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“Oh, that’s so wonderful for her,” my mom coos, even though she doesn’t know Harlow. They’ve never met nor has she asked to, but my mom sounds legitimately happy for her.
And for a brief moment, I have an idea of what it might be like to have a mom where we share similar interests. In this case, it’s happiness for Harlow.
I poke at the edges of this new feeling. Lowering my voice to convey the secrecy of this—not that my mom knows Harlow and could let the cat out of the bag—I tell her, “Stone’s going to propose soon.”
My mom rests her hand over her heart and purses her lips. “Please tell me he has some very romantic, over-the-top idea?”
Laughing, I shake my head. “He asked me for some help, and I’m thinking about it.”
“Oh, I have a ton of ideas,” she says, and for the next ten minutes, she offers me what are actually solid possibilities that I’ll pass on to Stone.
We order bowls of chicken tortilla soup along with fajitas to share. It’s so odd but tossing around proposal concepts seems to have opened a free-flowing conversation that doesn’t come easy to us. My mom is so enraptured by the romanticism of it all, she seems softer and more genuine.
And it causes a yearning within me to have her excited about my love life.
“I went out on a date last night with a Titans player,” I say.
My mom, mid sip of her second margarita, chokes. She stares at me with watery eyes as she coughs.
“Tell me more,” she gasps and takes another pull on her drink.
I give her the short version of meeting Hendrix, leaving out the talk in the storage room, and an opaque version of our date last night, leaving out our talk about her.
My mom grins. “Did he kiss you good night?”
I almost snort thinking about how our evening ended. Hendrix took me home after dinner and just as he was leaning in for a kiss on the front porch, the light came on and my dad opened the door. He had no reason to still be at my place other than to wait so he could interrupt what I’m betting would’ve been a great kiss.
I’ll give Hendrix credit. He didn’t jump back but instead leaned in closer and planted his lips on my cheek as my dad glared at him.
“See you Friday night,” he’d said, then beamed at my dad. “Nice to see you, Bear.”
We both watched him trot down the porch steps and into his BMW. When he pulled away, my dad asked, “Friday night?”
“Our second date. He wants me to come to the home game tomorrow night and then out after, but I can’t take off two nights in a row.”
“I’ll cover for you,” my dad offered as I brushed by him and he closed the door.
“I thought you didn’t like him,” I teased.
“I don’t. But I’ll still cover you if you want.”
My dad and I shared a beer while I told him all about my first date with Hendrix. I gave him way more detail than I’ve given my mom. My dad has not only my full trust but the biggest piece of my heart, so I was excited to share how wonderful the evening was. I declined his offer to cover my shift tonight because a date isn’t a good enough reason to take my dad’s free time like that.
“Stevie,” my mom says, throwing a chip at me and jolting me out of my memories. “Did he kiss you good night?”
I smile at the way his lips felt on my skin. “On the cheek.”
My mom sighs dreamily. “What a gentleman. Will you see him again?”
“Tomorrow night.” I don’t bother telling her that he asked me to the game tonight but I declined because I didn’t want to miss another night of work. I don’t feel like listening to her lecturing that I’m wrong to let such an opportunity go. She doesn’t understand what it’s like to own your own business, and I’ll only get angry if I have to explain the concept of responsibility.
To my relief, she focuses on him as a player. “What position does he play and what team did he come from?”
She doesn’t know much about sports, but like everyone who lives in Pittsburgh, she knows about the plane crash that killed nearly the whole team.
“He was actually on the original team.”
Hand clapping over her mouth, my mom squeaks her distress. “Oh wow. A lucky man. I imagine that’s got to be all kinds of emotional for him.”
I wouldn’t know as we haven’t talked about it. Not that it was a subject we avoided, but we spent our time talking about family.
Maybe tomorrow night. The fact our conversation was so wonderful over dinner was why I agreed to his request for a second date.
