“To your last first date.”
I didn’t throw it out like a pickup line. I offered it as direction. It was a door I was opening and standing beside, waiting for her to walk through at her own pace.
She paused, then clinked her glass to mine. “Aren’t you confident?”
“I’m certain,” I corrected.
Certainty didn’t mean rushing. Certainty meant I was not playing with her time. It meant I saw what I saw, and I was prepared to prove it.
She took a sip, her eyes fluttering closed for half a second at the taste. Something in my chest pulled tight at that bit of softness. Her lashes fell, her shoulders eased, and for a beat, she looked like she wasn’t carrying anything heavy. I wanted more of that for her, more ease, and more exhale.
We talked about our careers and goals while we waited for the food. She told me about her kids and how she loved watching them finally understand something they swore they couldn’t get. I told her about my swimmers, the ones who came in scared of the deep end and left with medals.
“I have an interview Monday at Self Ridge for the head swim coach position.”
Her smile spread slowly. “If they have any sense, they’ll hire you. Do you realize, if that happens, we’ll be working at the same school? Teaching together?”
“There is no if,” I said. “And I’m not worried about tiring of you.”
“You sure?” she asked. “I see too much of people at work sometimes. I worry I’d get on your nerves.”
She was nervous. She expected love to come with irritation. She expected me to eventually act like her presence was a burden. I couldn’t have her thinking that at all.
“I could never tire of being in your presence, mama,” I said, my voice low. “Your spirit is calming as hell. Ineedthat.”
I meant it. My life stayed on ten most days—responsibility, watchfulness, bills, schedules, teenagers with attitudes and big dreams. Being around her made my mind loosen its grip. It made me feel human again, not just useful.
She looked down, then back up. “I like the sound of that.”
“Good. Get used to it.”
We moved into past relationships. She told me about a college boy who didn’t know what he wanted and made her feel like she was asking for too much by needing consistency. I told her about Zuri and how I chose my sisters over parties and lost a girl who didn’t understand that choice. Saying her name didn’t sting like it used to. It felt like a closed lesson now, a chapter I could reference without bleeding.
“What do you want now?” I asked her. “For real.”
“I want peace. Partnership. Somebody I don’t have to explain my worth to, someone who isn’t threatened by how much I love my kids at school or how much I love my family. Someone who understands I get quiet sometimes because life was loud for me early.”
Her honesty sat at the table with us, clean and unafraid. I respected it. I loved it. She wasn’t asking for perfection. She was asking for maturity.
“That’s me.” It was not an exaggeration or joke.
I didn’t mean to smile when I said it. I didn’t flirt it up. I just held her gaze and let my face be the proof—steady, open, present.
She met my gaze and held it.
“What about you?” she asked.
“I want a woman who’s soft with herself but firm with the world, somebody with a big heart who doesn’t let everybody play in it. A woman I can cover without smothering, protect without putting her in a cage. Somebody I can build with, have kids with, build a home and a real community around our name. I want what my parents had, just without the early exit.”
Saying it out loud made my throat tighten because that part always did. My parents were the blueprint and the heartbreak, love and loss in the same breath, an oxymoron that raised me.
Her eyes softened. “You talk about them like they’re still here.”
I gently tapped my chest. “They are. They taught me how to love. I’ve just been waiting for the right place to put it.”
That was the truth. Love had been stored up in me for years, boxed and labeled, waiting for a home that wouldn’t waste it. I’d been pouring it into my sisters, into my work, into the kids at the pool, but romantic love? I’d been holding that back, not because I couldn’t, but because I wouldn’t give it to someone who treated it like a convenience.
Our food came: oxtail eggrolls, crisp and full, my steak cooked right, and her snapper lay across the plate as if the chef believed in his own talent.
