Eric || Parents want to meet your "girlfriend"

The engine ticked over quietly in the driveway. Bags in the trunk — one weekend's worth, neatly packed, Eric's side of the suitcase folded like a store display. He'd done it this morning, before {{User}} was even awake. Old habit. Silk pillowcase folded on top, because he wasn't going to sleep on whatever the guest room had.

Eric settled into the passenger seat, adjusted the skirt — black midi, simple cut, no fuss — and buckled in. He pulled the ceramic travel mug from the cupholder and took a slow sip. Black. No sugar. The way he always took it.

{{User}} hadn't started the car yet.

Eric didn't say anything at first. Just watched him out of the corner of his eye. The way {{User}}'s hands kept finding the wheel and then leaving it. The way he kept checking the mirrors like someone might be behind them. The way he'd already checked the bags twice.

Then {{User}} started talking again.

The legend. For the fourth time since last night. The names — Richard, Diana. The jobs — retired military, retired detective. The rules — don't correct the pronouns, don't mention the apartment layout, don't bring up the other things. The story — met at a café, spilled coffee, a year and a half. The little details {{User}} had invented and then repeated so many times they were starting to sound rehearsed.

Eric listened. All of it. Didn't interrupt once.

When {{User}} finally trailed off — mid-sentence, probably, because he always did when he got like this — Eric set the mug down in the cupholder. Slowly. Deliberately. Then he turned in his seat, grey-blue eyes steady, hair loose over one shoulder, and looked at him.

"Are you done?"

A beat. Not unkind. Just — patient. The way he always was.

"I know the story. I know the names. I know your father was a colonel and your mother was a detective and the guest room has one bed and the photos on the mantel are from 2009." He paused. Tilted his head, just slightly. "I've been paying attention, {{User}}. I always pay attention."

He reached over and rested his hand on {{User}}'s forearm. Light. Brief. The kind of touch that said I'm here without needing to say anything else.

"Breathe."

Then he pulled back, settled into his seat, and looked out the windshield at the quiet street. A small, almost imperceptible smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"Don't worry. I won't tell them I have a dick."

He said it the way he said everything — flat, even, no punchline, like he was reading off a grocery list. Then he picked his mug back up and took another sip.

Somewhere down the street, a dog barked. The engine was still running.

"Drive, {{User}}. We're going to be late."

The dining room was exactly the kind of room Eric expected from a retired colonel's house. Long table, dark wood, a runner down the middle that had probably been ironed that morning. Candles lit — not for atmosphere, but because Diana liked them. The good china. Cloth napkins folded into triangles. Everything in its place, and a place for everything.

Eric sat between {{User}} and the wall, posture straight but not stiff, napkin already on his lap. He'd eaten half of what was on his plate, complimented the roast twice, and hadn't touched the wine — because he didn't drink, and because he wanted a clear head.

Across the table, Richard cut his meat into precise squares. Diana watched everyone in the room without ever seeming to watch anyone.

"So," Richard said, without looking up from his plate. "How did you two meet?"

Eric set his fork down. Calm.

"Café," he said. "He spilled coffee on me. Offered to buy me a new one. I said yes." A pause. "I'm still waiting for that cup, actually."

Diana smiled. Richard didn't.

"And what is it you do, Ericka? {{User}} mentioned design?"

"Graphic design. Branding, mostly. I work remotely for a studio. Logos, typefaces, that sort of thing." He picked his fork back up. "It's quiet work. I like quiet."

"Where did you study?"

"City college. Nothing prestigious. I was average." A faint shrug. "I learned more on the job."

Richard set his knife down and finally looked at him — directly, the way Eric had expected all evening. "Family still around?"

"My mother and sister, yes. They live in the suburbs. We're close." He didn't elaborate. He never did.

Diana leaned forward, chin resting on her hand. "And you've been together how long?"

"A year and a half." Eric glanced sideways at {{User}} — just once, brief, the kind of glance that meant I've got this — then back to Diana. "He's patient with me. I'm not always easy to read."

"Anyone who can put up with my son for a year and a half has my respect," Richard said. Deadpan. It might have been a joke.

Eric inclined his head, just slightly. "He makes it easy."

Silence for a moment. Forks on plates. A clock somewhere in the house ticking.

Then Diana set her fork down, folded her hands, and looked at him the way a detective looks at a witness — friendly, open, and absolutely not missing anything.

"So. Tell me. You two are serious. Living together. Have you thought about children?"

Eric didn't blink.

"No," he said. Flat. Almost bored.

Diana raised an eyebrow. "No thoughts at all?"

"Thoughts, sure. But children are complicated." He reached for his water glass, took a small sip, and set it back down with deliberate care. "I have problems on the female side of things. It would be difficult for us. We've made peace with it."

The pause that followed was long enough to be noticed.

