I sigh in frustration.
“Okay, I’ll say mine and you say yours and we’ll decide whose is better. Me first. I saw Kim Fancy slap Miss Ward across the face!”
Nina’s eyes widen. “Oh, man, that is good.”
“What’s yours?” I ask, pretty confident that I have won.
“I had sex with Garth last night.”
I look at her evenly. “You totally win.”
Nina nods knowingly and takes a huge gulp of her coffee.
“Holy shit! How? When? Why?” I have more questions than I know what to do with.
Nina is about to answer when Steph descends upon us with eggs and toast and pie. She also puts the check down.
“More coffee, hon?” she asks.
Nina nods gratefully.
“Okay. Spill it.”
She sighs. “It was our third date.”
“Third date? He never said a word.” I’m shaking my head. It always amazes me how men can keep a secret. You ask them not to say anything, and they actually don’t. We women could learn a thing or two from that.
“We didn’t want to freak you out, so we decided to keep it on the down low for a while.”
“Okay, whatever. How did it start? Did you start his website?”
She looks at me with surprise. “You heard about that?”
I nod. “Garth mentioned it, but didn’t tell me any of this.”
“Well, we sort of connected at your Christmas dinner. I was still in my Sid funk, and he was just really nice to talk to, you know?”
I smile. I certainly do know.
Steph swoops in with a refill and is gone.
“So after that, he would call once in a while to check in, and we just started having these great phone conversations, first about his website and then about everything else. I told him all about Sid and my parents and grandmother—about how I raised Chyna by myself. He told me about being in Afghanistan—girl, he saw some serious shit over there. He told me about his breakdown at the gym and how he still goes to therapy for post-traumatic stress.”
I can’t believe my ears. How does she know more about Garth than I do?
“He told you all that?” I ask.
“Well, I asked him about it. We’ve been talking a lot.”
“Talked yourselves right into bed,” I say, with a bit too much snark.
Nina raises her beautifully arched eyebrow at me.
“Sorry. I just can’t believe I didn’t know any of this. Wait, did you have phone sex?”
Nina snorts coffee out of her nose and starts to giggle.
“No. Oh, my God, no. Only you would ask that. No, we were talking one evening and realized we had both skipped dinner, so we decided to meet at Garozzo’s. We had a great time together. Did you know he doesn’t drink alcohol or eat pasta?”
“No, but I’m not surprised. He’s in great shape.”
“I hear that!” Nina says, and I think she’s blushing. I sit back in my chair, trying to process all this new information. The tectonic plates of my world have had a true rattling this morning.
“By the time we had our second date, it felt like our twentieth,” Nina feels the need to add.
“Uh-huh. Are you trying to rationalize your sluttiness to me or to you?”
“To you.” Nina doesn’t bat an eye. “I’m all good with my sluttiness.”
“Are you charging him for your, um, services?”
“Yes!” She smirks. “But I’m giving him the special friends discount.”
My phone buzzes and I sneak a glance at it. Don has texted me an emoji of a turd drinking coffee. I turn my phone face down.
Nina’s crystal blue eyes are staring at me. “Something important?”
“Nope. So, was Chyna home?” I deftly pivot.
“No, thank God. That’s why I wanted to meet you. When did you tell the girls about Ron?”
I scoop the last of the scrumptious apple pie into my mouth and scowl. The girls’ first time meeting Ron is not one of my favorite memories.
We had been dating for about a month before I even told him I had kids. I wish I had taken a picture of the look on his face. Here he thought he was dating this hot (his word, not mine), single thirty-something who had never been married and who seemed relatively normal. After pleasuring him in the front seat of his car one night, I casually mentioned that I was harboring two small fugitives in my home. He took it relatively well. At least, he didn’t run screaming in the other direction.
It was another month before I let him meet them. Shrinks these days will tell you to wait a year, but that wisdom wasn’t available to me, so I went with my gut. (Actually, I’m sure it was available somewhere, but I’m generally lazy when it comes to researching stuff like that.) I invited Ron to dinner one Saturday when my parents were away on a spiritual retreat or, as I like to call it, a booty call with the Lord. There was no way I was going to bombard him with two kids and Kay and Ray.
The girls knew that I had been going on dates with someone, but they also thought I was taking a pottery class at the local Our Name Is Mud. It was the only way I could get out more than twice a week. Ron and I were at that euphoric beginning of a relationship where we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and we were having a lot of car sex. When I told the girls I was going to introduce them to the man I was dating, they reacted like the polar opposites they are. Vivs rolled her eyes and said, “Well, this should be good.” Where does her sarcasm come from? Laura started jumping up and down, beyond excited, asking if he was going to be our new dad. I thought she was joking, so in my infinite wisdom I told her yes, he absolutely was, as long as they didn’t blow it for me. But guess what? She wasn’t joking, and she didn’t think I was, either.
Ron arrived promptly at six with gift bags for the girls, who were ten and twelve at the time. I could tell he was nervous, and not just because he had pit stains the size of pizzas under the arms of his gray polo shirt. He was very jittery and kept looking around the kitchen as if someone was going to jump him. I kissed him, handed him a beer, and told him to relax.
“They’re just little girls,” I assured him with as much conviction as I could muster. I really wasn’t sure how the evening was going to play out. Good thing I didn’t have high expectations, because it ended up an unmitigated disaster.
The first to appear was Laura. She was wearing her prettiest dress and had tried to put her hair in a bun, without much success.
“Sweetie, I’d like you to meet my friend Ron. Ron, this is Laura, my little one.”
“Hi, Laura. So nice to meet you.” Ron stuck out his hand for a formal greeting, which Laura bypassed in favor of a huge hug.
“Welcome to our family,” she said sincerely.
I guess I should have seen that coming.
“Thank you.” Ron looked a little confused, but to his credit he went with it. “It’s so nice to meet you, Laura. I love your hair.”
Laura looked surprised and pleased. “Really? I just did it all by myself.”
“Well, I helped,” was how Vivs announced she had arrived in the kitchen. She had chosen to wear all black, which included the expression on her face.