The Search for Lily Myers ✓

31 | Bad Blood

The dreaded time had come for Amelia to introduce Henry to her parents, but there were a few silver linings to it.

First of all, she could stop being so vague with her mother when asked what she'd been up to recently. It was practically becoming an extreme sport to try talking about what she did in her free time while also omitting the fact that she was spending practically all of it with a boyfriend. Secondly, even though Amelia had yet to detail to either of her parents precisely how terrible of a person Colton was—she didn't know if she ever would—at least Henry knew the truth now. It did bring her some relief to know that at least the two of them were on the same page, that she didn't have to hide from him just how nervewracking it was trying to brace herself to skirt around the topic of her last relationship with her parents. She thought that surely they couldn't be so dense as to bring Colton up in front of Henry, but considering how the past couple of months had been going, she was doing her best to expect the unexpected.

The other strategy she used to attempt to calm herself was asserting as much control over the situation as she possibly could. She told them both on the phone beforehand that she had a new boyfriend so that they wouldn't be surprised when she showed up out of the blue with him. She was calling the shots about where and when they met up. They'd go visit her dad first, then her mom, scheduling them back-to-back so that she didn't have to prolong the misery of it for more than half a day. And if things with her mother started to run unpleasantly long, Amelia was going to excuse herself and Henry under the guise of having made plans to go hang out with Natasha.

She wondered why seeing her own parents had to require this much effort while she was getting ready that morning, staring at her own reflection in the bathroom mirror as she did her makeup. She truly did leave many encounters with them feeling more drained than rejuvenated, but she knew there was no use in wallowing around in her illusion of misery. There were plenty of parents out there in the world who were much worse than her own, plenty of people who didn't even get a chance to know their parents. In the grand scheme of things, she need not pretend to be struggling so unbearably under the weight of their personalities even if her mother was a little bit of a Karen.

The doorbell rang just as Amelia was finishing up her lipstick. When she shoved the tube back into her makeup bag and opened the door for Henry, she immediately noticed that he seemed to have put in some extra effort to make sure that he looked put together for her parents—not that he usually didn't look put together, but he'd made sure that his shirt and coat were wrinkle-free and there were no flyaway hairs to be seen atop his head. The faint scent of aftershave lingered on his jaw as she leaned in and gave him a kiss.

"You look nice," he said.

"I was about to tell you the same thing."

"You ready?"

She nodded. "As ready as I'll ever be. Don't get me wrong, they'll think you're great. I'm not worried about that. It just feels like my social anxiety flares up around them even though I've obviously known them my whole life."

"You just want to say the right thing," he assured her. "There's nothing wrong with that. And we can let me do most of the talking, I don't mind."

"You're braver than I am," she murmured, the edges of her lips tilting up into a small smile.

But Henry shook his head. "You've already done the hardest part just by letting them know I exist. I know this is a big deal to you and you've been stressed about it, but for what it's worth, I'm proud of you for doing it."

She pressed another soft kiss against his cheek. "Thank you."

"Is there anything super important I should know ahead of time?"