CHERRY. [JESS MARIANO]

Just Peachy

The house that Rosalind and Edward Quinn rented in Hartford was big. But it wasn't nearly as big as their house in London. My mum and I stood in front of the great big wooden doors as we waited for someone to let us in.

"Remember," my mum chided just as the door opened.

"I know, be nice," I repeated her words from the car as we stepped into the house. Hattie, one of my grandmothers maids took our coats with a timid smile. "Hey, Hattie," I greeted her.

Hattie was a petite lady in her early twenties with ringlets of blonde hair. She was so tiny that I was afraid she'd break under the weight of our coats. "Hello, Miss." She replied before scurrying off. Despite my many insistence for her to stop calling me miss, she keeps doing it.

"We're in here!" I heard my grandmother call from the living room. My mum and I made our way over to her and my grandfather.

"Cassie!" My grandfather said happily before hugging me tightly. He was a good head taller than me with greying black hair and dark brown eyes. "How is school going?"

"Good," I said with a smile in my grandmothers direction.

She had her usual brown hair with streaks of grey pinned up on her head. She wore a very elegant dress with a floral print on. "Sit down, dinner will be ready soon," she tells us as we take a seat on the two opposite couches.

We all made small talk as we waited for dinner to be served. I was nodding along to the conversation every now and then but the inside of my head was spinning with various thoughts of what I was gonna say to my mother after dinner.

I had told Jess that I would tell my mother about us and I planned to stick to my word. It was just that there was so many ways this could go wrong. I decided that I would tell her on the drive back home. That way if she planned to kill me, she'd have to wait till we got home. It seemed as if a lot of our intense arguments had happened in the car, so why not keep the tradition alive.

"Cassie," my grandmother pulled me out of my thoughts. "I was just asking if there were any boys in your life?" She asked as if looking through my mind.

I cleared my thoughts -and throat- before answering her, trying not to give anything away. "Um, no there isn't."

"There better not be," my grandfather added from his place beside me. In his eyes I could go out with Leonardo DiCaprio and he still wouldn't be good enough for me.

My mother chimes in from across me. "Even if she did I would know," she says confidently. I hated to be the one to tell her she was wrong.

"Don't be absurd," my grandmother says with a pointed look to her. "Remember all those boys you kept from me."

She pinched the bridge of her nose with a sigh. "We've been over this before ma," my mother says.

"The last time you hid someone from me it was-" my grandmother was cut short with a glare from my mother. She always made sure that I never heard my fathers name from her mouth, so it was no surprise that she had banned anyone from saying his name either.

On that note, Hattie came into the living room. "Dinner is ready," she announced as everyone got up and made their way to the dining table.

The table was set for four and had a variety of salads and what looked like chicken parmesan. With all the food on the table you'd think that it was a dinner party. There was no noise except for the sound of our cutlery hitting the plates.

That was  until my grandmother spoke up. "Are you sure you don't have a boyfriend?" She asked once again as she put down her fork and knife.