I stand outside my dorm and wait for the town car to pick me up. I don’t know why my dad still uses the same car service our family had pre-Uber. It seems stupid to have an assistant make a bunch of calls to get me a ride when I could summon a private car with just the push of a button on an app.

I remain silent during the whole ride, enjoying the calm before the storm.

The driver takes me to the parking lot of a Japanese steakhouse. In classic New Money, California style, the high-end restaurant is down the street from a Panda Express and across from a gas station.

I mutter a quick “Thank you” as I hop out of the car. My parents are already waiting when I step inside, so we greet each other for the first time in months in front of the hostess.

“Braden!” My mom pulls me into a hug, her shawl wrapping around me like a blanket.

“Hi, Mom,” I say.

“Good to see you,” my father says, extending his arm.

I nod and shake his hand quickly.

“They refused to seat us until the entire party was here,” he says, cutting his eyes at the hostess, who is about my age and probably not the one who wrote that policy.

“We’re ready now,” he says more directly to her.

“This way,” she says shyly, grabbing three menus. The restaurant is light and airy, with large windows opening to a garden and luckily not the gas station that would be visible if the windows were on the other wall, which is covered in bamboo. The tables are draped in immaculate white cloth and have weird sculptures as centerpieces.

After the first two tables are deemed unacceptable, we are placed near the window at what is meant to be a six top. I wonder briefly if being too close to the door or too near to the air vent was really the problem, or if he just wanted a table big enough that he could sit more than an arm’s length from my mother.

We silently read the menu for a few minutes. I decide quickly which cut of meat I’ll be getting—it’s the same as when we came here when I visited Warren as a senior in high school, but I continue to pretend to read so that I don’t have to be the one who breaks the tense silence.

I reach for my water, and my mother seems to take this movement as invitation for conversation.

“Everything looks very delicious,” she says. “Doesn’t it, Jared?”

My father nods.

“It reminds me of that place we went to, years ago, when we were in Japan, that place the Williams took us. Do you remember what it was called?”

“No.” My father shakes his head. He looks around. “Where is the waiter? I would love to order a drink.”