My phone dings. I take Mai’s face in my hands and kiss both her cheeks. “Love you.”
“Te amo,” she grumbles.
The fifteen-minute ride to Fort Greene lets me answer some work emails on my phone. Resumes for the P.E. teacher position Elias vacated earlier last year. Educational consultants begging for money. Supply orders. I fire off reply after reply, and by the time I look up, we’ve stopped outside the coffee shop.
“Thanks,” I tell my driver, stepping out and donning Work Lina like a well-worn suit.
The cafe is just around the corner from our school, one of those ‘mid-century modern’ cardboard cutout ones with the wood and the Edison bulbs and the iron accents that look the same as all the other ones in the same style. It’s already packed full of screaming children and worn-out parents. It’s a gorgeous morning, and the sun is shining brightly through the windows, illuminating all the families inside, everyone including…
Like magnets, like last week in the yard, our eyes meet and click together, above and beyond and through masses of people.
In that moment, boss-ass bitch Work Lina melts into a puddle and becomes someone I don’t like, someone I thought I’ve grown up from—Old Lina meeting a tall, dark, handsome, tattooed man. Luckily, I recognize the signs of this, as one may recognize the signs of a stroke. Brain mush? Check. Panties wet? Check. Feeling generally slutty and ready to drop everything at his behest? Check.
But I’m prepared now, so I’m able to steel my back and rebuild boss-ass bitch Work Lina one vertebra of my spine at a time, extending it, building a fortress out of stone around my more soft, vulnerable insides. I send him a cool, calm, collected smile and a nod, like ‘yes, hey, I recognize you,’ but keep it moving, not bothering to clock his reaction. I scan the rest of the families in the cafe, wondering who the PTO president and his daughter are while marching up to the counter to order a latte. Unfortunately, that’s where he’s sitting, but we’re building Boss-Ass Fortress Work Lina, so it doesn’t matter. Keep it moving.
However, there is a slight construction delay.
This occurs when I move closer to him and realize that tall, dark, handsome, and tattooed has a miniature, lighter-skinned, adorable, non-tattooed little girl version of himself seated in the chair next to him.
The sight is jarring for several reasons. He’s afuckingdad(?!), first of all. This grungy, gorgeous hunk who could be the reigning champion of an underground boxing or MMA club is adad—to a tiny slip of a girl wearing chocolate and bits of muffin all over her cheeks and in her ear and bangs with a pink tutu skirt and a shirt seemingly made entirely out of glitter. Her legs are dangling a full foot off the ground, both shoes are untied, and she has a book the size of her torso open on the table in front of her with pictures of tanks (the combat vehicle, not the top) and… is that Eisenhower?
Oh no.
I pay for my latte and stand waiting off to the side, with my back to them, cheeks getting hot, blood rushing into my ears. There’s no way.
I hear the little girl first. “Is that her, Daddy?” she whispers.
Shit.
It takes him a moment to answer. “I don’t know,” he whispers back, and it’s extraordinarily unfair that even his whisper is hot, and I can imagine him whispering “is this for me?” while peeling my pussy apa…
I’m fortunately distracted by his continuing, “I recognize her from Tito Ollie’s… oh,” he pauses, making the same connections I am currently making. “You’re the one who goes to the school, Frankie,” he finally whispers to his daughter. “Do you know what AP Sanchez looks like?”
FUCK. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
“What if I said something really loud,” she whispers really loudly, “like,I sure do love PS 2andI can’t wait for you to be the president of the parents, Daddy?—”
All right, Work Lina. Time to work.
I turn around and turn on my most professional smile. “Dominic?” I ask, looking directly and forcefully into his eyes. This may have been a mistake, however, and I should probably have looked at his nose instead, because the moment we make eye contact this close together, I feel my stone fortress halt all construction and begin to crumble.
My eyes flick down on their own accord to his (very empty) ring finger. They flick back up in time to catch him doing the very same thing to my left hand, and then this man who looks like he could belong to a Filipino motorcycle club or maybe a straight up gangblushes, and it would be adorable if I weren’t really fucking confused.
His eyes and his hair are dark, practically black, but with the sun shining into them like this, they turn a deep coffee brown. He clears his throat. “AP Sanchez?” he says, standing like some sort of gentleman and not the guy who might start the mosh pit at a heavy metal concert.
This is fine. This is work. Keep it moving, Work Lina. “Lina, please,” I say, with a smile so wide that I probably seemed deranged.Don’t scare the child, Lina. I put out my hand to shake his, and this is yet another mistake, looking at and feeling his large, warm hand envelop my own, feel his rough skin against mine. His intricate tattoos go all the way down to his hands, stopping right at the wrist, and I have the sudden urge to trace the patterns with my tongue. I notice he is looking at our conjoined hands with either bewilderment or the same sort of horniness. I yank my hand away, turning to his daughter. “What’s your name, hon?”
“Francine Flores,” she answers proudly.Franthine Floreth, actually, because she has the best lisp. She hops down from her chair, a small cloud of glitter exploding from her shirt and onto her father’s pants. He doesn’t bat an eye. She also stands politely, like a politician or a lady or maybe a knight in glitter armor. This teeny girl takes my hand and shakes it, too, with a strength and a confidence that’s atypical for someone her size. “I’m gonna be in kindergarten,” she says. I immediately like her.
“It’s really nice to meet you both,” I say. “Can I sit?”
I’m worried for a second that Francine will run around the table and do something ridiculous like pull out my chair for me, but luckily they both sit down.
“What are you learning about?” I ask Francine, gesturing to her book.
“Generally, or specifically?” she wants me to clarify. She mangles the pronunciation of both words.
“Both, if you’re offering.”
