“If you’re done with work soon… do you want to go for that pizza?” Mike stares at me in surprise. “I mean… if you’re not busy.” I feel my cheeks heat. I can’t remember the last time I’ve asked someone to go out, if ever. This is completely new territory for me; Marco managed our entire relationship, not that Mike and I have one of those.
“Yeah, that would be good,” Mike says at last, and I nearly sag with relief. Surely this doesn’t need to be so hard. “I don’t get off for another hour, though. Could I meet you somewhere?”
“Sure.”
“What about Barb’s? That’s where I usually go.”
“Yeah, that would be great.”
We agree to meet and then I head home, a flurry of nerves taking residence in my stomach. Should I change? Put some makeup on? I barely have any. And if I look too dressed up, will Mike think it’s weird? It’s not as if this is an actual date.
I end up changing my top and adding a bit of lip gloss, which isn’t much effort but still feels like too much.
When I walk into Barb’s an hour later, Mike is already sitting in one of the booths with a Coke, and he rises as I walk towards him.
“I got off a little early. Let me get you a drink.”
“Um, okay.” I nod towards his Coke. “That looks good.”
I slip into the other side of the booth, feeling incredibly self-conscious. Already this is feeling more like a date than I expected it to.
Mike signals to the waitress and then orders me a Coke, before turning to me with a smile that spreads across his whole face and crinkles his cheeks. He’s so friendly-looking that I can’t help but relax and smile back.
“So, what did you get up to today?” he asks and I surprise myself by answering honestly, by wanting to.
“I went to my first counseling session. It was… intense.” Kind of like me, then, apparently.
“Intense?” Mike repeats with a frown.
“I’ve never done any kind of counseling or therapy before. The whole thought of it freaked me out, to be honest.”
“Yeah, I can see how it could. I’ve never had any, either.” He props his elbows on the table. “So were you glad you went, in the end?”
“Yeah.” I pause to take a sip of my Coke that the waitress just delivered. “I ended up talking about my dad, which I didn’t expect at all.”
“Why not?”
“It’s just such old history. I thought I was over it.”
Mike tilts his head, his expression all sympathy. “Over what?”
“Just… the rejection, I suppose.” My throat is getting tight again and I take another sip of Coke to ease it. “He asked me to leave home when I was eighteen.”
“That’s tough.” Mike doesn’t sound surprised, though, and I wonder if he has a similar story with his own dad. “How come?”
Haltingly, painfully, I tell him about my mother leaving, the DUI, the way my life fell to pieces all around me, and how my dad seemed indifferent to it all, to me. In the nine years since I’ve left home, I’ve seen him three times—once early on, to get my stuff when I was moving into Marco’s, once when Dylan was born, and a last-ditch effort when Dylan was four. Each time, my dad acted as if he couldn’t care less.
“I really did think I was over it,” I tell Mike. “He’s a jerk, I get that. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does.” I try to smile but sniff instead, and Mike reaches over and holds my hand. It feels both weird and right, and I don’t want him to let go.
A few minutes later, the waitress comes to take our order, and we agree to split a medium buffalo chicken, which is both of our favorite pizza topping. After she leaves, the intensity has thankfully broken, and I’ve avoided crying, which is definitely a good thing.
“Anyway, that was all a long time ago,” I say in the tone of someone who is finishing a conversation. “What about you? Are you close to your family?”
“My mom, yeah.” Mike picks at the peeling corner of the laminated menu. “My dad walked out when I was nine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t mind so much. He wasn’t a great guy, you know?” His mouth twists and he looks away.
“Still, it’s hard. My dad isn’t that great a guy, at least I don’t think he is. But I’ve still wanted him to love