Dad looked at me oddly suspicious as he asked me. “Okay? What of it?”

I became slightly worried about their reaction as I told them. “I work for a secret service.”

“…”

There was a moment of quiet before my mum spoke “Since when?”

There was no look of shock, overreaction, bursting out, crying or anything from my mum and especially my dad. I looked at them in concern wondering if something was wrong with their heads. “Not gonna question the fact that I might be lying or even be worried about my job?”

My mum shrugged her shoulders while dad sighed. My dad spoke up. “If the secret services don’t hire a genius like you then I will be very surprised. But the question since when?”

My dad looked at Natasha and noticed how calm she was about this revelation as I replied enigmatically. “For a long time.”

My dad frowned as he heard that as he asked me the next question. “Have you been involved in fights?”

‘Here comes the moment!’ “Plenty.”

I watched as he took a deep breath while mum quietly looked down. “Can you quit?”

I looked at my dad who was staring into my eyes. It almost felt like he was staring into my soul. “I can but some way or another I will be drawn back into it. Might as well get paid for the risk I am taking.”

He began rubbing his forehead as my mum looked at me with a sad smile. “I thought you were supposed to keep these kinds of thing a secret?”

I nodded to her question. “We are. Which is why I am not telling you anything about my job, or when I started, as knowing that information can put you in terrible danger.”

My mum looked at Nat in worry. “What about you Natasha dear? Did you know about this?”

My dad glanced at Nat and both of them stared at her in concern, making her feel extremely uncomfortable. However, I knew she must be thanking all the training she did to stay so calm and collected in front of them with a smile. “We kind of got together due to our jobs.”

I smiled awkwardly as she looked at me with an eye of nostalgia. The key ingredient of the best lies was mixing truth in them.

My parents sat stunned and became quiet for a while. ‘Honestly, everything was going good so far considering my parents’ track record about being too worried off me. I didn’t like lying to my parents, but my only consolation was I was telling them the truth, but not the truth that they think.’

My dad as if remembering something suddenly looked up at me in concern. “Did you fight with those aliens?”

I grabbed Nat’s right hand and held it tightly as I replied to my dad. “Yeah. The person in silver armour at the end of the alien invasion was me during the fight.”

This earned another jaw-dropping moment of silence. Natasha looked at me in worry seeing my parents frozen. “I think you told them more than they can handle in one day.”

I nodded to her analysis. “Yeah, I think I did.”

She smiled as she stroked my hands. “For a person who claims to have learned psychology you are pretty bad with these kinds of situation.”

I looked into her eyes sadly as I brushed the strands of hair out of her face. “I learned it is best not to hold anything back the hard way. I rather get everything out of the way now than later.”

She smiled as she grabbed my hand and kissed it before we turned our attention back to my parents who were like a crashed ‘Google Chrome’ page.

We sat there in awkwardness as we waited for them to recover.

They did break out after a few minutes, just that their questions weren’t the sort that I was expecting.

“So, you are telling me you invented a suit like Tony Stark that can fight aliens and you are part of a secret organisation who fights these kinds of threat, along with your girlfriend?”

My dad summarised everything to which I replied. “More or less.”

My dad shook his head as he sat back looking at Natasha and me in concern. “I don’t think I am believing you at this point.”

I looked at mum who was looking at dad, who seemed to be in denial.

I just smiled as I stood up before tapping my watch. *Skitter*

My mum yelped seeing this as she moved next to dad in concern. Seeing this process for the first time even Natasha was curious. “Blimey!”

My dad just watched with an open mouth.

The silver dust came out of my watch rapidly. They wrapped me in a cocoon for a fraction of a second before I transformed into my silver spiral armour with the ominous-looking red glow on my chest meant to make people think that must be my power source or something.

I looked at my parents as the bots covering my face shifted to reveal me towards them. “What about now?”

My mum exclaimed with her jaws almost hitting the floor. “Holy sweet mother of garlic bread!”.

My dad extended his hand warily as he proceeded to touch my armour to see if it was real. “I don’t believe this.”

After a while of poking and pinching themselves my parents accepted the reality. I took off my armour as I looked at my very concerned and shocked parents. My dad looked at me as he spoke. “I think I like to go back to believing you ran a restaurant in Manhattan along with doing consultant for companies.”

