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I mean, I know it happened six months ago, forty-seven minutes after I saw him, but I don’t knowhowit happened. How I became so infatuated with him.
Yes, it started at the interview when I saw him playing so lovingly and adorably with his baby girl. But then I went home and told myself that I’d imagined it all. That maybe I felt that way because he was just so… handsome.
And sexy.
Usually I’m so busy with things happening in my life that I hardly ever notice any guy’s sexiness.
But then I came back two days later, on a Monday, and I realized that no, I wasn’t imagining it.
Iwasinfatuated with him.
And months later, I still am.
Even though I know nothing about him.
I mean, I know he’s a pro soccer player; he plays for the New York City FC. I know where his family is from — Puerto Rico — and most of his extended family lives there. He of course has a three-year-old daughter, Sophie, that I look after four days a week and whom he loves to pieces. So much so that instead of living in New York City where his home base is, he chooses to live two hours away in Bardstown to be closer to his sisters and so Sophie always has someone to look after her. Not to mention, he always keeps his Sundays free no matter if he’s on season or off.
I know he’s neat and doesn’t clutter. His favorite color is gray, or Ithinkit is, because most of the stuff in his house is gray-colored. Except Sophie’s room; that’s all very girly and quintessentially pink. I know he likes soy milk because there’s never any other kind of milk in his fridge. I know his favorite fruit is apples. I know he has exactly seven suits in his closet, all mostly gray in color. He prefers to wear washed-out jeans and cotton t-shirts. His socks are all gray as well, with green stripes. He wears black briefs. His perfume is Yves Saint Laurent. He uses those bar soaps rather than a fancy body wash. His razor is a big old-fashioned silver thing and he has that vintage shaving kit where you mix the shaving cream in a bowl type thingy.
I know he doesn’t drink or smoke or party like other twenty-four-year-olds. Instead he works out — there’s a fully equipped gym in his house — and spends whatever time he has outside of practice with Sophie.
Oh, and I also know that he liked my empanadas.
Not because he told me so.
But because I’d brought them on a Monday and they were gone by Tuesday when I came over for work. So he finished them all within twenty-four hours and I thought I’d brought quite a lot: sixteen, to be exact. And even if it’s not a lot, he still ate them and finished them all.
So I usually bring him empanadas every Monday.
But other than that, I know nothing about him.
Which again begs the question: howdidI become so infatuated with him?
“I’m…”
I don’t know what I was going to say but whatever it was, it doesn’t matter because my mom speaks again. “You have to move on, Meadow. You have to do the smart thing here.”
“He’s going on a second date,” Jupiter reminds me. “And according to you, he never does that. So it’s even more important that you move on from him.”
She is right.
He never ever goes on a second date.
It’s such a well-known fact that his sisters, Camille and Lucia, are always harping on about it. They’re always saying that he needs to settle down, not play the field like he’s doing. He has a three-year-old daughter for Christ’s sake. And it doesn’t matter what Sophie’s mom did to him — I have zero idea about what she did to him; I don’t even know her name — he needs to forget that and find himself a decent girl.
To which, I’ve one time heard him reply, “Shut the fuck up, por favor. Me estas dando dolor de cabeza.”
At the time, like so many things about him, I didn’t know what he’d said. I was putting Sophie down for the night and it was one of those rare nights when he came home early, and was downstairs with his sisters who had come over for a visit. Usually he arrives the second I’m due to leave for the day and we hardly get to be in the same space for more than couple of minutes.
Anyway, I went home that night and looked what he’d said up on Google and it means: Shut the fuck up, please. You’re giving me a headache.
All of this to say that yes, it’s very rare for him to go on a second date.
Meaning this girl, Tara, must be very special to him.
Which starts such a sharp ache in my chest that I have to blink a few times to clear my vision.
I swallow, loosening my grip from around the tap and staring down at the ceramic sink. “No, he never does that.”
