It was just before six in the evening and the sun was about to set on Southern California. From the second floor window of Kieran’s bedroom in Whittier I could see the sun slowly sinking into the silhouette of rooftops, the sky an assortment of blues and purples and pinks. With my boyfriend so miserable though it was kind of hard to enjoy.
At precisely seven o’clock, Kieran would sit down for dinner with my parents for the first time. He requested that I get ready as quickly as possible and then head over to his house, claiming he needed to be “mega debriefed” before meeting Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Harland.
Kieran stood with his back to the open closet, shirtless and in his underwear. If it was inappropriate for me to be alone in his room with him and his plaid boxers while his mom was home, well, his stance on the matter was simple: no care ever. The door was wide open.
He held up two pressed, collared, button-down shirts on blue plastic hangers. “Which one?”
It felt like a scene from a movie and I immediately started laughing. He frowned at me and huffed.
“Lana.” His tone wasn’t pleased.
He held the two shirts out at me again. “Tell me which one I should wear.”
I pointed at the one on the left. “The black one.”
“Are you sure?” Kieran held the shirt against himself. “Doesn’t the other one seem more springy? It is April.”
“Kier, just because you want them to like you, it doesn’t mean you should step outside of yourself. This,” I pointed at the shirt I’d already chosen, “is something you would wear to look appropriate. But this,” I pointed at the fancier purple-stripe shirt, “I’m not really sure why you even own this.”
“Oh, now you’re making fun of my wardrobe?” he scoffed, but not seriously, and the dimples in his cheeks flashed.
I shrugged. “I like you better when you’re just an everyday scumbag.”
“Well unfortunately for you, he’s not available today,” Kieran said, ignoring my quip and dumping the shirt I rejected on the floor.
He took the black dress shirt off the hanger and slipped into it, folding over the collar and buttoning down the front. “It feels kinda like I’m thirteen and getting ready for a first date.”
I grinned. “You look really cute.”
“I’m glad you think so but I doubt that your parents will be very concerned about how cute I—wait—” Kieran stopped buttoning. “How am I going to wear this with black slacks? Will it look okay?”
“No slacks,” I shook my head. “Dark rinse jeans or khaki-type pants, maybe. It’s a casual dinner, Kier.”
“You’re wearing a dress,” he stressed, pointing at me.
My sleeveless dress was lemon in color, simple with a so-called sweetheart neckline and empire waist, stopping a few inches above my knees. Apparently the material used to make it was imported from Italy, but that didn’t change the fact that it was mostly polyester.
“Yeah, but it’s a casual spring sundress. It’s not cashmere. It’s not silk either,” I countered. “Believe me, there will be other rich kids there and you’ll blend right in.”
“Do I need to remind you of all the reasons why your parents won’t like me?” he wondered.
“Just stop worrying, okay? It’s going to be fine. You don’t have to be who they want you to be.”
“Well I have to be good enough. I have to be tolerable.”
I moved so that I was less than an arms length away from him. “I promise it’s going to be fine. We’ll get through tonight.”
He pulled me closer and enveloped me with his arms. I looked into the emerald of his eyes, my chin tilted upwards. When our lips met my eyelids fluttered shut and I felt a tingling all the way down to my toes. We pulled back and Kieran kissed my neck and my jaw line and then whispered in my ear, “I love you.”
I didn’t let go of him. “And I love you.”
For a moment neither of us spoke. The way he was looking at me made me feel ten feet tall. Like I was the most important girl in the world – a place in the universe I hadn’t earned and didn’t deserve. When he looked at me like that I felt good about myself and my insecurities of never being as close to normal as I wanted to be all went away. When he looked at me like that it didn’t matter that I was too young to feel how I did about him or that I was too young for him to feel that way about me. When he looked at me like that we were just us—Lana and Kieran—and it felt like that was enough.
“Well,” Kieran broke the spell when he spoke, “that’s good because tonight would totally pointless if you didn’t.”
We sat down on the bed and I tugged on his right arm so I could button the sleeve of his shirt.
“What advise do you have for me regarding this casual dining you speak of?” he asked.
“Advice?”
“Yeah. You’re supposed to mega debrief me, remember?”
I laughed, a toothy smile on my lips. “Oh wow, you’re completely serious about that.”
“This is serious. I’m serious about you and me,” he said. “Are you?”
I lost the stupid smile from my face and replied, “Of course I am. I’m going to be serious about you no matter what they think. That’s why I don’t want you to put too much energy into this. They know I’m dating you. They invited you to dinner. If it doesn’t end well then so what?”
