Page 8 of My Vampire Plus-One
I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him—or, if I was being honest with myself, his striking blue eyes, or the way his broad shoulders filled out that ridiculous shirt he was wearing—until I finally made it to Italian Village, the restaurant in River North my family had picked for this month’s get-together.
I opened the door to the restaurant and was greeted with the pleasant aroma of roasting garlic. My mouth watered.
I was nearly thirty minutes late. Mom would likely have something passive-aggressive to say about that. Probably something about how I was going to make myself sick if I kept working so hard.
While Mom and Dad sort of understood my brother Sam’s interest in being a lawyer, the kind of practical application of math skills I used in my career made as much sense to them as being a jackalope hunter would. They didn’t exactly disapprove. They just didn’t understand why a person would want todoit, least of all someone who was related to them. Especially if it meant having to work inhuman hours several months out of every year.
Hopefully Mom’s comments tonight would not get any worse than passive-aggressive.
Either way, if the delicious aroma that greeted me when I stepped inside the restaurant was anything to go by, at least dinner would be good.
Italian Village was relatively new and had been getting good buzz on social media among people who knew the Chicago food scene. So it was a lot more crowded than I’d have otherwise expected in this part of the city on a Tuesday. The host guided me through the restaurant to a table for ten near the back, where my parents, my brothers Sam and Adam and their respective spouses, my eighteen-month-old nephew Aiden, and my twin eight-year-old nieces Ashley and Hannah were already seated.
Adam’s cell phone rested on the table in front of his kids, who were staring at whatever was playing, transfixed. My brother must have won the argument he always had with his wife, Jess, over whether they should let their children have screen time during dinners out.
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, squeezing between the backs of Mom’s and Dad’s chairs and the wall behind them as I made my way to the last empty seat at the end of the table. I almost mentioned the strange interaction I’d had with that guy outside my office to explain why I was late, then decided against it. How would I even describe whatever that was? I barely understood it myself. Easier to fall on the old standby excuse. They were expecting it anyway. “Work is just…you know.Wildthese days.”
“We know,” Sam said, giving me a small smile. “Glad you could still make it.”
Sam was a second-year associate at a law firm in the Loop. Like me, he worked very long hours. Unlike me, he still managed to make our monthly family dinners on time. His husband, Scott, likely had something to do with that, though. Scott was an English professor, and with his fastidious attention to detail andlegendary calendaring skills, he was the opposite of every absent-minded professor stereotype I had ever heard. And being the daughter of a retired history professor and a retired high school English teacher, I’d heard just about all of them. I suspected Scott actually kept Sam’s calendar for him, with little beeps going off on Sam’s phone anytime my brother needed to be somewhere.
I loved spending time with Sam and his husband. Even though their busy work schedules and mine rarely lined up, we always had fun when we did manage to find time to hang out.
Fortunately, Mom didn’t seem upset with me for being late. She was fully engrossed in conversation with Scott, seated on her other side, and hadn’t even noticed I’d arrived. Mom had a master’s degree in nineteenth-century English literature, which she’d used to teach language arts to high school kids for thirty years, and had been a voracious reader all her life. The first time Sam brought Scott home, I hadn’t even thought Mom could look so happy. Sam liked to joke that of the three of her kids, she liked Scott the best.
Honestly, he may have been right.
“Glad you could join us, Ame.” Dad sat at the head of the table, directly opposite from my nieces. His voice was deep and booming and carried easily over the din of the restaurant. “Tax season keeping you busy, huh?”
It was, verbatim, the same question he’d asked every March and April in the seven years since I’d become a CPA. From anybody else, the repetitive and unimaginative questioning would feel dismissive of my career, and grating. I mean, it was still alittlegrating and dismissive, even from Dad. But I knew he wasn’t doing it because he disapproved of my job. He just quite literally didn’t know what else to say about my career.
You couldn’t get much farther away from early twentieth-century European history than filing tax returns on behalf of nonprofit foundations.
“Yep,” I said. “Super busy.”
“Good girl.” Dad smiled at me, then turned his attention back to the wine menu he’d been studying when I arrived. “In the mood for some Chardonnay? I ordered a bottle for the table.”
I wasn’t normally much of a drinker. Especially not on a work night. But suddenly, the idea of drinking something with dinner to blur the edges of the day sounded marvelous. “Sure,” I said.
“Me too.” Adam was making silly faces at Aiden, who was no longer interested in the iPhone and looked about thirty seconds away from a total toddler meltdown.
“Me three,” Mom said. She smiled at Dad before turning to the rest of the group. “Also, now that you’re all here, I wanted to see whether you’d gotten Gretchen’s invitation.”
Sam looked up from his menu. “What invitation?”
“Gretchen’s getting married in May!” Mom was beaming. “Your father and I got ours today. Aunt Sue said you’re all invited.”
I fought to stifle a groan.
Lord.
Notanothercousin getting married.
Suddenly, the wine Dad ordered couldn’t arrive soon enough. Because now I knew exactly how the rest of tonight’s dinner was going to go. Mom and Dad wouldn’t be gently harping on me about working too hard like I’d worried.
They’d be gently harping on me about being single, instead.
The less of what I knew was coming next that I had to sit through completely sober, the better.