Brenda: Are you still awake? I heard your date was smitten tonight!

Me: What? How?

Brenda: Rob’s on the phone with Mark. They’ve been yakking for a good 20 minutes. We’re gonna hit the sack soon but I had to check in with you first!

Me: Smitten?

Brenda: Yep! That’s what Rob said. :)

Smitten! Mark’s smitten! I squinch my face up in an expression of triumph, raise my fists, open my mouth… and let the tiniest whisper of a shriek escape my throat.

Yeah, baby! Woo!

Me: I had a great time, that’s for sure.

Brenda: Cut to the chase! Is he a good kisser?

Me: LOL yes

Brenda: Hah! I knew it! Did you have fun? I just heard Rob say something about stock car racing being expensive… did Mark take you to a race?

Me: No. I mean, yes, but not stock cars. Dune buggies! Fuckin awesome! There was a dirt track! With jumps and everything! We raced each other and had a blast!

Brenda: OMFG really? Dune buggies? Srsly?

Me: Yes!

Brenda: Sheesh! Rob only took me out to dinner! :P

Me: Haha dude it was so dreamy!

Brenda: Shit, girl! Testify!

Me: He’s super hot/manly/did crazy things to my body/then stopped before we went too far… SO HOT!!!

Brenda: Okay whoa! TMI alert haha!

Me: :P

Brenda: From Rob’s side of the convo, I think Mark had a good time, too.

Me: Yay! I hope so!

Pause as the text bubble floats on the display screen.

Then,

Brenda: You will be my next sister in law! I’m calling it right now!

Me: LOL!

Brenda: Good thing Jen found her own man cuz I am plumb outta brothers now :P

Me: She did? I knew it! Didn’t I say so?

Brenda: Yep! You were right! K, hun, gotta go. Talk soon! <3

Me: Nite <3

Thank God for Brenda. Comforted and happier now, it doesn’t take long before I drift off to sleep.

* * *

The rest of the weekend is uneventful. Saturday, I don’t do much, except hit the gym, go to the track, and do my dutiful laps. Still no crowds there, and I had the track to myself. All good.

After that I stay home, sit in my room and watch Netflix.

At least, I pretend to watch Netflix, since I’m really thinking about Mark and our date.

In addition to that, way down in my deepest self, I’m wondering whether or not I really want to drive in this race.

It’s been bugging me for a while now. I love to drive but it’s true that I hate crowds and performing under pressure. I’m not even sure whether I can do it. And also, I’m not sure whether I should set that kind of precedent for myself, in front of my family and the world.

I feel like I can barely keep my head above all the expectations laid on my shoulders as it is.

Especially…my father’s expectations.

Because, my Dad is tough…very tough, it’s true.

But, he has a different side to him, too. I think about stories that Mom told me.

Like, how, when I was born, she started seeing a soft side of him in a way she’d never seen with my brothers.

She says having a daughter changed him, made him more conscious of how he behaves…made him more willing to be open and tender and silly with all his children, not just me.

Brought out more of his father-instinct that ever before.

She says it started when I was a colick-y newborn.

The story goes, Mom, suffering with postpartum blues, little sleep and dealing with the aftermath of giving birth to twins, had trouble soothing me one particular day. Dad had stepped up a lot but had to work to keep things running, even more so now with six kids to feed.

Apparently, Tommy, who was always placid and content, had been sleeping peacefully as usual, but I’d been crying and in pain. Nothing she tried worked… not gripe water, not burping, not rocking, not walking or white noise or feeding nor any lullaby. She said by the time Dad got home from work that day, she was crying too.

When Dad walked in the door, he found toddlers Bryce and Gavin making a mess in the kitchen with the hasty Spaghetti-o dinner that Callum and Hamish had made, trying to help out. Of course, Callum and Hamish, teenagers at the time, were egging the younger boys on, getting them to paint spaghetti mustaches on their lips and in their hair. Typical boy stuff, not realizing that their mother was at her wit’s end.

