This door was big, heavy and made of smoked glass.

I took hold of its imposing steel handle and inhaled deeply. Saliva trickled down the back of my throat like I was hungry, except I wasn’t. I wasn’t thirsty either. My stomach was a churning mess of nausea.

I don’t want to do this.

I held the door handle a little longer, without pushing it.

“Yalla, Gonzalo,” said Mom’s voice behind me. (That means ‘let’s go’.) “You can do it. Go on in.”

I gritted my teeth and pushed.

The door opened onto a large room filled with circular tables draped in white tablecloths. People sat at the tables enjoying pizza, pasta, lasagne; chatting, eating and laughing. A mother spooned bolognese into her toddler’s mouth while he fidgeted in a high chair. An elderly couple peered at their menus, though one of them might have fallen asleep. A family with three elementary school-age girls flicked meatballs at each other when they thought that the waiters weren’t looking.

“Ah, there he is, in the corner,” said Mom, barging past me and pointing. “Oh, I’m so excited for you to meet him again.”

‘Again’? What does she mean ‘again’? She hadn’t used that word before...

Mom signalled to a waitress and shot forward. Reluctantly, I followed.

At the table Mom moved towards a lone man sat facing the window, his back to the restaurant entrance, studying a menu.

I couldn’t recognise him from the back of his head. He had black but greying hair, cropped close at the back as if he had recently had a haircut. He was dressed in a smart black suit-jacket with understated shoulder pads. I don’t want to do this. I didn’t want to meet my Mom’s new boyfriend now, I didn’t want to be on ‘disciplinary leave’ from Miracle Force. I wanted to re-join Mute and meet Amina properly. But that hadn’t happened yet. Instead I wasn’t allowed back in to the Base for a whole week. Now it was like I had been suspended from there as well.

“Alistair!” said Mom. “Alistair, we’re here.”

Alistair? I thought. What sort of a stupid dorky name is ‘Alistair’? It wasn’t Hebraic or Hispanic. I didn’t know an ‘Alistair’. Or so I thought.

On hearing my Mom the man started, then stood up and turned to receive us.

“Ah, Deborah. And hello again, Gonzalo.”

Wrinkles lined his face and nearly-blue bags sat under his eyes. His skin was pale, though it had gained some colour since the first time I had met him. His clothes were completely different though. In addition to the jacket he also wore a jet-black shirt with black buttons, the top one undone, black corduroy trousers and shiny black shoes.

“Dr Black!?” I said, not in greeting or description but exclamation.

“The very same.” He smiled and offered me his hand. “I’m glad you remember me, Gonzalo.”

What the hell? My Mom is going out with Dr Black? My hospital doctor?!

Dazed, I took his hand and he shook it. His grip was firm and strong, even to my invulnerable hand, if a little clammy. “Please,” he said, gesturing to the two vacant places set at the table, “have a seat, both of you.”

As I took my place on bewildered autopilot, Mom said “Shalom, Alistair,” and gave Dr Black a little peck on the lips before taking her own seat.

I was dumbstruck. I felt like Mute must feel all the time. I hadn’t been expecting this.

To be honest I’m not sure what I had been expecting. Mom had never had any other boyfriends since my Dad—at least not that I knew of, anyway. I thought maybe he would be a businessman from her work or someone from her writing group or something like that.

Not...my doctor?!

For a moment they both just looked at me, either because they didn’t know what to say or because they were trying to gauge my reaction, waiting to see what I was going to say.

“What…?” I said lamely after a while. “How...? When…? Where...? Why?!”

Dr Black took the lead. “Gonzalo…” Oh, so we were on first name terms now all of a sudden? It had been all ‘Mr Lopez’ when he had seen me in his consulting room—strictly professional. “...I know it’s never easy meeting your parent’s new partner for the first time. If you can believe me, I really do know…”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I struggled to pay attention to what he said because I was busy taking him in, analysing him, putting to use some of the training I had received at The Base. Now that he was here, he needed more analysing than the first time I had met him.

He was old but I guessed now that he looked extra old because of tiredness and overwork. If you mentally subtracted those from the wrinkles around his mouth and eyes he was probably late middle-aged—so not old old, but still way older than my Mom. He had quiffed up the front of his grey-black hair a bit with hair gel, probably to try to look younger. Instead, it made him look stupid.

I tuned back in to what he was saying. “...you see, ever since that day when you came to see me at the hospital,” Dr Black went on, “I’ve been very taken with your mother. She’s a remarkable woman, you know.”

He looked sideways at Mom for a moment and a smile appeared at the corner of his mouth. Ugh.

“After that first appointment,” Dr Black carried on, “I asked your mother out on a date. It wasn’t a breach of conduct because she wasn’t my patient.” His voice sounded...educated. It also sounded like he was working hard to convince himself of what he was saying, let alone me...

