"Actually I don't know where he'll be in two months." Rico groaned and let his head fall forward.
"If he leaves, you could always go with him," Sam suggested gently.
"Just tag along whether I'm invited or not. Could you do that?" Rico challenged him.
"No," Sam admitted.
"I guess I'll just have to wait and see."
"But you're not a wait and see kind of guy," Sam pointed out.
Rico laughed ruefully. That was so true.
It wasn't long before Sam had to go to the café, and Rico was left to work alone. He was brooding over Mitch and what to do about their date when his grandmother showed up. She had come to bring some snacks for the volunteers and check on the floats she was sponsoring. Right away she noticed Rico's mood.
"What's eating you, sweetheart?" his grandmother asked him.
"I'm trying to figure out how to date Mitch," Rico told her simply.
"What's there to figure out?" she said like Mitch was some easygoing, no fuss kind of guy.
"You don't think he might be a challenge? Maybe he's even too much for me to handle," Rico told her.
She dismissed that as nonsense. "You go and take that bull by the horns," his grandmother told him. Then she pointed a finger at him challengingly. "Are you my grandson or not?"
Rico groaned. Everyone was telling him the same thing, and he shouldn't need anyone to tell him in the first place. With any other guy, he would have had it all figured out without giving it a second's thought.
With Mitch, the sky always seemed to be falling. Rico didn't know where they stood from one minute to the next. Then Mitch said they were boyfriends, and that was a whole other mountain of pressure that Rico never had to deal with before. One thing he knew—he wanted to be Mitch's boyfriend and stay his boyfriend.
At lunchtime, Rico got to sit down with Mitch and eat in a spot on the elementary school bleachers apart from everyone else. Rico tried to put his worries out of his head, but then Mitch brought up the subject himself.
"About our date..." Mitch started to say and then he saw how Rico was looking at him and he frowned. "Why do you look like that?"
Rico answered that question with a question of his own. "Are you canceling?"
"Canceling?" Mitch said like the question didn't make any sense.
"Canceling our date," Rico clarified, speaking louder than he meant to. His anxiety was building with every second that passed and he watched Mitch's brow stay furrowed.
Mitch finally answered. "No. I was going to ask you if you know anything about that place called Raffinger's."
"That's the place where you didn't want to stop for drinks before we went skinny dipping," Rico said.
"Right. Have you been there? Do you like the food?" Mitch asked matter of factly while Rico was still recovering from thinking the worst.
After a minute, he answered. "I went there with my family when I was a kid, but it was called something else. Elmer's Steakhouse or something."
"I was thinking of taking you there for our first date," Mitch said and Rico's heart jumped in his chest. It was like he didn't really believe it would happen until Mitch said that.
"You were? I've been tying myself into knots about where we should go for our first date, and you already have it figured out?" Rico said. He sounded exasperated, but he was actually incredibly relieved. He still glared at Mitch for making him suffer like that.
"Sorry?" Mitch said and gave him an amused look.
"Raffinger's sounds good. Anywhere sounds good," Rico said. "Just hand me a sandwich and kiss me, and I'm happy." He already had half of his uneaten sandwich in his hands so he held it up.
Mitch laughed and leaned over to give him a kiss. "We'll go to Raffinger's then. They have a deck in the back that overlooks the river. I thought it might be nice to eat out there."
"That does sound nice." It seemed like Mitch wasn't half-assing this. He really thought about it and came up with something good, unlike Rico who racked his brain and only managed to make himself crazy.