Poor Mom was in the bedroom, trying to feed or burp or soothe me, the both of us crying like someone died.

She said Dad took one look at the goings-on, marched into the closet and came back out wearing his kilt and tartans over his work clothes. On his head was his Tam O’Shanter cap, the one with the jaunty pom-pom.

Mom said that was the first time since they’d been married that he’d donned his Scottish tartans.

Then he’d sung that old camp song, McTavish is Dead, in a thick, broad, Scottish accent and brought all the other boys in sing along, with Bryce and Gavin still covered in spaghetti sauce and giggling like mad.

To Mom’s amazement, I’d stopped my screaming, fixated on the boys’ shenanigans and watched, fascinated.

Next, she says, Dad had taken me from her arms. He’d warmed a bottle up and fed me, burped me, changed me and put me in the crib next to my sleeping brother. Then he’d helped Mom into a hot bath, and while she soaked, he cleaned up Bryce and Gavin, and cleaned the kitchen up, too. When she was finished in the bath, he’d fixed a meal of an enormous omelette with toast and home fries, and fed all the older boys with it too.

Then he’d settled the whole family to watch Disney cartoons, and sat next to my mother and tenderly cuddled her, kissing her head and telling her what a great mom she was and not to worry about a thing.

Laying on my bed now, it makes me smile to remember how Mom looked when she told that story.

There are so many ways in which my father has helped me…helped all of us.

He looks out for us. Worries about us. Provides for us and tells us how proud he was at every opportunity, even if we tried but failed at something.

Always, he was the most proud of us for trying, always praising our efforts no matter how feeble.

Now, sitting here, I remember something else Mom says. Which is, that Dad had to learn to let us fall down so that we could learn to pick ourselves up.

Mom says that’s the hardest part of being a parent and that it was always particularly hard on Dad.

Why is that? I remember asking her.

Because it’d be so easy for him to pick you up himself, was her reply. But a good father has to judge carefully when to do that. The truth is, it’s almost never.

Almost never, Mom?

Almost. And your Dad may be hard, but he is nothing if not a good father.

I know she was right. I know it! It’s just that he’s so…difficult sometimes. So… irritating!

No matter what, I can’t disappoint him.

So I have to do this race. I have to. I don’t have to win, but I do have to try.

That’s all there is to it.

Think, think, worry, worry.

Story of my life.

Finally, with effort, I mentally shove all that out of the way.

I want to think about something good now…something uplifting.

So of course, I think about how Mark looks… and how Mark feels.

The angles of his jaw, the size of his shoulders…how it hot it was to be held in place on that bubble stream and given such a crazy orgasm!

And…and…the heat of his thick length, and how it felt for that one, throbbing moment when I held it in my hand.

Sigh.

Mark hasn’t called or texted at all today.

Which, naturally, makes me entertain a few paranoid thoughts. Like, worry that he doesn’t like me anymore.

Perhaps, despite his bravado, he got cold feet because of my family. I mean, who wouldn’t?

Or…wait! Maybe I had bad breath? I brush my teeth religiously but some people just have a bad-breath problem. Maybe I’m one of them and no one wants to say so. Halitosis…bad gut bacteria or something, isn’t it?

I cup my hand and breathe into it but I can’t smell anything.

Body odor? Shit, what if I have body odor! I raise my arm and sniff my armpit, as if today’s armpit-sweat can time-travel back to yesterday or something.

Geez! I laugh to myself. Even I can’t believe how dumb I am sometimes.

Besides, let’s face it…he obviously changed his mind because my boobs are too small.

Jennifer, whose knockers are huge, always said she wished she had small, perky boobs like me. She says it’s hard to find a good bra and that she has a lot of back pain.

But being a member of the Itty Bitty Titty Club is no picnic, either.

Looking down at my chest, I squish my boobs together with the sides of my arms. Hah, now I have cleavage!

