She would be all of the above, of course, but tasking me with the inevitable seemed a little dramatic.
It wasn’t even technically a real date. It was day one of my What Women Want course taught by the one woman I was ironically not allowed to want. Not in a way that breached the bedroom, at least.
Vanessa used to love when I’d get dressed up on a weekend and surprise her with a night out. We’d take the truck and drive seventy-five down the highway with all the windows open, singing at the top of our lungs on our way to Lola’s in Jacksonville. We had a table that was our table, unofficially. And if that table was taken when we got there, we’d get loose at the bar for as long as it took to open up.
She always ordered a tex-mex wrap and drank too many margaritas, and by the end of dinner I was piggybacking her across the parking lot and letting her fall asleep with her head in my lap on the ride home. Those dates were few and far between after I joined Delta, and sometimes I’d be gone months at a time in a different country with no service and no way to talk to her. But in the middle of the desert I’d still be thinking about Saturdays at Lola’s and my girl in a sundress.
That turned out to be a very one-sided daydream.
I put on my least wrinkled button-down and a pair of shorts, combed my hair for the first time since the Army, and realized I needed a haircut worse than I needed to get laid.
Fifteen minutes later I was still staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, wearing the same clothes from ten years ago, trying to recreate the man I was when I took women on dates but hating every perfectly coiffed strand of hair on my head. Because that guy wasn’t me anymore.
I flipped off the boyish version of myself in the reflection before changing my entire outfit, shaking my head like a dog and slapping on my hat.
Frankie Casado in his twenties was a cocky, reckless, unchecked son of a bitch. In my thirties I was one misstep away from another spinal surgery. That dramatic change was at the heart of my insecurities, along with my ex and, most recently, the inability to keep a girl interested past a dating-app-mediated text conversation.
Getting this day right with Ophelia was more important to me than I initially realized. Sure, it was showing her how a man should be treating her, but it was also proving to myself that I was still the kind of man who knew how to do that. No matter how many times Mateo fanned my ego and reassured me of my self-effacing bullshit, I couldn’t shake that I was the issue. That I was the reason I couldn’t find the right person to settle down with.
I parked outside the duplex apartment Tally lived in and shot a quick text to the girl inside. We’d gone back and forth a few times that morning, mostly O complaining that I wouldn’t tell her where we were headed because apparently it was imperative to her outfit choice, and me telling her that shoes were required but panties were not—which earned one of those eye roll emojis and a middle finger.
Before the phone was back in my pocket it started ringing. I checked the screen expecting it to be Ophelia calling to stall—or worse, cancel the whole thing, which would have really put a wrench in my day. Then I’d have to collect her from upstairs using a fireman’s carry out to my car in ninety percent humidity. My back ached just thinking about it.
It wasn’t her, thankfully, but it wasn’t any less stress-inducing.
I picked up the phone. “Hi, Ma.”
“What’s the matter, Francesco, you don’t call your mother anymore?” Her lighthearted voice caressed me through the receiver.
It’d been too damn long since I saw my mom. Somehow the fall season came and went while I was on my ass with new clients for Cap and buried in job applications for the air base. The trip to Colorado itself took a week out of me, and now I was sitting on the phone with my mother as I waited to take a woman I couldn’t mention on a date.
Explaining whatever the fuck Justin and Mila shit Ophelia and I were up to was not on my to-do list.
“Take it easy on me, I’m getting old,” I deflected.
“Don’t talk about old to me. I’m more than halfway to my grave with no grandkids.”
“You might have grandkids somewhere.”
Her disapproval burned me from forty miles away. “You’re lucky I’m not there to smack you.”
My sister and I were used to being berated about our love lives, or lack thereof. Adriana hadn’t ever seriously dated anyone, and I was sure at that point my mother wasn’t above posting her photo on telephone poles like a missing animal looking for a mate.
She liked when I was with Vanessa—because the girl gave her something to look forward to. Engagements, weddings, babies. When she and I broke up my mother was more hurt to lose those things than she was to lose the future daughter-in-law, which should have said all it needed to. And I never even told her the whole story.
I changed the subject. “That reminds me, why is Mateo telling me about you seeing someone?”
“Mateo calls me, so he gets to know things.”
“I’m your only son,” I pressed. “So I should know all things. Always.”
A curtain in the upstairs apartment window rustled and I squinted at it.
“Well that’s why I’m calling you, to make sure you’re still coming to dinner this week. Your sister has to work Christmas Eve, so I’ll cook on the twenty-third. We want to know all about the job and the trip. Adriana forgot she has a brother.”
“No she didn’t. She just sent me one of those chain messages from two thousand seven with a picture of Rudolph boinking Clarice the other day.”
“I don’t know where I went wrong with you two.” She sighed. “Thursday, Francesco, you’re coming?”
The way her voice hitched at the question made my chest tighten. I needed to fucking show up more. As if over a decade in the military wasn’t enough time away, now I was flirting with taking off to Colorado permanently. Not once since the idea was first planted had I been as hesitant as I was hearing my mom pleading for me to simply have dinner with her, over the phone.
“Of course I’ll be there, Ma. I wouldn’t miss it.” My phone vibrated and I pulled it away from my ear to a text from Ophelia that she was on her way down. “You need anything?” I quickly asked. “Cash? Everything at the house is working?”
“The only thing I need is my handsome son at the kitchen table.”
“Can do,” I promised. “I gotta go, I have some stuff today, but I’ll see you in a couple days, all right? I love you, Ma.”
“Love you. Tell Mateo Mama Casado said hi.”
The call disconnected and I watched out the passenger side window as the door to Tally’s apartment opened. Ophelia stepped outside and I couldn’t help but notice how well the Florida sun suited her.