Worse for Better- Book #1 in the WF Series

Chapter 26: Truth

♡ Alaiya's POV: ♡

"Is everything alright?" my dad confirms, and I nod while barely able to make contact with him without the memory of yesterday. "Who's this again?" My dad never got to meet Roman so he points slightly.

"Oh, this is Roman," I introduce, and when my dad holds his hand out to shake his hand, Roman just looks down at it, taking my dad by surprise.

"He doesn't shake hands. Germaphobe," I'm quick to defend his action.

"Oh." My dad takes his hand back. "Did you and Carson break up?" he asks as he motions towards Carson who's sitting at the end of the table next to his mom.

"It's a long story." I decide to just ignore the question.

My dad just oh's again before sitting down after setting down the turkey in the middle of the table.

Roman and I take a seat next to each other, and I already know the way everyone is looking and what they're thinking. My mom wants to kill me, Carson wants to kill me, my dad and Carson's mom are confused, my grandparents are amused, and Aunt Penny and Grandma Rose are just watching everyone watch us.

After a couple of minutes of killing silence, my grandma begins to pass around the food, though no one has spoken a full sentence yet.

"You know, Roman plays football and is the quarterback?" my grandma informs everyone as she's pouring herself some sauce on top of her food.

I look over at her with a pointed look.

"Oh, does he play with you Carson?" Mrs.Walker asks Carson interested.

Carson nods with a forced smile at her. Right as he does, her phone begins to ring and she looks down at it before excusing herself for just a moment. Once she's left, my grandma continues.

"Carson, what position do you play when you're not benched...I mean playing?" my grandma corrects herself with a shake of the head, making everyone's eyes widen at how glib she is.

My grandpa though is just eating his food like this is a normal Tuesday event for him.

"I'm defense," Carson ignores her kind of insult and she longly oh's with a bunch of sarcasm.

"You know," she begins again and I take a seat back against my chair since this is not going to end. "I think that the position a person has in a sport shows that type of person they are." She plays with her fork on her plate. "For example, let's use quarterback and defense," she offers, acting like this isn't a part of one of her shenanigans.

Oh boy.

I look over at Roman and give him a "yeah" look but he's just enjoying this because my grandma almost hates Carson as much as he does so this is like a fully-seasoned, happy ending show for him.

"A quarterback has authority. He has many talents and holds a team together," she explains, and my grandpa nods with her. "Everyone relies on the quarterback because he's their leader."

Here comes the insult.

"Now defense, the defense just has one job." She interlocks her hands together. "To defend. They're there for a while, but the quarterback."She shakes her head at how great she finds the position.