Page 41 of The Loophole
“I can see you’re still in your pajamas, so I won’t expect you by lunchtime. But I’ll instruct the staff to set two more places at the table for dinner.”
“We have dinner reservations for my birthday,” I explained. “That’s why we’re planning to come tomorrow.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Reservations can be changed. I’ve waited long enough to meet your young man, so you’re coming today. End of discussion.”
I glanced at Embry. He shrugged almost imperceptibly, as if to say, why not? I turned my attention back to the screen and said, “Fine, Granddad. You win. We’ll be there in a few hours.”
“Dinner’s at eight, but cocktail hour begins at six sharp. Don’t be late.” With that, my grandfather ended the call.
I muttered, “Fuck,” and sat down on the kitchen floor. Then I stretched out on my back and stared at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry. I know you were looking forward to that fancy restaurant.”
“It’s not that. I feel horrible about lying to him. I expected a lot of push-back and disbelief, which would have made it easier somehow. But he welcomed you to the family and didn’t even question any of it.”
Embry smirked, just a little. “Because he thought you were gay all along.”
I sat up and exclaimed, “And he bet on it! I can just see him and his brother Charles, having a chuckle about my total lack of a love life over brandy and cigars. At some point, Gramps says, ‘I bet the kid is gay.’ And Chuck comes back with, ‘Nah, he’s just a total wash-out with the ladies.’ They argue about it for a while, until one of them says, ‘Let’s put five bucks on it.’ Honestly, who does that?”
“That might not have been how it happened.”
“It’s annoying no matter how it played out.”
“I get that.”
I got up and said, “I still feel bad about lying to him, though.”
“Good. That means you have a conscience. But just remember, he pushed you into this by giving you that weird ultimatum—get married or get nothing. He should have just stepped up and helped you when your restaurant was struggling, instead of trying to control your life.”
“I never told him how bad things got when the restaurant started to fail. I was too embarrassed.”
“Well, anyway, it’s too late to take it back. You already told the lie. The wheels are in motion.”
“Yeah. They are.”
Embry said, “We still have a little time before we need to get on the road. Healdsburg is what, two hours north of here?”
“Something like that, and Uncle Charles’ place is maybe twenty minutes outside of town. He’s my great uncle by the way, my grandfather’s brother. But that’s too wordy, so I just call him ‘Uncle.’ Which you probably figured out.”
“I did. Let’s go relax for a while, maybe eat some more cake…”
“And cancel our coveted reservation at the hottest new restaurant in town. But hey, my colleague who managed to slip us in can probably do it again, a year or two from now.”
He flashed me a smile. “Something to look forward to.”
Embry had seemed pretty confident about this whole thing, until we got in the car a few hours later and started making our way out of town. He fussed over Dusty for a while, who was perfectly content in the back seat, and then he began asking questions.
“Do you really think we can pull this off? There’s so much we don’t know about each other. Like, why were you named Bryson? I was named after a character on a soap opera, but I don’t know where your name came from.”
“Bryson and Fallon are both family names. My brother and I were named after illustrious ancestors on our mother’s side. And I don’t think we’re going to be expected to know every last thing about each other. It’s not like we’ve been married for twenty years or anything.”
“That’s true.” He turned to look at me, as much as he could with the seatbelt pinning him down. “Your grandfather knows we’ve been married for two weeks, but are we going to try to stretch our timeline?”
“What do you mean?”
“In reality, we met just days before we got married. We’re not going to go with that timeline, are we?”
“I thought we were going to stick to the truth as closely as possible, to avoid making this too confusing.”