Rainbow snippet - Second Helpings

A did a sort of 'eeny-meeny-miny-mo' and decided on an excerpt from my contemporary novella, Second Helpings. A few weeks back we had a Sunday lunch scene with Stuart and his dad: this time it's the other leading man, Paul, and his mum. “You’ve got me all to yourselves for twenty minutes. Then I’m back to the vegetables.” His mother took a large swig of wine. “This feels like Sundays back when you were a boy.” “You only let me have lemonade then.” Paul swirled his wine, admiring the rich colours in the bright sunshine. “You used to do that with your lemonade, too!” She grinned. “Nothing changes.” Paul just smiled in return. The whole world had changed since then—that was before he’d come out and while Dad was still here. Pre-university, pre-work, pre-Richard, pre-America, pre-Ben. University and work had both been a blinding success, but Richard had turned out to be a lying, cheating bastard and as for Benjamin Hewitt III . . . “How’s Ben?” his mother asked, as if reading his thoughts. “Working too hard,” Paul replied, avoiding her gaze. That email hadn’t come by the time he’d left the café, and he wasn’t ready for the third degree. Not until he had something concrete to share. “Sounds like you, then. Has he had any luck finding a job over here?” “Not yet. It’s only been a couple of weeks since he started to look.” Paul had begun to suspect the answer would be the same in another couple of months—or another couple of years. Looking at their relationship with the benefit of a long-distance telescope, he’d started to see all sorts of signs that hadn’t been apparent close up. “It’ll happen when it happens.” More excerpts at the Rainbow Snippets group.