by Sean Michael
“For me too. Seriously. I’m embarrassed.”
“I could spill my water once we get some, and then we’d be equal in the embarrassment department,” he suggested, testing Ryan’s sense of humor.
“Let’s go for a chocolate mustache during dessert instead.”
“That sounds like a lot more fun. Less wet too.” Lord, he was a dork.
“And way less cold.” Ryan winked at him.
He chuckled, pleased that his sense of humor hadn’t made Ryan wrinkle his nose or frown or get up and walk out.
“I see you’ve got drinks already,” the waitress noted as she stopped at their table. “Did you want anything else with your dinner?”
“I’d like some water, please. In a glass,” he added, giving Ryan a grin.
“Same here.” Ryan was laughing now. Soft, quiet snickers.
They chuckled easily together, and it was neat, having this kind of rapport right from the start.
“Do you know what you want, or do you need a few minutes?” their waitress asked.
“We haven’t even looked at the menu,” Alex admitted. They’d only just arrived at their table, and he’d refused the offer of a menu while at the bar.
“Okay. Take your time, and I’ll bring you those waters and some rolls.”
“Thank you.” Ryan gave her a nod and a smile.
Alex did like politeness in a man. So far, so good. Did that mean he was actually considering seeing this guy again? Yeah, yeah he was.
“I suppose we should look at our menus before we get into the getting to know you part of the evening,” he suggested. He’d hate to have to tell the waitress they still hadn’t done it when she came back.
“Works for me. Have you been here before? Do you know what’s good?” Ryan asked.
“I never have, no—I’m new to the city. But I’ve been told it’s one of the best in town and that everything is good.”
“Ah, well then, I will be daring. I never get fish at home, so I’m going to have the baked haddock.”
“I want meat.” Alex grinned, realizing he was almost drooling. “I’ve been out of the country, and I’ve eaten a whole lot of rice recently.”
“So, I’m dying to know what you do.” Ryan set aside his menu, turning his attention to Alex.
“I run a nonprofit organization that builds schools, homes, roads, and wells in third-world countries. I spend a lot of time overseas.” Or at least he had. He was running out of money, though. He was going to have to rely on the outside emergency relief gigs for now and start fundraising in earnest.
“Oh, very cool. That sounds so exciting! Where did you just come from?”
“Haiti. It’s still in really rough shape. Heartbreaking really. It’s going to be a long time before they don’t need help anymore.” Sometimes the disconnect between being home and ordering a steak dinner and being out in the field was huge. No, not sometimes. It always was, but it was a much larger disconnect when he’d just arrived home.
“I can only imagine. You’re a hero. That’s so cool.”
“I don’t know about that….” He was trying to make up for how his inheritance had been earned in the first place. He hoped his father was rolling over in his grave.
“Well, I think it’s vastly cool.”
He accepted the compliment with a nod of his head. “Thank you.”
The waitress came with the rolls and their water. “Have you decided?”
Ryan ordered first as Alex took a quick glance at the steak section of the menu.
“I’ll take the baked haddock, please, with the potatoes and haricots verts.”
Bingo, there was his favorite. “And I’ll have the filet mignon, rare, along with the roasted potatoes and vegetables, please.”
She wrote on her notepad and asked, “You guys want salad to start?”
“God yes.” He craved fresh greens almost as much as he did a steak. “Garden with balsamic dressing on the side, please.” He looked at Ryan to see whether or not he was going to be crunching on his own.
“I’ll take the strawberry spinach pecan salad, please. That sounds heavenly.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“It’s delicious.” Their waitress put her pad in one of her pockets. “I’ll have the salads out shortly.”
Alex waited until she’d left. “Maybe I’ll sneak a strawberry or a pecan. How do you feel about sharing with strangers?”
“It has been a long time since that sort of thing worried me.”
“Oh?” That was an interesting sentence.
“I live with four little thieves. I can’t remember a meal when someone didn’t want a bite.”