Richard's expression didn't change, but his eyes flicked briefly to Diana. Diana's expression did change — softened, the way people soften when they think they've just been handed something private.

"I'm sorry," she said, quietly. "I didn't mean to pry."

"You didn't." Eric picked his fork back up. "It's just easier to say it plainly than to dance around it."

He took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. Then, without missing a beat:

"The roast is really good, Diana. Did you do something different with the glaze?"

And just like that, the table moved on.

Underneath the table, out of sight, Eric's hand found {{User}}'s knee and squeezed once.

Told you.

The kitchen smelled like rosemary and dish soap. Diana had rolled her sleeves up and was running the water, testing the temperature with the back of her hand the way people do when they've done this a thousand times. Richard had retreated to the garage — something about the carburetor again — and {{User}} had been shooed off to the living room with a pointed look from his mother.

Eric had stayed.

He'd stood up from the table the moment Diana started clearing plates, stacked three of them without being asked, and followed her into the kitchen before anyone could tell him not to. Now he stood at the counter with a dish towel over one shoulder, sleeves pushed up past his elbows, taking each plate as she handed it to him and drying it with slow, methodical passes.

He didn't fill the silence. He never did.

Diana noticed.

She handed him another plate. Watched his hands — long fingers, careful movements — and then let her gaze travel up, just for a second, the way she used to when she was still working. Up the line of his arm. Across his shoulders. Then back down to the sink.

"You're tall," she said. Casually. Like she was commenting on the weather.

Eric didn't look up. "I've been told."

"How tall?"

"One seventy-eight."

Diana hummed. Handed him another plate. "That's tall for a girl."

Eric took the plate. Dried it. Said nothing.

Diana reached for the next one and, without turning her head, added — lightly, almost offhand, the way she might mention a restaurant she'd tried — "And you've got broad shoulders. For a girl."

The dish towel paused. Just for half a second. Then resumed.

"I swim," Eric said.

"Do you?"

"Sometimes. When I remember." He set the dried plate on the stack and reached for the next one before she'd even handed it to him. "It keeps the posture straight."

Diana didn't answer. Just kept washing.

The water ran. Somewhere down the hall, Richard's voice rumbled — talking to himself, probably, about the carburetor. {{User}} was still in the living room, out of earshot.

"You know," Diana said, after a moment, "I used to be a detective."

"I heard."

"Did {{User}} tell you?"

"He mentioned it." Eric dried another plate. "Said you were good."

"I was." She handed him the last plate. "I still notice things. Old habit."

Eric took the plate. Dried it. Placed it on the stack. Then — finally — he looked at her. Calm. Even. Grey-blue eyes steady, hair loose over one shoulder, a dish towel still draped across the other.

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't," he said.

Diana held his gaze for a moment. Then she pulled the plug on the sink and watched the water drain out, slow and steady, until nothing was left but the sound of the pipes and the quiet hum of the refrigerator.

"Hand me the gravy boat," she said. "It goes on the top shelf."

Eric turned, reached up — easily, without stretching — and brought it down. Set it on the counter. Diana dried her hands on the towel she'd been using and folded it neatly, twice, before setting it back on the rack.

"You know," she said, without looking at him, "I've met a lot of people who weren't what they said they were."

Eric picked up the dish towel from his shoulder and folded it too. Matched hers. Placed it beside it.

"I'm sure you have," he said.

Then he turned, walked out of the kitchen, and didn't look back.

Diana stood there for a moment, alone, listening to his footsteps fade into the hallway. Then she reached for her tea, took a slow sip, and smiled into the cup — small, private, and just a little too knowing.

Interesting girl, she thought.

Very interesting.

The living room had settled into that post-dinner quiet that only happens in houses where everyone is too full to move. Richard was in his armchair with a glass of something amber. Diana was on the couch with her tea. {{User}} was next to Eric on the loveseat, close enough that their knees touched, far enough that it looked casual.

Eric had his ankles crossed. Skirt arranged. Hair pushed back behind one ear. He looked, for all the world, like he belonged there.

The conversation had drifted, as it always did, to stories. Richard's were about the base. Diana's were about cases she'd worked before she retired. Eric had listened to both with the same quiet attention, laughing at the right moments, asking the right follow-up questions.

Then Richard leaned back in his chair and looked at Eric over the rim of his glass.

"You said you swim. Whereabouts?"

"City pool. Downtown. Nothing special." Eric reached for his water. "I go early. Before work. Fewer people."

"Smart," Richard said. "I used to run. Five miles, every morning, rain or shine. Knee's gone now." He tapped his leg. "You ever do any team sports? Growing up?"

"No."

"None?"

"No."

Richard raised an eyebrow. "Not even in school? Most girls do something."

Eric set his water down. Calm. "I wasn't most girls."

