Nate turned redder than the gore smeared on a butcher’s apron. “Well, we’ve known each other practically since we were born,” he stuttered. “But we’ve only been going out for like, a year. We don’t want to ruin it by, you know, rushing, before we’re ready?” Nate was just spitting back the line that Blair always gave him when he asked her if she was ready to do it or not. But he was talking to his girlfriend’s mother’s boyfriend. What was he supposed to say “Dude,if I had my way we’d be doing it right now?”
“Absolutely,” Cyrus Rose said. He clasped Nate’s shoulder with a red, meaty hand. Around his fleshy wrist was one of those gold Cartier cuff bracelets—very popular in the 1980s and not so popular now—that you screw on permanently and never take off, unless you cut off you own arm.