I was over the moon when a few months later the doctor told us we were going to have a little girl. Just like Ash had predicted all those years earlier.
Then just a few months after that, in the blink of an eye, my life changed again.
Mia walked into my office with a look on her face that even though I’d never seen before, I knew was bad. “Is it the baby? Ash?”
Her lip quivered and she told me that Ash and AJ had been hit by a truck on the way home from the farmer’s market.
Ash normally went alone, but since she was nine months pregnant, I’d asked AJ to go with her. They’d been coming home when a drunk driver blew through a stoplight and hit them. They were both rushed to the hospital.
When I got to the hospital, I was informed that Ash and AJ hadn’t made it, but that they were able to deliver Lexi Grace. I lost my wife and son and was handed a healthy six-pound, five-ounce baby girl.
The moment was surreal, tragic, and indescribable.
“There he is!” Nick began a slow clap as he stood from the booth. “Alex Vaughn San Francisco’s Most Eligible Bachelor.”
I wanted to tell him to sit the fuck down, but I knew that would only encourage him to continue his antics. I walked across the checkerboard floor of the diner which was filled mostly with businesspeople who had a limited time to eat and get back to the office, who thankfully weren’t paying any attention to my idiot friends. I glanced around at the red leather tufted booths that lined the walls, which were filled with black and white photos of the city dating back to the 1900s. The décor hadn’t changed in the twenty plus years I’d been coming here. It was like stepping into a place frozen in time. There was something oddly comforting about that.
“Can I get your autograph?” As I approached the booth, Maddox handed me a copy ofThe Bay Lifewhich featured a full-length photo of me on the cover.
It was so different seeing something online versus holding the publication in your hand. I knew that technically things lasted longer on the web, but there was something that felt so permanent and tactile about having it in print.
“No!” Nick shoved his copy toward me. “Sign mine first.”
I sat down, ignoring both Beavis and Butthead. When Nick had been crowned with the ridiculous title, we’d bought him a sash that he’d proudly worn. I was happy to see that the boys hadn’t pulled that out for me. If I’d ever, in a million years, thought that there was a chance in hell that I’d be the one in the hot seat, I wouldn’t have had it made.
“There are my boys! Be right over.” Leticia, who had been serving us for the past two and half decades, greeted us from the soda stand where she was filling tumblers of coke. She’d witnessed our successes and failures and acted like a proud mom.
When we were just scrawny, cocky kids with chips on our shoulders who were routinely tossed out of establishments because it was obvious we couldn’t pay for a meal, Leticia had made sure we never went hungry. She’d told us that if we ever needed food, to come see her and she’d make sure we were fed. And she’d made good on that promise. Over the years, she’d fed us dozens of meals. If it weren’t for her, we’d have gone to sleep hungry a lot of nights in that group home.
The three of us had come from humble beginnings, to say the least. I’d started as the lowest man on the totem pole on construction jobs. Then used my savings to buy a dilapidated building in Oakland, renovated it, and flipped it. One building led to another. I started working with an investment firm in Southern California. That relationship led to others and in the last few years, Vaughn Holdings had gone global.
Maddox was the tech geek of the group. When we were kids, he could disarm any security system, he knew all the cheat codes for every video game and could hotwire cars. As an adult, he’d developed a cybersecurity system that was used by the Pentagon. He’d been offered billions of dollars for the patent, but he’d declined. When his company went public five years ago the IPO was near seventy-two dollars per share. Since then, the stock value had skyrocketed.
Nick was the true entrepreneur in the group. The salesman. The showman. The investor. He’d built his media empire starting as an intern at a local radio station. Soon he was on the air. Within two short years, his radio show was not only number one in its area, it had been syndicated. Once he started making real money, he dabbled in the stock market and made a few bold investments that had paid off. When they did, he started Locke Media Group and bought the station that he’d interned at.
After dropping off drinks at a table filled with tourists wearing I Heart San Francisco shirts, Leticia’s next stop was our booth. Her long, waist length black hair was pulled up in her signature ponytail and it swung back and forth as she crossed the room with a carafe of coffee in her hand.
Like the diner, she looked exactly the same as the first time we’d met her, with the exception of some gray hair threaded in her inky locks. Her age hadn’t dampened her quick wit or sharp tongue. She had opinions and she wasn’t afraid to share them with us. When it came to Leticia, the customer wasn’t always right. She was.
She loved her job. I knew that because she didn’t have to work here. Maddox, Nick and I had made sure of that. Over the past decade, I’d paid off all her credit card debt and the mortgage on her home. Maddox had paid for all four of her kids to go to college, and Nick had bought her a Tesla with all the bells and whistles. He always had to be the flashy one.
“So, what’s on the agenda for the Sexy Single Dad’s Club today?” Leticia asked with a sparkle in her eyes.
One of the younger female wait staff had dubbed our weekly lunches the Sexy CEO Club. And since we’d all become fathers, it had morphed into the Sexy Single Dad’s Club. I was not a fan of the title, but it was better than being San Francisco’s Most Eligible Bachelor.
“You haven’t seen, Leticia?” Maddox handed her his magazine. “We’re here to celebrate. Our boy here is San Francisco’s Most Eligible Bachelor.”
“Oh,” Leticia cringed as she hissed through clenched teeth and directed her attention to Nick. “I bet that stung.”
Leticia knew us well. Nick was the one with the ego. Maddox was the sensitive one. And I was the serious one.
“The fact that I know how much Alex is going toenjoythis dulls the sting just a bit.” Nick explained matter-of-factly.
After she asked about the girls, we put in our orders and as soon as Leticia walked away Nick and Maddox both stared at me expectantly.
“What?”
Nick batted his eyes at me. “We’re waiting to find out which one of us you’re going to ask to be your plus one for the dinner.”
