The Girls' Guide to Love and Supper Clubs Read Free Page B

disaster. Why do interactions with Adam’s parents always end this way? Because I’m me, that’s why. And Adam is Adam. I am chatty and unpredictable, and Adam is uptight and cautious, and when you throw us into a room with his parents, we somehow become exaggerated versions of ourselves, which is to say, polar opposites. I am the loose cannon, and Adam is the guy with a stick up his ass, and it is clear which kind of person the Prescotts prefer.
    What Adam’s parents think of me shouldn’t matter, but it does—to both of us. Adam may have grown up surrounded by luxury and privilege, but we were both raised by parents who invested a significant proportion of their time and money into our upbringing and whose opinions always mattered—on the right schools, the right majors, the right careers and lifestyles. Why should their opinions about our significant others carry any less weight? I’ve always respected people who could flout their parents’ wishes on a regular basis and blaze their own trails in the face of their parents’ disapproval. But Adam and I aren’t like that. It’s one thing we’ve always had in common.
    Adam turns onto the wider and less crowded thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street, and I decide to break the silence. “The carrot cake came out well.”
    Carrot cake. That’s all I’ve got.
    “Like it matters,” he mumbles under his breath.
    “I’m sure they’ll get used to it. Us living together.”
    Adam huffs as he races through a yellow light. “Don’t count on it.”
    We don’t speak again until we reach the apartment.
    Adam unlocks the door to our fifth-floor, loft-style apartment, which is located in the heart of Logan Circle. When I interned in Washington as a college student, Logan Circle was still considered “up-and-coming,” and I heard stories about the prostitutes who would loiter up and down Fourteenth Street. But over the past few years, dozens of shops and restaurants and galleries have moved into the area—everything from Whole Foods to the hip Cork Wine Bar and lowkey Logan Tavern—and now the Fourteenth Street corridor bustles with young professionals, who have moved into the area in droves. Our building sits on a lot where a run-down auto repair shop once stood, but now the decaying warehouse of beat-up cars has been replaced by eighty-four luxury rental apartments—none of which I could afford without Adam’s monthly financial contribution.
    I follow Adam into the apartment, leaving a few feet between us as he storms into the living room. He throws his keys on the steel console, setting off a clang that echoes off the brushed cement floors.
    “I can’t believe you told them,” he says as he throws himself onto our leather couch— his leather couch, actually, since I sold all my furniture before we moved in together, an idea that seemed to make sense at the time but now makes my stake in this apartment, this relationship , rather tenuous.
    “I didn’t mean to,” I say. “It just sort of … slipped out.”
    “Right. It slipped out. After I specifically asked you not to say anything.”
    “I told you, I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.” Adam stares at me, unmoved. “At least they know the truth.”
    Adam lets out a huff. “Yeah. Great.”
    “They were going to find out eventually …”
    Adam presses his palms against his temples and lets out a grunt. “You know what? I can’t deal with this right now. We’ll talk tomorrow.” He pushes himself off the couch and marches into the bathroom.
    Okay, so he’s pissed. Or, more accurately, given the banging I hear going on in the bathroom, he’s flat-out angry. But if we have any shot at making this relationship work, his parents will have to accept and respect our decision to live together. We can’t live a lie forever. At least I can’t.
    What worries me is I’m beginning to think Adam could. When I said Adam has never defied his parents, that’s not entirely true. He’s dating me, after