don’t have any plans,” I answer. “I was going to stay home and rent a movie Saturday night. Nothing big or fancy.”
“Well, do you want to go out tomorrow night?” he says, lifting his eyebrows, which makes his forehead crunch up a little.
“Shoah,” I say, trying to mimic his accent again.
“Tommy, you have a horrible Boston accent. Let…it…go!” he jokes. “It would be like me trying to imitate a Spanish accent, not that you have one or anything.”
We both start laughing.
After one more five-minute kiss good night, I step outside the car and into the entrance of my building. I walk in and I look back and see Mikey looking back as well, as if he’s waiting to make sure I get in okay. Then he pulls away and his car grows smaller as if it were a Hot Wheels model in the distance. As soon as I head upstairs to my studio, I plunge into my head and hug my pillow as I was hugging Mikey.
Then a text message pops up on my phone, causing it to twitter electronically.
“Good night, Tommy. Sweet dreams, cutie!”
I can’t stop thinking about Mikey for the rest of the night, and I fall asleep reliving and relishing his kisses in my mind.
The next day about 8 P.M. Mikey comes over again and my stomach is fluttering with anxious anticipation. When he walks in, we tightly hug and kiss like it had been weeks since we had seen each other. It’s only been twenty-four hours but who’s counting? He looks so handsome in his royal blue, long-sleeved button-down shirt and blue jeans. Both make his eyes more intense, like the blue of the waters off Cape Cod. We did not make any big plans besides him coming over. So after he walks in, we find ourselves lying on my big blue sofa, giggling and enjoying each other’s company. He twirls one of my longer curls with his index finger as we talk about what to do.
“I love your hair, Tommy,” he says, stretching out one of the longer curls in the front. “You look so cute with it,” he says, his lips softly kissing my forehead, then slowly down to my nose and then finally reaching my lips. He caresses my cheek with his right hand.
It seems like we are going to stay here, just like this, which is perfectly fine by me until Mikey says, “Let’s go out and get some drinks.”
I look at him, wondering, “Hmmm. Again?” We drank Thursday when we met, and a little bit last night at the restaurant, and now Saturday, he wants to go out and get some more drinks. I know he is a counselor and that’s one of the most difficult jobs around, but so is newspaper reporting!
But then he looks at me with those beautiful, sigh-inducing blue eyes, sticks his tongue out, and bites down on it, which makes me lose my mind a little and surrender to him.
I say, “Sure, Mikey! Where do you want to go?”
Half an hour later, we stroll into Club Café. He says that some of his friends are going to be there and he wants me to get to know them and have them get to know me so I oblige. I can’t deny it, I’m curious about his friends.
There’s an old saying my mom would tell me in Spanish, “You are who your friends are,” or “Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are,” or something like that. She always has some sort of old school Cuban adage to share about any situation.
So on my third night out with Mikey, I meet his friends, a lovey-dovey couple in their early thirties named Patrick and Will; they seem really nice. Patrick is a physical therapist who reminds me of comedian Jon Lovitz because of the way he talks. Will is an accountant (so many accountants in Boston) with bright red hair and the freckles to match every strand. They immediately recognize my name from the paper when Mikey introduces me. We chitchat in the video bar, where Ciara dances and gyrates on the screen to her Goodies.
Things are going well until I notice the Jon Lovitz clone and the redhead growing drunker by the minute. They each make three visits to the bartender to buy drinks for themselves (mostly Cosmos) and Coronas for Mikey. Like watching a slow train wreck, I see what’s happening and I stop drinking after my second DCV. I have a feeling I am going to be the only sober one here, not what I had in mind for a second date. Patrick and Will are a riot but they’re bumping into other guys accidentally, slurring their words, and they almost break out into a fight with The Kyle, whose crisp chambray Izod shirt now sports a reddish splash from Will’s spilled Cosmo.
Kyle glares at him the same way a coiled-up cobra does before attacking its prey, which would have ruined everyone’s night. I step in and defuse a potential fight. No one wants Queen Cobra flexing her fangs right now. I try to keep him from wielding his verbal swords.
“Kyle, hey, it was an accident. If you go to the bathroom now, dilute it in water, and hold it up to the fan, you won’t be able to tell,” I explain to him as I try to play down the whole thing. “Haven’t you accidentally spilled something on someone? There are so many guys here tonight that it’s bound to happen.” The last thing I need is a giant diva arguing with two drunken guys and Mikey stepping into the fray.
Kyle turns to me. “Tommy, your friends are as drunk as Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest. They’re making a scene and a mess here. If he bumps into me ONE MORE TIME, he will pay for a new shirt,” Kyle says just before he struts toward the bathroom in full diva mode while Will and Patrick laugh away and venture to get yet another round at the bar.
I notice Mikey seems to be getting tipsy as well, cracking jokes that really make no sense.
“Tommy, is Fidel Castro a long-lost relative of yours?” he asks in his slurred speech and laughs back.
“Um, no, Mikey. That’s not funny. If he was a relative, he would have been disowned a long time ago,” I snap back.
“Are you like Puerto Ricans and Mexicans?” he follows up with a laugh.
“Um, no! We just share a common language, but no, Cubans are not like Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. We’re all Hispanic but from different cultures and nations.”
He hangs off my arm whenever he laughs. He now wears the Corona like cologne. I smell him from a few feet away.
I look around the bar, and to my surprise, I spot Rico in the corner about to order his own drink.
“Dudette, what’s up with you? I just got here. Any hot guys tonight?” he says, peeling off his coat and showing off the tight green shirt that hugs and defines his body as if he were an anatomy textbook. The shirt brings out his green eyes even more than usual.
“I’m here with Mikey. It’s our second date or well, our third time hanging out if you count Thursday. He’s so sweet, Rico. We’re here hanging out with his friends over there by the veejay booth,” I say, pointing in their direction.
Rico looks around and sees Mikey with his drinking chums. A few seconds later, he tells me, “Your guy Mikey looks a little wasted. So do his friends. They’re all slumped up against the wall over there, getting rowdy and singing. Is the dude drunk?”
I feel embarrassed for Mikey and a little for myself.
“Yeah, they all had a bit to drink and Mikey seems pretty buzzed,” I tell Rico, looking down at my virgin Diet Coke on the rocks.
“That’s not cool. He should be having fun with you on this date, not with his pals. Be careful is all I’m saying. I don’t want you to get hurt or something. He should be sober and enjoying your company, bro. You deserve that, not him trashed like this,” Rico says before grabbing his beer from the bartender.
“I hear ya, Rico, but that happens to everyone. Let me get back to these guys before they bump into someone else and create a bar fight the likes of The Dukes of Hazzard. They already splashed Real Life Kyle with their drinks.”
“Oh no, God forbid that queen gets wet. It might ruin his Cover Girl close-up!” Rico fires back, unleashing his trademark devilish grin.
“See ya later, man,” and I head back to the other side of the bar.
Rico pats