Since the whole Nathan incident at my birthday and our short breakup afterward, Kieran and I had been back together for close to a month. Things were different now. He wasn’t just the boy I made out with. He wasn’t just the boy who called me on the phone every night, or the boy I went into rooms alone with at parties. He was the real thing. I understood now what it felt like to really mean it when you told someone you loved them. And I knew that even if dinner with my parents was a train wreck, nothing was going to change how I felt about Kieran. Not even him.
“Lana, I’m just an eighteen year old kid,” Kieran spoke, “so other than my family the only two things that really mean a lot to me right now are my band and my girlfriend.
“I think about you all the time. I think about our relationship all the time. I want it to stay as much as you do. If we ignore your family’s opinion and it turns out somewhere down the line that we really do have something…I feel like that’s going to be our issue.
“That’s going to be what we fight about. That’s going to hang over our heads and follow us around. I don’t want that,” Kieran told me. “Your parents don’t need to adore me. I just want them to accept me and see that I’m a decent human being and I’m not out to ruin your life. I need for them to be okay with me.”
So I sighed. Of course I sighed. “Damn it.”
“What?”
“I hate it when you go off and say stuff and I can’t argue anything back.”
He gave me his trademark grin, pleased that he had made his point.
“But I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
I answered, “We do really have something. I’ve known that for a while. I don’t need to walk the line to know it.”
“That’s fair,” Kieran pecked my lips briefly and put his arms around my waist. “So tell me what we can do to ease your parents into tolerating me.”
There was a lull of silence before I spoke again. I knew things about my parents and had a pretty good idea of how they responded to things brought up at the dinner table, learned from experience with my siblings, but I’d never really considered the consequences of those responses. I don’t think I’d ever thought about a dinner conversation actually having consequences. Family dinners at the Harland house, even when they were a little stiff, weren’t business dinners with strings attached. My parents usually didn’t judge us at the dinner table.
But I guess tonight wasn’t going to be a dinner at home, was it?
“Look my dad in the eye when he’s speaking,” I suggested. “He really likes that. Oh, and don’t clink your fork against the plate when you’re eating. My mom hates that.”
Kieran waited for me to tell him more.
“The table napkin is to remain on your lap at all times. It does not, under any circumstances, come near the surface of the table unless the meal is over or you’re getting up to go to the restroom,” I said in one big breath. “But please don’t leave me and go to the restroom. I don’t want to small talk about you.”
Kieran blinked, not laughing even a little. “I feel like I should be taking notes.”
I waved it off and continued, “Don’t try and play footsie with me. If they caught on that would be bad. Not to mention awkward.”
He scooted closer to me so there was no space between us and ran his ankle up my shin. “Oh really?”
We’d never once played footsie before so I giggled. I took his hand in mine and kissed his cheek. “That’s all the advice I’ve got for you, Kier. I know they’re going to ask you a lot of prying questions but just…just be you. You’re amazing. I think they’ll find it in themselves to respect you.”
He sighed and stared me in the eye. “That simple, huh?”
“It’s going to work out.”
“I hope so,” Kieran squeezed my hand tightly and rested his cheek on my shoulder. “Are you sure there’s nothing else I can do?”
“You should stop sitting here in your boxers,” I teased, turning my head towards him with a smirk. “So go put on your nicest pair of jeans.”
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Big ups to Jenn the Amazing for being a very reliable beta reader. Be glad that she's the only one who had to see the first version of this. It was really lacking.
And if you, dear reader, think it is still lacking...you can tell me about it in your review! :] Inspired by: "Always Ten Feet Tall" by Saves the Day "Come Together" by The Beatles "If It Means a Lot to You" by A Day to Remember Don't ask me how or why, those were just the songs necessary for this. Also, LoVe. No, not love. I'm talking about Logan and Veronica and their "epic love": Veronica: Come on, ruined lives, bloodshed...you really think a relationship should be that hard? Logan: No one writes songs about the ones that come easy. The first time I saw this episode, and heard that line, I felt like it was absolutely perfect for describing Lana and Kieran. Things I like about this story: - I think that you can see quite a gap in maturity between here and how Lana is in Part Two and Part Three, and that's important because she's eighteen here and 20 and 21 in those stories. - I also think that you can see a difference in the way she describes them because here they can say that they love each other, but they're not at "in love" yet. And they're still far from soul mates. Kieran loves her, and he wants their relationship to work out for the long term, but her parents are still an issue. In Part Three he says that she's always believed in them, and she's what holds them together after everything, but he says that he didn't always believe. Well if you were looking for another example of why he's not perfect (the examples are present throughout all three stories, but they're more subtle than Lana's very obvious imperfections) here's another. - They're young. It was fun writing this just because I already knew what they grow into two years after this takes place. I like that I can show what a difference their relationship goes through. - Kieran is in his underwear. COME ON. |