Eden's Echo

hopeful look I was no doubt wearing.
He gave me a harsh look and said, “Don’t you go thinking you won, Eden. I’m not happy about it, and I certainly don’t condone it, but you are going to see him one way or another once school starts, and I can’t exactly pull you out of school. I’d rather know what you are doing than have you sneaking around behind my back. I’ll allow it, but there are conditions, do you understand me?”
I wasn’t about to press my luck and simply nodded and said, “Okay, Dad, what are these conditions?”
“First, I need to meet his parents, and I need to meet him. Secondly, he’s not allowed in your room, and you are not to go to his house. You follow me so far?”
“Yes.”
“Also, anytime you go anywhere with him, if I call, you’d better answer by the third ring, and I am to know where you are—at all times. Can you live with that?”
Picking up the phone from the table, I locked gazes with Dad and nodded, “Yes Sir.”
“Okay, good. Now please text your boyfriend back and invite him to dinner next week.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, Dad. I’ll invite him, but first I have to decide if labeling us as a couple is what I really want. That was the whole point of dating him to figure that out. Despite what you think, you raised me right. I am not my mother, Dad, I don’t jump in headfirst.”
He sighed and gave a surprised chuckle before turning his tone serious again, “And Eden…”
“Yes?”
“He’s a brave soul, this Drew of yours. It took him no time to figure out what happened, why you weren’t replying, and he was actually bold enough to send a text that said something to the effect of him knowing you were grounded or something. He knew it was because I’d found out about you two, and told me to, please let you know he’d wait. Like I said—brave.”

Chapter Seven
Sir and Ma’am
I’d never seen Drew as nervous as he was at that moment. He sat on the tan microfiber of the three-seater couch in my living room and fiddled with the tassel on the closest navy blue, throw pillow. Dad sat in his matching recliner across the room and tried his best to look intimidating. In my opinion, he wasn’t quite hitting the mark.
“So finally, I meet the infamous Drew. I asked Eden almost a week ago when I’d be meeting you. She’d told me after you two decided to label yourselves as a couple. So the day has come,” Dad said with a hefty sigh. “I get to interrogate Eden’s first boyfriend.”
I choked on the sweet tea I was drinking and looked at Dad in disbelief. I hadn’t dreamed in a million years that he would let that particular, embarrassing cat out of the bag. I glanced at Drew and watched as all the nervousness fled and was replaced with a grin that cracked his face. I was gonna kill my dad! There was an amused twinkle in Drew’s eyes, and he placed a hand over his mouth in what looked like delighted shock. My hackles rose as I prepared myself for him, no doubt, giving me a hard time over never having a boyfriend, and EVERYTHING that it implied I had yet to do.
“I’m your boyfriend?” he asked in wonder.
It completely blindsided me. That was not what I had expected him to say at all. I just gawked at him, not knowing how to reply. Drew looked like a kid that had just opened all his Christmas presents and gotten everything he’d asked Santa for. It made my stomach flutter.
“Oh, so that’s news to you as well, I see!” Dad chuckled with a dramatic roll of his eyes.
Drew looked at my dad briefly, “Yes, Sir. It sure is.” He returned his gaze to me and asked, “Really? You really want to be a couple? I can finally call you my girlfriend?”
I smiled because the dopey look on his face was adorable. He was so happy about me wanting to be with him. It wasn’t exactly what I had expected, and to be honest, I didn’t have any real clue what I’d thought would happen, so I gave him my honest to god answer, “Yes.”
The doorbell chimed, Dad chuckled again and shook his head as he got up to answer it. Pausing, he turned and wagged a finger between Drew and me, “No, kissing, you two hear me?”
I glanced at dad red with embarrassment and half-squealed, half-whispered “Dad, please!”
He chuckled again and headed for the door which now had someone knocking on it.
Drew didn’t take his eyes off me, and his smile didn’t falter in the least until he heard his mother’s voice. His smile vanished as he almost jumped out of his skin with panic.
“My mom is here—why is my mom here?"
I looked at him sideways. “I have no idea, Drew.”
“Andrew—it’s Andrew or Andy when my mom is around, she doesn’t like Drew. That was what everyone called my dad. It bothers her when people call me that. Actually, on second thought,” he eyed me dubiously, “just call me Andrew because I don’t like Andy.”
  I laughed, I couldn’t help it. “Andy,” I said, amused.
His face turned red as he cast me a withering look, and I snorted to keep from laughing again. When his mother strolled into the room with my dad, Drew stood and plastered a smile on his face. She wasn’t what I had imagined when I’d pictured his mother in my head. She had flaming, dark red hair, a dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose, and was super short. I looked at Drew and then back at his mom and wondered how the hell someone so small gave birth to someone that ended