“Well that’s part of the whole agreement.”
“Blowjobs?”
The older woman at the booth behind us turned and glared at Natalia.
“I can’t take you anywhere.” I snorted. “No, not blowies—helping him get over his ex. I’ll be like…his test run before he gets back on track.”
“In exchange for…？”
A blush crept its way up my neck that had nothing to do with the alcohol buzz. “Directly out of Frankie’s mouth, mind-blowing, filthy sex.”
She sighed wistfully. “Ugh, God. Now I’m horny.”
“You’re welcome.” I clinked our glasses together. “Now you don’t have to feel bad about leaving me alone all night while you and Mateo…film.”
“You’d be shocked at how busy the holidays are for us. People are lonely this time of year. I mean, think about it. Everything is so cheery and festive and then there’s people who are just alone in their house with no family, no significant other. It’s depressing.”
I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow.
“That didn’t come out right.” She paled. “Not you, you’re not the same at all. You’re like, young and hot, and you could go to the grocery store and pick a DILF out of the butcher section buying a ham and take him home with you.”
“Relax, I know you didn’t mean it.” I chuckled, considering her thoughtfully. A rush of warmth overcame me. “I’m so proud of you, Nat. I want you to know that, seriously. You’re the coolest person I know, and you’re authentic, and brave, and passionate—and I’ll always be cheering you on.”
Her eyes glistened and she reached over the table to squeeze my hand. “Now you and your big teacher titties are making me cry.” Her full bottom lip jutted out and trembled with unshed emotion. “Love you more.”
“Love you more,” I answered, then cleared my throat. “Just out of curiosity though, if I did want to find a certain webcam couple for those lonely nights…”
She laughed. “Phee, you just ask, and we’ll give you your own private show.”
18
I hadn’t taken a woman out on a date in a decade. Flirting mercilessly with Ophelia was one thing, it was as natural as breathing—but a proper pick her up, open the car door, impress her with my charm and intelligence outing? That was something else entirely.
Why the fuck was I so nervous?
Mateo was taking Tally to her parents’ house for the day in Fort Lauderdale, which was like pulling teeth because she didn’t want to leave Ophelia for the few hours they’d be gone. Natalia didn’t know the random lunch with her family wasn’t random at all, and that Mateo had a string of things he needed to check off a list before Christmas—a private conversation with her father being one of them. Cap promised the girl that her best friend would be perfectly occupied, protected, and taken care of, as if I was a paid bodyguard and not a retired, disabled veteran.
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.”