He felt his eyebrows rise up to his hairline. “Four little thieves?” That was an awful lot of dogs. Or cats.
“Yes. My girls—Melanie, Daisy, Daffodil, and Rose. Rose just turned five yesterday.”
“Oh! Kids. Wow.” Four girls. Wow. That was…. Ryan was a father. That was totally unexpected.
“Yes, Mel is fifteen, Daisy is nine, Daffy’s about to turn seven, and Rosie’s five. She’ll start school in September.”
Fifteen? How old was this man?
“You’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter?” He tried to keep the shock out of his voice, but, well, it was rather shocking.
“Yes, and obviously that was a surprise.” Ryan blushed dark, his cheeks looking like they were on fire. “I’m sorry, man. Honestly. I would have thought your aunt would have told you.”
“Dude, you don’t look old enough to have a fifteen-year-old daughter.” That seemed like the safest answer.
“I appreciate that. I am, though.” Ryan stood, surprising him. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I have a daughter and a mother to speak to, rather firmly, about setting up blind dates for me.”
Alex stood too, feeling like an asshole now. It had just been such a big surprise was all. “No, please. Sit down. We’ve ordered, and I presume you’ve got a babysitter and everything. We might as well eat, right?”
“Only if you’re sure. I don’t want you to feel duped.”
“I don’t feel duped, Ryan. Surprised, yes, but you can’t blame me for that.”
The manager hurried over. “Is everything all right here?”
“We’re fine, thank you.” This had nothing to do with the restaurant. Even if Ryan wound up leaving, they wouldn’t make a huge scene, and they’d pay the damn bill.
“Yes. Just fine.” Ryan sat back down, eyes on the bread plate for a second. “So, this is awkward.”
Alex sat too, pulling his chair back up to the table. “Yeah, but we can work through it, right? Butter up a roll and tell me about your family.” He was not going to make Ryan feel bad for being a father, or for him not knowing about it.
“Sure.” Ryan grabbed a roll and started mangling the bread. Alex didn’t comment on it; there were more rolls in the basket. Ryan cleared his throat. “So, I have four girls.”
“You’re a little outnumbered, eh?”
“Absolutely, but they are, basically, good little monsters.”
He chuckled as he grabbed a roll of his own and buttered it. “So the obvious question is how?”
“That’s complicated. I was dating a girl in high school, and we were… well, we were fifteen and pregnant. I’ve been raising Mel from the start. It’s what worked best for both of us. Then, five years ago, my older sister and her husband were in a car accident, and suddenly I had an infant, a toddler, and a little girl.”
“Wow.” Man, had he misjudged. Old enough to have a fifteen-year-old but only just barely. And stepping up for both his own kid and his sister’s. He could totally respect that. “I’m very sorry for your loss. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been.”
“It was devastating, but we pulled together. I’m lucky that Mel has a good heart, that she just brought those babies in and said, ‘These are ours.’”
“That’s awesome.” He shook his head. “I’m just trying to imagine bringing up four girls, but it see
ms like a very daunting task.”
“Well, you rescue whole countries,” Ryan countered.
He shook his head. “No, no. People in those countries. And I just build things, then come home again to steak dinners.” He took a bite of his roll. Oh man, they were homemade. That boded well for the rest of the food—it looked like this was a good choice of restaurant.
Ryan nibbled on his own roll, beginning to relax.
“So is this your first date in a while?” Alex asked. Not that Alex could talk—he couldn’t remember his last first date. No, that was a lie. He totally could, and it had been a disaster from top to bottom.
“Eight years?”
“Oh, you win. I’d like to say it’s like riding a bicycle, but we both know that’s not true. It still makes me feel like a schoolboy,” he admitted.
“My daughter is afraid I’m going to get old alone.”
“With four girls? You’re going to be lucky to have a moment’s peace if my aunt is anything to go by.”
