The road to Rhys’s family home had turned white overnight. Our rental car crept along the packed snow, tires searching for grip. Rhys held my hand between us and warmed my fingers with his breath.
“They’re going to love you,” he said.
I had not been this nervous before the MCAT. Nothing in my first two years of veterinary school had come close. At school, I knew how to work for approval. This was different. They might not like me. I might not like them. I might talk too much, or barely speak. I could wake everyone with late-night bathroom trips, put a dish in the wrong cupboard, or stumble into a hundred small rules I did not know yet.
Warm light showed in the windows. Snow had settled on the roof and the dark yard. The sight made me wish I could paint it or take a photograph that held on to the feeling. Bianca would have known how to make an image of it.
Before Rhys had fully stopped the car, the front door opened. His parents hurried out in flannel pajamas and loose robes, their trouser legs tucked into snow boots. His mother, Irene, called out without forming a word. His father reached me first and wrapped me in a hug before Rhys had introduced us.
Irene was taller than I expected, nearly as tall as her husband, with pale blond hair and cheeks pink from the cold. Rhys’s father had thick brown hair streaked with gray and a face that reminded me of Rhys’s, only more deeply lined. His sisters were already inside by the fireplace: one small and fair-haired, the other smaller, with dark hair. Rhys insisted on carrying our bags, and his father ushered us into a room full of voices.
Even with his family around us, Rhys kept a hand at my waist or the small of my back, his thumb moving as he answered their rapid questions.
The drive had been all right.
The roads from Seattle had taken longer than we expected.
We were not hungry. Irene asked while pushing plates of pumpkin pie toward us.
We had been together openly for ten months. “I’ve been in love with her since we met,” Rhys said.
“Of course you have,” Irene said, squeezing my knee. “She’s as sweet as pie.”
“You only think that because of her curls,” Rhys said. “She’s got a temper.” My face heated, but everyone laughed and talked over one another. Rhys kissed the side of my head and drew me against him on the couch. I felt as if I had finally arrived where I had always wanted to be: inside a home filled with affection, noise, and people arguing because they were comfortable with one another.
“He needs someone to keep him in line,” one sister said.
“He’s not a draft horse,” the other objected.
“No, he’s more like a stubborn mule.”
Rhys pulled me across his lap and folded his arms around my waist. “How do you know Mara isn’t more stubborn than I am?”
“He’s right,” I said. “I’m the mule between us.”
“Then Rhys is the ass,” one sister said.
“If I am,” he replied, “at least I’m yours.”
When Rhys’s father came back into the den, he told me, “You’ll be in Rhys’s old room, Mara.” The ease of hearing him say my name so familiarly sent a warm, almost aching feeling through my chest. I had been there only minutes, and already I felt included.
Rhys had warned me that his parents would not let us share a room, even though we lived together in Seattle. They could be open-minded in some ways and surprisingly traditional in others.
After his parents finished the dishes, Rhys took me upstairs to drop off our things. He let me look through his old belongings for hours, answering every question as if he were guiding me through a museum devoted to my favorite subject. I picked things up; he told me where they came from. I wanted all the small pieces of his past.
There were plastic soccer trophies and faded photographs of him as a teenager, surrounded by girls with the thin, over-plucked eyebrows and bleached hair everyone seemed to have back then. Other pictures showed him with friends at school games, in summer parades, and on a family camping trip. Whenever I pointed to someone, he told me her name, how they had met, and where she was now. Most of his friends had been girls.
“You still keep up with all of them?”
“It’s a small town. Our parents knew each other, too. I hear news from people. A few still try to sell me powdered wellness drinks.”
At my request, he pointed out the girls he had kissed and the ones who had visited for the summer, then left and broken his heart.
I stopped at a framed formal photograph on his dresser and laughed. “You were prom king? How did you never tell me?”
He leaned over my shoulder. He wore a black suit and a crooked plastic crown, one arm around a pretty brunette in a silver dress and matching tiara. Behind them, the backdrop read BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY over a glittering skyline that somehow included both the Space Needle and the Columbia Center.
Rhys groaned. “That isn’t usually here. My mom must have put it out to show me off.”
“Did she want me to be jealous of your high-school sweetheart?”
He rubbed his forehead; his cheeks had gone pink. “She thinks it makes me look impressive.”
“I’ve known you for three and a half years, and you never once mentioned this.”
“My greatest achievement,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s humiliating.”
“How? At that age I still had braces and a haircut that made me look electrocuted. You were prom king beside a teenage model.” I lifted the frame as evidence.
He set it back on the dresser. “You were a school star, so you may not know that prom king is the prize they give a guy they think has already peaked and will spend the rest of his life selling trucks at the local dealership.”
“Wait. Let me write this down.” I turned away, but he pulled me back, his arms around my ribs.
“Everyone in your town expected you to do big things,” he said, grinning.
“I didn’t know because I went to a school with four thousand students, where nobody knew my name. And I’ve never studied truck-sales culture.”
“Your first mistake.”
“Rhys Callahan,” I said. “Isn’t that theory a little self-centered?”
His smile widened. “Because I think a dealership would hire me? They’ve done it with most of our prom kings.”
“Not that. You think your classmates voted for you because they felt sorry for you.”
He shrugged.
I put my arms around his neck. “That must have been it.” I kissed him, and he drew me closer. “It had nothing to do with how attractive, kind, and funny you are. Pure pity.” I kissed him again, longer.
“And that?” he asked.
“Still pity.” I squeezed his backside. “This too.”
“Being an over-the-hill golden boy has its benefits, then.”
Someone tapped on the doorframe. I pulled away, though Rhys kept his arms around me and turned toward the hall. His parents stood there, smiling, Irene leaning her head against her husband’s shoulder.
“We’re going to bed,” his father said. “Need anything?” Irene asked.
Rhys shook his head. “We’re fine. Just wanted to say good night.”