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“Holy shit!” Luci exclaimed.
“What?”
“This guy works for Gavin? What the fuck? Are all the men in Vegas hot or something? This isn’t fair! Do you know if he’s done porn?”
“I don’t think he has, but he should,” she said.
Luci moaned. “You are killing me! So where’d you do it?”
“In a laundry room.” Stark silence on the other end. “He didn’t even take my panties off, he just moved them to the side and got busy. Someone walked in during, and I kept riding him. It was amazing.”
“I gotta go.”
Luci abruptly hung up the phone. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Luci needed some alone time. The car pulled up to the restaurant. She tossed the driver a bill and slipped out. She started toward the Italian restaurant and spotted her mother through the window. She was with Marv, the rascal from dance class. Even as she watched, Marv took her mother’s hands and kissed them. Carmen stopped in her tracks. She hadn’t seen that smile since her father passed. Her world tore at the seams. Her mother was in a relationship. It wasn’t the classes or activities that made her mother look a decade younger; it was Marv.
As if her mother sensed someone watching her, she glanced out the window and spotted her. Her eyes bulged. Carmen stood there like an idiot, staring at them. Mom jerked her hands from Marv’s as if she’d been burned and rushed out of the restaurant.
“Honey, what are you doing here?” Mom called as she hurried toward her.
“I needed a ride,” she said past the lump in her throat. “And I tracked you through your phone.”
“Oh, honey, I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
She was so shocked; she didn’t feel anything. “How did you want me to find out?”
Her mother wrung her hands. “I was waiting for the perfect time. You’ve been having such a hard time since you lost Vinny and your father passed, and you’ve been helping Lyla, and that’s been stressful. I wasn’t sure if you’d think it’s too soon.”
Carmen looked past her mother to Marv, who watched them, hands in pockets. He looked hella worried and far from the rascal she met in dance class.
“Marv is a good man.”
She refocused on her mother who looked on the verge of tears. “Are you happy?”
Mom hesitated and then nodded. “I am.”
“Is it serious?”
“He asked me to marry him.”
Carmen jerked. “Whoa. He doesn’t mess around. He’s a widower, right? Has three kids?”
Her mother smiled uncertainly. “Yes. They’re good kids. You’ll like them.”
When she came back to Las Vegas and took care of her mother after being on the road, she had been hanging on by a thread. She lay in bed for weeks, listening to her mother sob herself to sleep. Sometimes, her mother didn’t get out of bed, and now, she was a new woman. Whoever made her mom light up this way was good with her. Personal thoughts and feelings didn’t enter into this.
Carmen stuffed her emotions down and took a deep breath. “You’re finally getting around to giving me siblings? When I’m almost thirty?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Carmen.”
She stepped forward and hugged her. “Don’t cry, Mom. You’ll ruin your makeup. You don’t mind if I crash your date, do you?”
“I-I was so worried …”
She kissed her cheek and wrapped an arm around her waist. “I’m fine.”
Carmen led her back into the restaurant. Marv looked uncertain and wary as she approached. She didn’t allow herself to think. She released her mother and hugged him.
“I knew you were trouble when I met you,” she said.