Hold on. My brain suddenly caught up with something that Dr Black had said a moment ago, when he had first started talking to me. I turned to Mom who was nervously playing with a bread roll. She looked up at me.

“Partner?” I said. It came out shocked, but I couldn’t help that.

“Now, Gonzalo,” said Mom, taking over, spreading her fingers on the tablecloth like she was adopting a defensive stance, “Alistair and I have been on quite a few dates now and we have grown very...fond of each other.” One of her hands crept along the tablecloth, and then his appeared and rested over it like a big, wrinkly spider. What did he think he was doing?

“It’s been a good six months now,” said Dr Black, “since that first appointment, so we’ve had a good deal of time to get to know one another.”

“We’re serious about our relationship,” said Mom. She squeezed his hand. “Serious enough that I knew we had to tell you.”

I thought I might have a vomiting episode. This was even worse than jumping out of a plane strapped to a telekinetic teenager.

For a moment I just stared at them and nobody said anything. Mom and Dr Black glanced at each other. They were watching to see how I was going to respond.

I just felt...sick. This man didn’t belong here with us. Mom wasn’t meant to see other men. If she was ever going to have another romantic relationship with anyone, it was going to be when she got back together with my Dad after he came to his senses and saw the error of his ways. The errors of his ways.

When I didn’t say anything, Mom came out with “I’m glad that you’re handling this maturely, Gonzalo. In fact…” She paused. Oh no. She thought this was going well. She had built up momentum. She was going to drop some other kind of bombshell. “In fact, Alistair and I were actually thinking of moving in with each other,” Mom finished.

It was like I had been hit in the forehead with an invisible sledgehammer, strong enough to cause even me pain.

I didn’t reel back, but I felt the force of the blow right between my eyes all the same. What I did do was wretch, as tickly acid rose in my gullet. My cheeks puffed out in anticipation of hurling, but then I managed to force the vomit down again with a gulp. It stang on the way back but it didn’t come up again. For now. The room span a little.

“I…” I said. “I…” I didn’t know what to say.

“Please don’t worry,” Mom followed up quickly. “We won’t do anything quickly, and you’ll be involved in the decision whenever the move happens.”

I just sat open-mouthed like a moron. I didn’t know where to look. This was all so big. So sudden. I wanted to go back to The Base. How could Mom be making these decisions so quickly?

Mom must have seen that I was struggling. “Lolo,” she said, “I know this is very big news, and I’m sorry I took a long time to summon up the courage to tell you, but Alistair and I are both adults and the truth is...well, we’re in love.” She glanced at him and that disgusting smile appeared on their faces again. “I know it’s very sudden, but, like Alistair says, we have both grown very fond of each other in, yes, a relatively short space of time, I’ll grant you, but enough time to know that we are serious about one another. Very serious about one another.”

My lip was quivering. Stupid lip.

“Oh, Gonzalo,” Mom said, more pity in her voice than reproach, “what did you think; that your poor old mother would never get into another relationship after your good-for-nothing father left us by ourselves?”

Yes! I wanted to say. That’s exactly what I thought, Mom! Instead I said: nothing.

Oh God. A memory had come to me. The first night I had met Abram, in the car, on the phone to my Mom in the background I had heard...giggles. They weren’t living together yet, but she had been seeing lots of him over the past few months, according to what they were saying. But I hadn’t thought about just how much she had seen of him, until now. I had pushed the phone call out of my mind, but it meant they had probably spent the night together, which meant they had probably... Urgh! Ewww! Gross! I couldn’t even think about it now! Another wave of nausea rose up in my stomach, and this time it was joined by something else: anger. They tussled for a moment in my gut; then the anger won.

“Don’t call my Dad ‘good-for-nothing’,” I said, managing to keep my voice just low enough to not be noticed over the restaurant hubbub. “He may have left us by ourselves, he may be a shitty father, he may be a serial womaniser, but at least he has some backbone! Not like this half-shrivelled-up, creepy, pasty old white guy!

“No offence,” I added to Dr Black, turning my head to him for a moment.

“None taken,” said Dr Black, shutting his eyes for a moment like a jackass.

“Gonzalo!” Mom said. She took a deep breath, then quietened her voice again. “That was very rude of you. Please apologise to Alistair at once.”

“No,” I said.

“It’s OK, Deborah,” said Dr Black.

“What?” I said.

“No, it isn’t!” said Mom.

“Honestly, it is,” said Dr Black.

“Er, excuse me, but are you ready to order?”

The three of us looked up from our argument.

A teenage waitress in an apron and cap was standing next to our table with her notepad out. A blonde ponytail stuck out the back of her cap. I silently thanked the God I was at this moment rapidly losing belief in that I didn’t recognise her from school.

We ordered with laboured calmness. I just pointed at something random on the menu. A pizza or something. I didn’t even look at it properly. I was pretty sure Mom did the same thing. Once she’d taken our order, the waitress walked away in silence.

We all looked at each other again, wondering who would be the one to shoot next.