“Dad,” I managed to say. “Mom.”
My mother’s eyes sparkled. “Paul, what a surprise this is!”
“Oh no. Not a surprise. I’m pretty sure this is God fucking with me,” I told her.
“Language!” my father frowned.
“Sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t sorry in the slightest.
“Hello,” my mother said over my shoulder. “I’m Matty Auster, and this is my husband, Larry. We’re Paul’s parents.”
“Nice to meet you,” Vince said cheerfully. He very smartly extended the hand that was not wrapped around my waist, knowing that if he let go I would use that time to escape. To exact my revenge, I flexed my ass against his lap and felt him shudder underneath me. To his credit, his voice was only a little tight when he shook my parents’ hands and said hello. “I’m Paul’s boyfriend, Vince Taylor,” he said, squeezing me again.
Goddammit.
“Boyfriend?” Dad said, sounding perplexed. “Paul, you never mentioned anything about a boyfriend.”
“It’s a new thing,” I said as I blushed.
“At least fifteen minutes now,” Vince agreed.
“Fifteen minutes?” Mom said. “That’s fifteen minutes longer than anyone else.”
“Mom!” I hissed.
“Well, it’s true, dear. You don’t normally have boyfriends, though for the life of me I can’t understand why. I think you’d make the perfect partner to a nice man.”
“Oh, he does,” Vince said.
“What happened to that guy that Sandy said you spit on last weekend?” Dad asked. “I thought you were going to try and get with that?”
I groaned. “Dad? Do me a favor. Never say ‘get with that’ ever again. You’ve just fried my brain. And you guys really need to stop talking to Sandy.”
Dad looked over at Mom. “How else am I supposed to say it?”
Mom shrugged. “Maybe you were supposed to say ‘make love to.’ You know Paul is secretly a romantic at heart. Once you get past that icy cold exterior it’s like his insides are made of marshmallow fluff. You remember those letters we found that he’d written to Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell? I?
?d never read such beautiful love poems. Paul has such as sweet way with words.”
“Oh right,” Dad said. “How did that one go? ‘Hark! And behold/Your love is but my soul/Us together would be like the greatest art/I would give you the world and my heart/How I wish I knew thee well/Oh, Zack Morris! From Saved By The Bell.’”
“I didn’t write that,” I told Vince hastily as he laughed at me. “That was my twin brother named Toby who died under suspicious circumstances when we were twelve. My parents deny he ever existed, but he’s the one that wrote love poems to fictional characters.”
“Paul, really,” my mother sniffed. “You didn’t have a twin brother. My uterus wouldn’t have survived another one of you coming out.”
“See?” I whispered to Vince. “I told you.”
“You wanted to make love to that guy you spit on?” Vince said, sounding positively gleeful. “And you already told your parents about it?”
Of course he was still stuck on that. “I never said those words!”
“I’m the guy he spit on,” he told my parents.
“Technically, I spit on the twinkie barback,” I reminded him.
“It was meant for me,” he said, absolutely sure.
“Oh, that is so lovely!” my mother said, her eyes brimming with tears.