“Indeed. Well, I’ve tried. Now I am off the hook for another eight years, and by then I’ll have one out of university, one a senior in high school, and… hell, the little one will be a teenager.”
“Ouch. Have I been that shitty of a first date already? I am sorry at my initial reaction. I was surprised. We can turn it around, though, can’t we?” Alex totally didn’t want Ryan to feel bad about this date, whether it led to anything or not.
“No. No, that’s not…. I could just tell you were horrified.”
“Shocked and horrified are two totally different things. I wasn’t horrified, I promise. Plus, I thought having a fifteen-year-old meant you were like eighty-seven or something,” he teased, hoping to lighten the mood some.
“There are days when I feel like that.” Ryan grinned at him, and suddenly the guy was simply… adorkable.
“So what do you do to support all these women in your life?” Alex asked.
“I’m a commercial artist. I work from home.”
Okay, that was a surprise. He wasn’t sure why it should be, but it was.
“So, you do stuff like ads for magazines?” he asked.
“Ads, book covers, magazine spreads—whatever my agent sends.”
“That’s really neat—and cool that you can do it from home. More and more people are doing that, I think.” In countries with technology, anyway.
“Apparently it’s the wave of the future.” Ryan snorted. “It sounds way cooler than it is.”
“I don’t know, being able to work in your underwear sounds pretty fun.” He’d been about to say in the nude but had changed it to underwear at the last second, figuring a dad didn’t have the luxury of hanging out in his altogether.
“We have had more than one jammie day. It’ll be much easier when Rosie goes to school.”
“I bet.”
Before he could say anything else, their salads arrived.
“So, is your life pretty much diapers, baths, and cartoons?” he asked once the waitress had gone.
“No more diapers.” Ryan gave him a dramatic look, eyes huge. “It’s more makeup and video games and homework and cartoons.”
“You might deserve a medal for bravery.” Alex chuckled, but really, it seemed like a different world to him.
“It’s just what parents do all over the world.”
“Of course. How’s your salad?” he asked, changing the subject before Ryan could decide he was a total idiot.
“Delicious. The strawberries and the balsamic are magical.”
“Yeah? Can I have a taste?” He thought this whole date could use a little magical.
Ryan forked up a bite and offered it over with a warm smile. Alex closed his lips over the fork, surprised by how intimate it seemed. And more surprised by how that hit him in his gut. There could be chemistry between them. Excellent chemistry if this sharing of a single bite of food was anything to go by.
“Good, isn’t it?” Ryan’s eyes were fastened on his mouth.
“Yeah, surprisingly.” He blinked, realizing he hadn’t even tasted the mouthful. He’d been too busy being astounded by the feeding itself. He cleared his throat. “Would you like to taste mine?”
“I’d love you. To. I’d love to.”
Alex blinked again and cleared his throat before spearing a forkful of his greens and offering them over. He was just going to ignore that.
“Sorry, man. You know how many times a day I say that?” Ryan leaned forward and opened his mouth like a baby bird.
Alex fed the fork into Ryan’s mouth, and just like it had when he’d been the one being fed, the intimacy of the act sent a thrill through him. It left him smiling at Ryan.
“Not bad,” Ryan said. “Not bad at all.”
Yeah, that was what he was starting to think about this date. Not only better than expected, but totally coming back from a rocky start. He offered Ryan a warm smile. “I’ll have to remember the strawberry one if I ever find myself here again. We’ll have to compare our mains next.”
“I can handle that. I haven’t had haddock in a while. I love it.”
“Cool. What other food do you like?” He dug into his salad, enjoying the flavors, the textures, the sharpness of the vinaigrette.
“I eat a lot of Cheerios.”
He laughed. “But the question was what other food do you like?”
“I like anything on the grill, I like eggs, and I like a good roasted chicken.”
