“Good to hear it, sir. Good to hear it. But come. Come with me. Your table awaits you.”
Mick was escorted in, with all eyes on him since the owner almost never met someone’s car, and was seated at a table by the window. Mick ordered the best wine for himself and Rosalind and then phoned Deuce to find out if they were en route. Once Deuce assured him that he would have his lady there in a matter of minutes, Mick leaned back and relaxed. And tried not to think about the level of betrayals his organization were enduring. Five in one month. That was unheard of. The Dons wanted a meeting. They were concerned too. Mick thought that situation alone would dominate his every thought. And it mostly did. But Rosalind did too.
A part of him still recoiled at the thought of even attempting to get close to someone the way it appeared he was getting close to Rosalind. The idea that he found himself smiling every time he thought about her. The idea that he actually initiated a phone call with her every night since he last saw her. Every single night. He refused to let the conversations linger, however. He simply asked if she was okay, she said that she was, and then he told her he had to go. And he did. He was a busy man. But when he thought about it, when he realized he never bothered to phone and check on any other woman before, not ever, it was a remarkable turn.
More remarkable was the fact that she was against his usual type. He dated women of all races before. Beauty came in every color under the sun to Mick and he sampled every one. But she was no supermodel. She was no elite businesswoman. She was no socialite. She was no self-centered pampered princess like his other women were, women who seduced him as eagerly as he seduced them. His interest in all the others began and ended with their looks, with their bodies, with what he could do to them in bed.
But Mick’s interest in Rosalind was on a different level. As the waiter arrived with the drinks, and left, Mick thought about that level difference. Unlike his other ladies, Rosalind’s beauty wasn’t in her makeup or in how many plastic surgeries she could afford or in other artificial ways to keep the lips full and the cheeks high and the eyes wide. Rosalind’s beauty wasn’t bold like that. It was natural. It was subtle. It was so subtle that many men probably missed it.
But not Mick. He saw it as clearly as he saw the world. Rosalind’s beauty went deep to him. It was in her smile, and the way she carried herself, and the way she refused to lose her integrity just to get what she wanted. She could have been in Barry’s play. If Mick would have insisted, he knew Barry would have granted him that request. But she refused to rig the game. She refused to skip the line just because somebody offered her the chance. She also turned his ass down, the first woman to ever do so. Mick smiled just thinking about that turn down, and how floored he was after she did it. He saw her differently. It was as if every other woman he ever showed interest in was on one side, and Rosalind stood apart on the other side.
He never kept a woman around for any appreciable time, so there was never women waiting in the wings for his love. But what was truly odd was the change in approach. Because oddly enough, ever since he invited Rosalind to come to Philadelphia, he hadn’t slept with anyone, he hadn’t asked to sleep with anyone, he hadn’t even answered the call from women interested in sleeping with him. Not that he didn’t have urges and needed a night with a lady. He needed several nights. But he knew he had to sacrifice if he was going to give this brand new, fresh out of the box relationship a chance.
He even got HIV-tested, even though, after twenty years of wearing condoms, he knew he was clean. But go figure. For Rosalind’s peace of mind, he got tested. And then he text her a copy of the negative results before she came. But what was wonderful to him was that she text him her results too. He smiled all day, not because she was negative, but because it was a done deal. For the first time in two decades, he was not going to wear a condom. Just before he had his last child, he was young and dumb and thought he was invincible. He almost never wore a condom and ended up fathering children left and right. He had three grown sons and one grown daughter, and Shane, who was not his biological child, but was supported by him. But regardless, he was not a good father to any of them.