He then looked at Nat before glancing at me. “Now I have to constantly worry about your safety and about her.”

I sighed as I heard him but felt happy inside knowing they really were accepting of Nat so quickly. “Dad I could have not told you about all this and spared both of you the worry…”

My mum decided to interrupt and make a joke at this time. “I don’t think that is an option for your dad who worries about you way too much even without any aliens.”

His eyebrows twitched as heard it while the rest of us giggled. I decided to carry on with what I was about to say from the slight interruption. “…but I wanted you to understand what kind of situation Nat and I are in.”

My mum looked at me in confusion. “David I don’t understand the point you are trying to make here.”

I sat down next to Nat as I told them point-blank the matter I was getting to. “I don’t want you to hate Nat in the future when one day she isn’t there for you guys when you ask of her. Our job is to protect everyone in the world from threats like in New York. In fact, it is not just our job it is our responsibility.”

Everyone was quiet for a long while. Nat grabbed hold of my hand in concern, and I stroked her warm hands that was getting moist from the stress she was in.

My mum looked at us before she spoke. “So how long have you two known each other then?”

Natasha smiled hearing that as she decided to speak up. “Since 2006 but we got together in 2007.”

Both my parents’ eyes widened as they looked at me in disbelief as Dad spoke. “And you kept it from us all this time?”

I sighed as I responded to him calmly. “We weren’t in a position to tell you at that time. After all, telling you about her must mean telling you about our job, which isn’t exactly a very normal one especially back then.”

He glared at me making me very worried before he sighed. “Then what made you tell us now?”

Dad was really angry, but I knew his anger wasn’t because I hid so many things from him, but because I never told them anything about Nat.

“We are planning to get…”

*Clack* *Creak* I started off but soon got interrupted as someone opened the door.

All of us involuntarily turned our heads in natural response to the door to see the surprised and shocked look of my little brother as he walked in. A smile came upon his face as he ran towards me. “David!”

He leapt to hug me. I smiled seeing my little brother as I patted his head. “Hey, Jack.”

The smile on his face told everyone how happy and excited he was. “When did you come back?”

I placed my hand into my pocket to fetch something I had for him every time I came back home. “Just a few hours ago.”

He nodded and moved onto the much more important question for him to gossip with me. “Did you see those aliens in New York?”

I nodded as I took out his favourite Maltesers chocolate. “Yeah.”

“Woah really?”

However, his curiosity was doused seeing the chocolate. “Awesome Maltesers! Thanks, bro.”

His eyes suddenly shifted behind me. I turned around to see Nat smiling towards us.

I stood up and went next to Nat and held her arm. “Jack meet Natasha, my girlfriend. Natasha meet my cute little brother Jack.”

I introduced them causing Nat to nod at him as she reached into her small handbag. “Hi, Jack.”

Natasha smiled as she took out a small, wrapped box of present from her bag and held it towards Jack. “Umm hi, nice to meet you… Thank you.”

Jack replied shyly as he took the box from Natasha. He looked between Nat and me and was about to ask me something when dad spoke up in his very serious tone, that I only hear him use for Jack and on rare occasions. “Jack go get changed.”

Unlike with me, my parents were pretty strict in raising Jack, but I knew they loved him just as much. However, with him being a kid, he didn’t see past the strictness of my parents to their love. Due to this, he liked me the most due to how lenient and fun I was, especially the house that became livelier whenever I came to visit.

Jack nodded as he looked at us and stated before he went upstairs. “David I will be back. I have so much to tell you.”

“Sure buddy.”

As he left I looked back at my parents who were debating whether to carry on with our conversation or not. In the end, my mum decided. “We will talk after he is asleep.”

All of us nodded in agreement as mum looked at us. “You guys had lunch?”

I shook my head. “Not really mum,”

“No problem. We usually have late lunch together with Jack anyway, after his school.”

Mum made way to prepare a late lunch meal for us.

My parents were quick to change the subject and talked about other things with Nat and me. Unlike me, they were pretty social people and was good at reading the mood when needed. So till Jack left we pretended as if everything was normal.

We ate lunch followed by Jack talking with Natasha and me; a lot about his life and how he wanted to come with me to America. My parents nearly froze hearing him say the term ‘America’.

After a while, mum and dad sent him to do his homework while I moved to show Natasha around the house and my bedroom.