“Do you do that beer can chicken on the grill where you shove the can up the chicken’s butt?” He’d never cooked that himself or seen it cooked or tasted it, but he’d seen it on the internet, and it intrigued him. It seemed like such a guy way to make chicken.
“My girls love that. I do a fair bit in the summer.”
So much for it being a macho thing if the girls loved it. He laughed, though.
“What about movies? What kind do you like?” It was basic Get to Know You 101, but he didn’t really have “game,” and any he did have he was thrown out of by Ryan being a father.
“Yes, please. I’m a stay-at-home, work-from-home dad. Watching movies is my passion.”
“So you’ve seen everything, then?” Because he’d seen nothing. His indulgence on the road was books. Physical ones. A lot of the places he went didn’t have electricity or Wi-Fi, and if they did, it certainly didn’t come cheap and it wasn’t reliable.
“Everything that’s available on streaming. We don’t go to the theater often—with five of us, it’s just too expensive.”
“I bet. Plus, how well do kids sit in a theater anyway?”
“I assume that will get easier, although Daisy gets overwhelmed by the noise and the bright lights.” Ryan got this soft expression when he talked about the kids.
“I guess if it’s something you’re not used to….” Alex always had a bit of a shock when he came home from overseas. Airports were especially bright. “What do you like to do in your downtime? Do you even get any?”
“I garden. I paint. I do a lot of upkeep on the house. What about you? What are you into?”
“I love reading. And dancing.” He smiled. Now there was a universal language. “I don’t mean anything formal—just move to the music, you know? All the places I’ve been, people dance.”
“I love to dance. I mean, I’m not good at it, but there’s a lot of dancing in the under-ten set. Lots. And all four of my girls are in dance class.”
Seriously? Was everything in this guy’s life the kids? Alex was trying to come up with topics that they could share here.
“You like to play sports?” he tried. He played a lot of soccer. A lot. Of course, most of the places he played, they tended to call it football. He didn’t watch professional sports much, though. He never was around enough to follow anyone through a season.
“I never have done much.” Ryan blushed again. “You must think I’m so boring. I was very young when my life changed, and I’ve focused on school and work, mostly.”
“That m
akes you interesting, doesn’t it?” Alex suggested. “You’re not like everyone else.”
“That’s kind of you. Why don’t you tell me about you? You have a fascinating story. How did you get into your line of work?”
“My father owned a company that took advantage of third-world countries. Mined them for everything they were worth and left the people worse off than they already were. When he died and left everything to me, I wanted to do something to make up for where all that money I inherited had come from. So I set up a nonprofit and got to work.”
“Good for you! That’s very honorable.” Ryan obviously didn’t understand how desperate these people were.
“It doesn’t make up for it, but it lets me sleep at night.”
“The father’s sins aren’t the son’s, you know?” Ryan noted.
Alex nodded. He knew. That didn’t make him feel that much better about it. “That doesn’t help any of the people in desperate straits, though.”
“No. No, I don’t suppose it does.”
“It’s good work, though. But I’m going to have to start soliciting donations. Funds are beginning to dry up.” And if he couldn’t find money to go back, he supposed he’d have to count on jobs with the Red Cross and such. He already did work for them if he was available when disasters happened. Theirs was a fairly small community when it came down to it. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to bring the tone down.”
“It’s very honorable,” Ryan said. “I work with a few ad agencies, but no one directly.”
“Do you come up with the campaigns or just do the graphics for them?”
Here was a topic not likely to lead to kids or the poor people of the world.
“I do the graphics. I have a fine arts degree. I’m a painter, believe it or not.” Ryan sounded like he had a hard time believing it himself.
“A painter? That’s cool. Do you get time to do that?”
“I do. I have a studio in the basement, along with my office.”
“I’d like to see your paintings sometime.” Alex laughed when he realized how that sounded. “That wasn’t a line, I swear.”
“Come in and see my etchings?” Ryan waggled his eyebrows.
Alex laughed again. “Yeah. Yeah, something like that.”