I hadn’t been on a date since I was nineteen. A blowjob attempt from a girl who had more teeth than a Mako Shark made that night disastrous enough that I had yet to go on another.

Dinner and a movie was far too cliché for me. So, I took a risk.

A big risk.

I brought Andy to my home.

She glanced around the table. “I can’t believe you took the time to make all this stuff.”

“I had a little assistance,” I admitted.

“But still.” She leaned over the platter of coxinhas and inhaled a breath through her nose. She looked at me and smiled. “To think you took the time to research everything.”

I didn’t do any research. After my decision to have Andy over for dinner, Goose volunteered to prepare a traditional Brazilian meal. He’d no more than pulled his bike out of the parking garage when Andy and I returned.

“It’s kind of a backward date,” I said, sliding the large dish of Moqueca de Camarão in her direction as I spoke.

She ladled it into her bowl. “What do you mean?”

“Start at home and go out afterward. Don’t most of them start out away, and end up in the guy’s home?”

She pushed the dish across the table. “I don’t know. I haven’t got a lot of traditional dating experience.”

“Me neither.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

I looked up from filling my bowl with the seafood stew. “I’ve been on one.”

“One?”

“One.”

“Oh. Wow. Why only one?”

I picked two of the coxinhas up and shrugged. “Superstitious, I guess.”

“You? Superstitious?”

“A little.”

I was more than a little superstitious, but didn’t want to be criticized for it. She dipped her bread in the stew, took a bite, and then cocked her head to the side. “What superstition keeps a guy from going on a date?”

“Shark teeth.”

She scrunched her face. “Sharks teeth? Like shark’s teeth, a newt’s brain, and the eye of a toad? Voodoo?”

I choked on the cheese dumpling. Hearing her say voodoo was too much. After a few drinks of water, I regained my composure. “The story is kind of gross, are you sure you want to hear it?”

She plucked a shrimp from her stew and held it over her plate. “I love gross stories.”

“My first actual date was with a girl I met at a record store. She was really pretty, but had really jacked up teeth. They went in every direction, like a shark’s teeth. I thought she was cool, so I asked her out.”

It was close to the truth. She was pretty, and had a disastrous set of teeth. Her incredible body, however, was what drew me to her.

“We went to a movie. About twenty minutes in, she offered to…” I gestured toward my lap. “You know.”

“I don’t know.”

“Blow me.”

“In the movie?” she whispered.

I nodded. “Mean Girls.”

“You took her to see Mean Girls?”

“I thought she’d enjoy it.”

She twirled her hand in a circle. “Continue.”

I didn’t think it would be appreciated if I told Andy all the details, so I condensed the story significantly, only hitting the highlights. “Let’s just say thirty seconds later that I had to make a trip to the bathroom to try and stop the bleeding. But, I couldn’t. I ended up in the emergency room.”

“Holy crap.” She stretched her lips thin, exposing her perfectly white teeth. After clacking them together a few times, she grinned. “From the teeth?”

“All three thousand of them.”

She draped her hair behind her ears and then gave me a funny look. “I guess I’m confused as to where the superstitious part comes in.”

“Maybe a little more than a little superstitious.”

“I’m intrigued,” she said with a smile. “Tell me more.”

“I decided if that date went so poorly that I had to go to the emergency room, that dates weren’t meant for me, and that they were cursed. So. I haven’t been on one since.”

She stirred her soup with her spoon slowly, seemingly less interested in eating. After a moment, she looked up. “Interesting.”

“What about you?”

“I’ve never sent anyone to the hospital” she said flatly. “I try to use my lips and tongue, not my teeth.”

“Not that.” I let out a laugh. “Dating. How can you be single?”

She set her spoon on her plate, brushed her hands over the tops of her tits, and stood. “Look at me. A good long look. Then, ask yourself if you really need to ask that question.”

She was wearing a dress that complimented her figure completely. Her hair was down, but not completely straight. It was wavy, like she’d worn it several times in the past. Her high cheeks and narrow nose were easily overlooked, making her full lips a point of concentration for anyone who met her. When combined with her eyes, it was enough to make any man stop and stare.

