Mismatched

Ch. 25

"Are you hiding me?" Riley asked.

It caught me completely by surprise. My chest tightened as I turned to look at him, surveying his expression.

We were laying, splayed across Riley's sofa. He had pushed his head up off my chest to look at me while he asked it. The TV was blaring a M*A*S*H* rerun in the background, one of Riley's favourite shows.

"What?"

"We spend most of our time together inside my house. I haven't even seen your place, let alone met any of your friends or family," Riley expanded, his eyebrows furrowed.

"I haven't met your friends," I countered back, knowing well enough not to bring his family up.

"I can Facetime Chris right now if you want," Riley said, starting to pull his phone out of his back-pocket, but I stopped him.

I understood the point he was making. He didn't have any people here, they were all still back in Toronto. Meanwhile, I'd been here my entire life and had been keeping my life with him separate.

Which was for a very good reason, but I couldn't tell him that.

Picture with me, for one second, dinner with Riley and my family.

"Who's your friend?" Mom would ask.

"This is Riley, my boyfriend."

"As in?" My father would say with a crinkled, confused expression.

"You're gay?!" One of my sisters would eventually exclaim.

Once that initial shock wore off (if it ever did) the truth would all come crashing down. Like the fact I was definitely not an engineer, my sister was posing as the owner of the matchmaking store, and this entire thing was a setup.

I also had a distinct shortage of friends, most of them either having moved out of town, or settling down into farm life with a wife and two kids, which meant I saw them about once every two months.

The only exception was my friend Anthony, but we had strictly gone out together to bars at night to try to pick up girls. So, suffice to say, I hadn't been joining him recently. I would just get an unhinged text from him once in a while telling me about his latest sexual rendezvous, or that he had ended up in the hospital for some insane injury. He was a general contractor and was less than careful. I once watched him use his foot to balance a plank of wood while he cut it with a power saw.

Anthony, of course, had no idea about anything happening with Riley.

"My family is... a lot," I explained, running my hand up and down Riley's back in a soothing way to help ease him. "And not a whole lot of friends."

"What about your sister, Lesley? You guys seem to hang out often," Riley prodded, and I froze.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Lesley. Actually, you already met her. Remember that person who said she owned the matchmaking store and gave us relationship counseling? Yeah, that's her. No follow-up questions at this time.

I opened my mouth but no words came out.

"I want to meet her," Riley insisted. "She sounds fun."

"Lesley is really fun, but she's actually just left for vacation. She's traveling Central America," I blurted out without thinking, because in the new TV show I had been watching, they were exploring historic sites in Central America.

"Oh, that's awesome. Where is she right now?" Riley asked.

Why did I have to say Central America?