Blind Success {Book 1 - Blinded Trilogy}

33 - Meeting the Parents

"Parents are the ultimate role models for children. Every word, movement and action has an effect. No other person or outside force has a greater influence on a child than the parent." Bob Keeshan

Okay. So the dinner so far had gone... Well... It's been okay. When I had first seen his dad I really just wanted to run and hide. Standing side by side, Steven's dad - whose name is Murray by the way - stood about 3 inches taller than Steven. Making him at least 6 foot 7 maybe even 6 foot 8; it's fair to say that he was freaking tall. At least I know where Steven gets it from though. His mother, Sophia, was a bit closer to my height standing at around 6 foot. So I was only slightly taller than her, but not so much that I was looking down with a crick in my neck the entire night. Murray had greenish grey eyes while Sophia had the same hazel color that Steven had. Both of them had greying brown hair.

So now we were sitting at the table, waiting for the waiter so that we could order. I was so tense that when Steven grabbed my hand under the table, I jumped and knocked my glass of cider over. Muttering curses under my breath I quickly wipe up the mess before excusing myself to the ladies room to clean myself up.

While I was trying to wipe the sticky juice off my dress, I heard the door open but didn't really pay much attention to it. I was so close to tears that I wasn't even sure if it was the stain of cider or untouched material that I was rubbing with paper towels. When I felt a hand on my shoulder I jumped and dropped the paper towels in my hands and turned to see Sophia looking at me. Great. I quickly blink to try and clear my blurred sight of the tears. "Sophia, I-I... Um..." She walks up to me and brushes her thumb across my cheek. Some of my tears had fallen from my eyes.

"We're not that scary are we dear?" I bite the inside of my cheek, not trusting myself to speak and not break down half way through a word. "I know Murray can be a bit daunting due to his size but really he's a big teddy bear."

"I-It's not you. I promise... It's... I'm just nervous... I've never done the whole meeting the parents thing." Sophia smiled kindly at me.

"So you wanted to make a good first impression." I nod, "You're doing fine though Andrea. Believe me when I say worse has happened. It's just one spilt drink. Steven is worried about you. I've never seen him so worried about someone before. You're something special. Now let's get you cleaned up."

It didn't take us much longer after that to get me clean of any cider that I had on my person when I knocked my drink over. When Sophia and I walked out, Steven was very quick to get up and come over. I then managed to spend the next 10 minutes trying to convince him that I was really okay and that I didn't need to reschedule this dinner before we made our way back to the table and continued with the dinner.

Once the food came, things were able to relax a little and we got into steady conversation. That was until I heard the words "So what do you do for a living?" come from Murray's mouth. Those were words that I was dreading because how can I break it to these two lovely people that I kill people for a living? Not that I've been doing much killing recently. But that is technically still my occupation... Damn I need to find another job somehow.

"Um... Well I... Uh... I'm sort of between jobs at the moment." I stammer.

"Okay, well what did you used to do?" I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. I had no idea how to answer that. I looked at Steven. He knew to a certain degree what I used to do but he didn't know everything. I look back at his parents, who were awaiting a reply.

"Um... I used to work for the government... In a roundabout sort of way." I saw Murray and Sophia share a look and dread filled me. I've made it onto their bad list... I couldn't help it at the time, but a whole lot of scenarios that don't have happy endings played through my head on a loop, most of them ending with his parents demanding that me and Steven break off the relationship that we had going. I sincerely hoped that they wouldn't do that.