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“I’m sure you’ll have a great time, Mom.”
She’d been on dates before, so it wasn’t like I was worried, but a son would always be protective of his own mother. I asked her my usual set of questions, Where was he taking her? and When would she be back? and Did she have her pepper spray?
Mom answered satisfactorily and I watched as she bounced up the staircase that led to our apartment to shower and glam up. It was nice to see her excited about something other than a new flavor of ham glaze.
I checked my phone.
My best friend, Raj, left a long, frantic voicemail about how he was absolutely going to fail AP World History. Raj was the smartest person at school, so I knew his terror was mostly due to the fear of shattering his parents’ high expectations.
My stomach did a little flip when I saw that I’d received a text from Mr. Jones, my guidance counselor.
Mr. Jones’s text read: Text when you start heading this way.
With Mom’s blessing, sometimes I spent evenings at Mr. Jones’s house. My fingers were jittery when I typed back: Sorry, can’t come over after all. Mom’s going out for the evening and I need to manage the deli while she’s out.
Staring at my screen, I saw that he read the message but didn’t reply. A different type of worry flooded my belly. I didn’t want to disappoint Mr. Jones, but I couldn’t let my mom down, either. I couldn’t let myself brood over waiting for Mr. Jones’s return text, so I silenced my phone and attended to customers as they came into the deli.
The next three hours flew by and at nine o’clock, I cleaned the deli and locked the store.
Once upstairs in the apartment, one second I was at the kitchen table, studying for my World History exam, and the next, Mom was shaking me awake.
“Have you been studying all night, Ciaran?” Mom asked with a light chuckle.
My head jerked up. I’d fallen asleep, a clear imprint of my face smudged against the workbook lying open before me. I was still wearing my red apron, my deli cap was askew, and I smelled like an Italian hoagie.
My phone said it was midnight.
“Yeah,” I croaked out. “Or, rather, attempting to study.” I glanced quickly at my texts and saw that Mr. Jones had finally replied by sending a crying face emoji. A sense of relief wafted over me. At least he wasn’t angry with me. “Did you have a nice time, Mom?”
“Absolutely,” she answered in a breathy tone.
In hindsight, I should have noticed the gleam in her eye, the twitch at her lips.
Really, I should have recognized Mom’s alertness and the way she floated—literally floated—around our small kitchen like a ballerina as she put a few dishes away, humming a tune à la Cinderella. She looked beautiful, radiant, as if joy had made her buoyant. This was not the same woman who’d left the deli a few hours ago. Oh, she wore the same lovely gown, and her hair was up in a lovely bun, and her makeup was still expertly applied, but she was not the same.
Mom came back different.
But I was groggy, with drool on my face, sleep gunk in my eyelashes, and, honestly, I was thinking more about Mr. Jones’s dreamy face than I was about my mom’s date.
When something flashed in my eyes, a gigantic exotic sparkle on Mom’s ring finger, I froze.
“What is that?” I asked, my voice skyrocketing.
I stood and pointed at her index finger. I backed up and nearly tripped over the kitchen chair.
“Stefon asked me to marry him.”
Mom’s tone was soft but there was no mistaking the joy those words brought her. The dark kitchen was illuminated by the heft of that diamond ring’s ability to reflect light. Good God, it was so big, it seemed unfathomable she could even lift her hand.
My mouth went dry and it felt like sawdust had coated my tongue.
Swallowing hard a few times, I managed to rasp out, “And you said no, right?”
Mom smiled. “I wouldn’t be wearing this if I said no, Ciaran.” She wiggled her hand. The ricocheting light was deafening and blinding.
The room spun before my eyes. I sat back down on the hard chair, head woozy. Mom knelt beside me. She smelled like vanilla, like usual, but I detected another scent—the spicy, sweet tobacco fragrance of a cigar.
There was a new man in my mom’s life.
