“Thanks. I’m hardly seasoned, but it’s fun to use the stuff I learned in years of school.”
The traffic leaving South Beach is proof of what she told me I’d face if I lived there. I’m glad to have someone with local knowledge helping me figure out this new place. “You must’ve been in college when you lost your husband, right?”
“I was attending community college, working at the restaurant and trying to get pregnant. We planned to be young parents. I was going to stay home with them and go to school when they did. After Tony died, I got a big insurance payout that I put toward school. It gave me something to do once the initial shock of his death wore off.”
“I’m so sorry that happened to you.”
“Thanks.”
“Have you . . .” I shake my head. It’s none of my fucking business whether she’s dated anyone else since she lost her husband.
“Have I what?”
“I was about to ask you a deeply personal question.”
“It’s fine. I’m used to it. Everyone I meet wants to know if I’ve dated again since I lost him, and the answer is I’ve had a lot of first dates, a couple of second dates and very few third dates. My grandmothers love to fix me up with guys they know, their friends’ grandsons, customers at the restaurant. At first I wanted nothing to do with it, but after a while, it was easier to go on the dates than have to constantly tell them why I didn’t want to.”
“It was their way of trying to help you move on, I suppose.”
“Yes,” she says with a sigh, “and I love them for it. We all suffered over the loss of Tony. He’d been part of our family for ten years by the time we lost him.”
“I can’t imagine what it would be like to meet ‘the one’ when you’re as young as you guys were.” I’ve never met anyone I could picture spending the rest of my life with. I’d begun to wonder if Ginger might be my “one” when I found out what she really wanted with me—and it had nothing to do with forever except for the stain she put on my good name.
“It’s funny that I can’t remember meeting him. We used to talk about that a lot. He remembered every detail of that day, but I don’t. I was with friends at an arcade in the mall, and he said the Selena song ‘I Could Fall in Love’ was playing the first time he saw me. I used to say he was making that up, but he swore it was true.”
“That’s very sweet.”
“We lived near each other but went to different schools, which is why we hadn’t met before. He had friends who went to my school, and they approached me to ask if I’d consider meeting their friend, who’d decided he was going to marry me.”
“No way. They did not say that.”
“They did!”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘I’m fourteen, and I’m not marrying your friend.’ They begged and pleaded with me to at least talk to him, which I said I’d do, mostly because I sensed they weren’t going to let up until I did. I figured I’d talk to him once, tell him to get real and move on.”
“But that’s not what happened.”
“That’s not what happened.”
I’m completely captivated by her story and more than a little heartbroken to know how it ended. “Don’t stop now! I have to know the rest. But only if you want to tell me.”
“It’s one of my favorite stories to tell. He called me that night and every night for a month. My parents were all over me about who I was on the phone with every night. I can’t really recall the specifics of what we talked about, but I do remember laughing—a lot. He was really funny. I think that was the first thing I loved about him, that he could make me laugh even when I was annoyed with him.”
“An important quality, for sure.”
“It took two years of us being best friends before my parents would officially allow us to date.”
“Holy crap. That must’ve been a long two years.”
“It was, and believe me, I was so pissed about it. I thought my parents were impossibly old-fashioned. But when I look back at it now, I can see how important that friendship was for everything that came later.”