Course, as soon as I let them go…buh-bye, nice round boobie-mounds.

Push arms together…and…boobies! Let arms go…and….nuthin’.

I spend a few minutes doing boob push-ups with my arms and then I lay my head back and contemplate the ceiling.

Of course, the longer it goes without hearing from him, the worse it gets.

I stay up late, Netflix playing in the background, doing boob push-ups and wondering if I should get implants, before finally falling into a fitful sleep.

* * *

The next day, Sunday, is another boring day.

After dinner, I’m up in my room, giving myself a mani-pedi.

Toes splayed by rows of balled-up tissues stuck between them, I sit back to let the new coat of nail polish dry and get to work on my fingernails.

The first coat goes on without incident and just as I’m capping the bottle, that’s when my phone rings.

Of course!

I grab for the phone, fumble it and watch as it bounces across my bedspread and then––oof–– I slither across my bed on my stomach and snatch it between my palms just before it goes over the side.

It’s him!

My heart does a slow flip in my chest.

I answer, “Hel-looo,” in my sexiest voice, and he rewards me with a low, delighted, “Well, hi there,” delivered with a boyish laugh.

We quickly fall into a comfortable back-and-forth, re-hashing our date on Friday, all but coo-ing at each other in pleasure. We enjoy a leisurely hour-long, flirtatious chat, full of pregnant pauses and low voices, interspersed with my giggles and his chuckles.

“Ah, sweetie,” he says, after a while. “I can’t wait to see you again!”

“Me too,” I say, hoping this is the lead-in to his asking me for our next date.

“But we’re backlogged at work, and Abraham, my shop guy, is gonna be on days this week, which means, I’m working nights.”

“Oh. Well, it’s good that you’re busy at the shop,” I offer.

“Sure is, but I’m also working on a side project, might be busy this weekend, not sure yet. But I don’t know if I can see you then, either. Unless…I don’t suppose a busy, popular woman like you would keep a Friday or Saturday night open for a last-minute date with an eager suitor?” His voice is teasing and flirty.

Keeping my own voice light and flirty, I reply: “Isn’t it a little presumptuous to assume that I have a free night on the weekend in the first place?”

“Is it? Huh,” he says, all innocence. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. So…are you free or not?”

“Hold on, now…I have to check my schedule,” I say, primly. Of course, apart from practice at the Speedway on Saturday night, I’ve got no plans. But I can mess with him a little bit, just for fun. “Hmm, I don’t know…I’m fairly busy that weekend, too.”

“Oh, really?” His voice falls, disappointed.

“Well, let me see…ah…I’ve got, ummm….ritualized nail-clipping Friday night! Yep…yes, and I have to um, wash, dry and, er… polish all the door knobs on Saturday! Yes. So you see, I’m very, very busy.”

He gives a shout of laughter. “Ritualized nail clipping and door knob polishing, huh? What happened to staying home to wash your hair?”

“Excuse me? Ritualized nail-clipping is…an….um, ancient tradition,” I’m giggling now, getting warmed up to my own bullshit, “and of course, as you know, Door Knob Polishing is…the, ah…the newest Olympic sport! Yes, indeedy…”

Chortling, he interrupts. “Now, I’ve heard everything. Alright. How about we just grab a bite on Saturday after practice then? Or do something together? I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer!”

Oooh! He’s telling me, not asking me. So manly! I’m grinning ear to ear, loving it.

“Okay, sounds good.”

“Great. And I’ll call you in between, don’t you doubt it,” he adds. “Someone’s gotta make sure you’re staying out of trouble. Hell, I may drop by and ritually clip your nails for you…if …” he pauses for effect, “you’ll wash, dry and polish my knob.”

“Why, sir! I’m sure I don’t know what you’re implying,” I try for a stern tone but I can’t keep the giggle out of my voice. “I was under the impression you were a gentleman!”

“Who…me?”