Diana's teacup paused halfway to her mouth. She set it down slowly.

Richard didn't seem to notice. "What about your voice? You've got a low voice for a girl. Noticed it at dinner."

The room went very quiet.

{{User}}'s hand twitched on the armrest — but before he could say anything, before he could even move, Eric did something no one expected.

He laughed.

Not a giggle. Not a nervous laugh. A real one — low, dry, the kind of laugh someone makes when they've heard the same joke a hundred times and still find it funny.

"I get that a lot," he said, and shrugged, easy, casual. "Choir teacher used to put me with the altos. Said I had a 'smoky' voice. My sister says it sounds like I smoke three packs a day."

Richard stared at him for a moment. Then — slowly — the corner of his mouth moved. Just a fraction.

"Nothing wrong with a smoky voice," he said.

"Tell that to my mother," Eric said. "She's been trying to get me to do vocal exercises since I was twelve."

Richard actually chuckled. A short, surprised sound, like it had escaped without permission. He took a sip of his drink, and when he set it down, the tension in the room had already evaporated.

Diana, meanwhile, was watching Eric with an expression that was impossible to read. She picked her tea back up and took a long, slow sip, her eyes not leaving his face.

"Your mother sounds like a character," she said.

"She is." Eric reached for his water. "She's also five feet tall and terrifying. I get my height from my father's side."

"And your father?"

"Don't know him." He said it the same way he said everything — flat, even, no weight. "Left when I was small. It's fine."

Diana opened her mouth, closed it, and nodded once. She didn't press.

A minute later, the conversation moved on — Richard talking about a neighbor who'd tried to build a fence without a permit, Diana laughing at the story, {{User}} finally breathing again. Eric sat through all of it, sipping his water, answering questions when asked, saying nothing when not.

Under the table, out of sight, {{User}}'s hand found his. Squeezed once, tight.

Eric squeezed back. Twice. I'm fine.

The house had gone quiet an hour ago. Richard's footsteps had creaked up the stairs first, then Diana's — lighter, slower, pausing at the top of the hall like she always did before turning toward the master bedroom. The door had clicked shut. The light under it had gone dark.

{{User}}'s old room was exactly how he'd left it: the same posters, the same desk, the same narrow bed pushed against the wall. Eric had looked at it for a moment when they first came up — the way he looked at everything, taking inventory — and then set his bag down on the chair by the window and started unpacking. Silk pillowcase. Face wash. Night cream. The little bottle of serum he used on his lashes. All of it arranged on the dresser with quiet precision.

Now he stood in front of the mirror, back to the room, hair loose over one shoulder, and began to undress.

The black midi skirt came off first, folded neatly and set on the chair. The cream turtleneck followed. Underneath was the thing he wore every day and never talked about — the soft, fitted bra with silicone inserts, the kind that gave him the silhouette that made strangers hold doors and waiters say ma'am. He'd explained it to {{User}} months ago, casually, the way he explained everything about himself — like it was just a practical detail, no more interesting than his skincare routine.

He reached back to unhook it.

That was when the door opened.

Not a knock. Not a pause. Just the soft turn of the handle and Diana — in a robe, hair down, holding a folded blanket in her arms — stepping halfway into the room before she stopped.

"I forgot to give you the extra blanket, it gets cold up here at night—"

She stopped.

Eric's hands were still behind his back. The bra was half-unhooked, one strap already loose on his shoulder. The silicone inserts were visible in the mirror — the soft curve of them, the way they sat against his chest. His hair was down. His shoulders were bare. He was tall and lean and unmistakably not shaped the way the bra had been pretending.

The room went very, very still.

Diana's eyes moved — once, quickly, from his face to the mirror to the bra to the inserts and back to his face. Her grip on the blanket tightened. Her mouth opened, then closed.

Eric didn't move. Didn't flinch. Didn't try to cover himself or turn around. He just watched her in the mirror, calm, the same way he watched everything — patient, unhurried, waiting to see what she would do next.

Then, quietly, without turning around:

"You can put the blanket on the chair."

A pause.

"It does get cold up here."

Diana stood in the doorway for one more second. Then she stepped in, crossed the room, and set the blanket down on the chair beside his folded skirt — neatly, the way she did everything. She didn't look at him again. She didn't look away either.

At the door, she paused with her hand on the frame.

"Breakfast is at seven," she said looked at her son. "I think I just won a hundred dollars."

After this mysterious phrase, she calmly left.

Eric stood where he was for a long moment. Then he finished unhooking the bra, set it on the chair next to the skirt, and pulled on the oversized sweater he slept in — the soft one, the grey one, the one that hung to his thighs. He turned off the lamp on the dresser, walked to the bed, and lay down on his side, facing the wall.

His voice, when it came, was even. Almost amused. Just a little tired.

"Well."

A beat.

"At least she didn't scream."

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