“You’re beautiful.”

“I’m not,” she said. “But thank you.”

I admired her as she sat down and began to pick the shrimp from her soup. After dunking what was left of her bread into the coconut milk broth, she lifted it to her mouth and then paused. “Here’s the rest of the story.”

“What story?”

She poked the piece of bread into her mouth. After swallowing, she continued. “Nobody’s perfect. You know that, right?”

“All too well.”

“Well. I’m not even close.” She grabbed another bread ball, poked the entire thing into her mouth, and continued as she chewed. “I think I had self-esteem issues when I was young. So, I let anybody who wanted to bone have at it. I was the girl in school that was commonly referred to as a slut. It started after my parents were gone. I never blamed what happened between them for my deficiencies, but it played a part in me being who I was.”

“How old were you when they split up,” I asked.

“Thirteen.”

“There’s a reason hotels don’t have a thirteenth floor.”

“They don’t?”

“Nope. It’s bad luck.”

“I’ll agree with you on that one.” She bit into one of the fried cheese balls and rolled her eyes in pleasure. “So, anyway. I was a little tramp. Then, we moved to Syracuse when I was in eleventh grade. When we did, I decided to change. No more sex unless I was in a relationship. I met a guy. We got serious. Everything was perfect. At least it seemed like it.”

“What happened?”

“Everything.” She tossed the remaining piece of food onto her plate. “He lied to me. About everything. I thought he had a job, but he didn’t. He was a drug dealer. I thought he was faithful. But he wasn’t. He stuck his dick in half the city’s women. I thought he wasn’t abusive, but when I confronted him about lying, he beat me. Not a little bit, either. He tied me up and left me in our apartment.”

I felt sick, for more reasons than one. I wasn’t a mirror image of her former ass hat boyfriend, but I was close. I was a criminal and I wasn’t completely truthful.

I’d never beat a woman, and I’d beat any man who did, but that didn’t excuse me from my other faults.

“I’d say I’m sorry, but it’s not near enough,” I said.

“He said he’d kill me if I left him, but I came out here to go to school anyway. Holly came too.” She laughed and pushed her plate to the side. “Her and her husband. He fucked some skank at Hooters and they split up right when I was graduating college. I guess when you get right down to it, I’ve got a hard time trusting men.”

The last thing on earth I wanted to do was cause her harm. I couldn’t see any way to keep from it, though.

“I’m sorry you went through all that,” I said. “I really am.”

It was all I could think of, but it wasn’t enough, and I realized it. Knowing that she’d been through everything that she described – and somehow managed to graduate college and carry on with life – spoke volumes of her character, strength, and worth as a human being. I admired her from a whole different perspective because of it.

“It’s just life. I’m a big girl.” She picked up her butter knife and wagged it at me. “I can say this: there’ll never be another man that treats me like that. Not unless he wants his dick cut off.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You’ll need a bigger knife than that.”

She laughed out loud. “That’s no shit. I’d need a chainsaw for that tree trunk of yours.”

I finished my bread and nodded toward her plate. “Are you done?”

“I’m stuffed.”

“Too full for dessert?”

“Right now? Yeah.”

Goose had prepared pave, a Brazilian layered cake. It wasn’t what I needed, and I doubted it would cure how she was feeling. There was only one thing I knew she wanted for sure, and it wasn’t something I’d ever been interested in providing anyone with in the past.

In fact, until that night, I viewed it as off-limits.

I pushed myself away from the table. I’d been dying to see her in a pair of jeans anyway.

“Do you have some jeans you can change into?”

“In my purse?”

“No. At home.”

“I mean. Yeah. Why?”

“Because,” I said. “We’re going for a motorcycle ride.”

“Seriously?” Her eyes shot wide and she leapt from her seat. “I thought it only held one person?”

“I’ve got another one downstairs that’s supposed to hold two.” I said. “I’ve just never tried it.”

“You’ve never given a girl a ride?”

“Nope.”

“Superstitious belief?”

“No. I’ve never met anyone worthy,” I said. “Until now.”