“I’m also single.” He waits a beat and asks, “Can we have dinner sometime?”
“Yes.”
“To be clear,” he says. “I mean…a date.”
“No White Castle, then.”
“The most official date. I’ll make you dinner.”
“And walk me to my door at the end of the night?” I ask.
“I can’t guarantee that.”
23
“Is 10 a.m. too earlyfor wine?” Nick asks. His apartment smells like bacon.
This is the first time I’ve had an official, scheduled datebeginin the morning.
For two people who work nights, one of whom has a kid who needs to be picked up from day camp before 5p.m., it just made sense.
I assure him that it’s never too early for wine.
“This is one of maybe five things I know how to cook,” he says, stirring a bowl of batter. “I should really expand my repertoire, but Kira’s picky about food, so it’s more efficient to master the five things she eats.”
“You choose your meals according to a nine-year-old’s palate?” I was expected to eat whatever my parents put in front of me. But of course as an only child, I was always outnumbered.
“Have you ever tried to reason with a third-grader who refuses to eat?” he asks. “I do my best, but I’m not going to engage in a battle of wills every night.”
I wonder how Kira’s mom decides what they’re going to eat—and who made dinner when they were married. Having never been romantically involved with a divorced person—let alone a parent—I don’t know how to broach an honest discussion about that relationship on a first “official” date.
Nick pours the batter onto the griddle. I wander around the living room, which has fewer boxes than it did last time, but more toys and art supplies strewn across every surface.
“Where’syourstuff?” I ask. “All those collectibles you were unpacking?”
He nods toward his bedroom. “Why do you think I installed all those shelves in there?”
“To drive me crazy with the drilling and hammering?”
“Exactly.”
“I know whyIconfine my stuff to one room.” I lean against the kitchen counter. “But this isyourapartment. You could put some of your things out here, too.”
Nick scans his living room. “You think Kira’s taken over the apartment.”
“I didn’t say ‘taken over.’ But it’s your space, too, right?”
“I can live anywhere,” he says. “I spent years living out of one duffel bag and sleeping on a bus. Kids need space. And I don’t want my home to feel like…some crash pad. Especially since her mom lives in ‘our’ house. That’s always going to feel like the default.”
“Sometimes I slept on my dad’s couch because he didn’t have an extra bedroom. I didn’t mind because it meant I could stay up late and watch TV.”
Nick shakes his head. “Kids need their own space. And it shouldn’t feel like an extra bedroom.”
Not that I believed my dad to be a paragon of fatherhood. But every time I have a conversation with Nick about single parenting, I feel like my memories get distorted. Like I’m playing them back through a lens that gives them a grittier aesthetic.
Nick grabs a plate from his cabinet and carefully opens the lid of the waffle iron to reveal a golden-brown waffle shaped like the starshipEnterprise.
“It’s really good,” I say after I bite into what he explains are the warp engines.
