A month later saw Alex fully recovered, Brad behind bars, awaiting trial, Dante and I forming a solid friendship, and the relationship between Tara and myself growing more and more each day. We were just going out to dinner at that same Italian restaurant where we'd said that we love each other for the first time, and it was about a week to go before I took Tara home to meet my mother.
“I am so looking forward to going to New Zealand with you next week,” I told Tara as we waited for our dinner. It was Saturday night and after dinner we were going to catch a movie at Doncaster Shopping town.
“Yeah, I'm looking forward to the trip too, but I'm kind of nervous as well,” Tara admitted to me.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out, but you don't need to worry, my family are going to love you and so are my friends,” I reassured her. I reached out and grabbed her hand over the table and squeezed it to reinforce my words.
“How can you be so sure?” Tara asked, sounding like she still wasn't convinced.
“Because I love you, hun, you make me happy and that's all my family want for me, besides you're like wickedly awesome, how could they not absolutely love you?” I asked seriously.
“Because a lot of parents are just like that when their daughter brings home another woman to meet the family for the first time, when they realise that they've raised a gay daughter,” Tara explained.
“My parents aren't like that, trust me, my step dad used to go on at me about getting pussy when he was flatting with me back in dub, and they both kept on trying to introduce me to women, they'll be fine with you. Like I said, they'll be glad to see me happy,” I explained with a big smile on my face. “I bet my bottom dollar that they will absolutely love you,” I squeezed her hand once more.
“I hope so,” was all that Tara could manage to say as our food was brought out to us. As we ate we discussed random everyday stuff, the weather, what was happening around the world on the news, what was happening at work. It felt so comfortable, so right, I could have spent hours sitting there talking to Tara, but I wanted to make sure that we got to the shopping town before the book store closed up for the evening.
“Hey, we've got a bit of time before the movie starts, do you want to go for a bit of a roam around the shops first?” I asked, checking the movie listing on my cell phone as we stepped into the shopping town out of the car park.
“Yeah, okay, how much time to we have?” Tara asked as she laced her fingers through mine.
“About half an hour,” I informed her.
“Maybe we should go and get out tickets first though, don't want to miss out or anything,” Tara commented.
“Yeah, that's a good idea,” I smiled, so we walked to the cinema and purchased our tickets. After buying our tickets we went down to the main part of the shopping town. I led us straight to the book shop on the ground floor.
“What are we doing here, sweetheart?” Tara asked.
“You'll see,” I smiled. I'd been to the book shop the previous afternoon to make sure that they had my book in stock, and I kept on smiling as I walked up to it.
“Hey, this book has your name on it,” Tara commented as she picked up a copy of it. “Why does it have your name on it?”
“Because I wrote it,” I informed her simply.
“You wrote this? You're an author? How come you never told me?” Tara asked her last question sounding a little hurt.
“You never asked, and I'm telling you now,” I replied. “Would you like me to buy you a copy?” I asked.
