fed each other on occasion. Michelle had seen them.

  “Okay, but we weren’t cradling each other’s faces like we were the leading couple in a romance film.”

  Caledon nodded solemnly in agreement with Michelle’s words, setting down the now crumpled up serviette on the table.

  “It wasn’t that bad …” Sylvie trailed off, the defensiveness in her face evolving into uncertainty as she turned to Jordan. “Was it?”

  “It was a little,” Caledon informed her.

  Michelle honestly thought that he was being far too generous by saying that. But, well, Sylvie was one of her best friends, so it made sense to go easy on her.

  He took the remaining half of the pizza slice Michelle had been holding and resumed eating.

  “We’ll try to be more aware in future,” Jordan said.

  She almost jumped for joy. In that moment, Michelle gnced over to find Caledon also checking for her reaction. It was the first time she’d felt like they were working together as a team. They grinned at each other.