Page 87 of Spiced!

“Stop hitting your head. You’ll get a mark, and you don’t want that tonight.”

I covered my face with a palm.

“It went well, didn’t it? That’s good. You deserve all the happiness in the world,” she said with the serenity of a woman who had arrived at a conclusion and was simply waiting for the world to catch up. “Your table’s at eight. I expect to meet this man before your next date. Call that my price for pulling strings.”

“I said seven-thirty and—”

“And I said eight because you always run late when you’re not thinking straight, and you are currently not thinking straight.” She barked a laugh. “Thinking straight, as if you could. My big ‘mo’ son.”

“Mom!”

“Oh, come on, that was funny.”

“I’m thinking perfectly straight.”

“Your thinking is wonderfully gay. That’s as far as I can go with you here.”

I stared at the ceiling and wondered why the gods had cursed me. My mom, the traitor, laughed quietly from her end of the line.

“Don’t wear the gray shirt,” she finally said.

“I wasn’t going to wear the gray shirt.”

“Wear the blue one, the one Alan gave you. It brings out your eyes and works with your skin.”

“How do you know about the blue shirt?”

“Again, I’m your mother. Why do you question the mysticism that is motherhood?” The genuine glee in her voice frightened me a little. “Besides, Alan texted me a photo of it in November. He said you’d never worn it and asked me to encourage you to wear it sometime because it does something nice for your eyes.”

“I’m thirty-three years old, Mom.”

“And you have very nice eyes and the fashion sense of a blind beggar monk.” She paused again. “Trust your mother. He’ll notice.”

“Mom.”

One more pause, the warmest of all of them.

“Brendan.”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“I’m glad it went well. I love you.”

I leaned against the exam table for a moment and looked around the room, at my stethoscope back on its hook, at the paper on the exam table still slightly crinkled from where Mofongo had sat on it, at the empty pan dulce box in the trash bin. Without thinking, my fingers reached up and found my lips where, moments before, Adrian had breathed my air.

I sighed . . . and smiled.

“Me, too, Mom. Me, too,” I said.

“Eight o’clock,” she said. “Go.”

I picked Adrian up at six-oh-four, which was four minutes later than I’d said and which I was not going to acknowledge. He came out of his building and stopped on the sidewalk when he saw my car. He wore dark jeans and a fitted black shirt. As he opened the passenger door and got in, he looked at me with one cocked brow.

“You’re four minutes late,” he said.

I resisted the chuckle. “Traffic on Dale Mabry.”

“It’s Tuesday.”