Page 81 of Tony

I nod my head slowly. “Yeah,” I whisper. “Because I’m ready for date four.”

She looks down to hide her smile, but quickly looks back up again. “You’re trying to get out of how date three ends, aren’t you?”

“No,” I say, taking her hand. “I’m just trying to put it behind us so we can start something new. Because I feel like… like… everything that came before now was about the past. And I want this day to be about the future.”

She points at me. “Good answer.”

“It was, wasn’t it?”

She laughs. “OK. Date four it is. What should we do?”

There’s a back door in the breakroom. I have no idea where it leads, but I don’t really care at the moment. I just need to get her out of here and into someplace else. So I take her over to the door. I open it up and when we walk out into the late morning sunshine, it really does feel like a new beginning.

I start heading in the general direction of the car, still holding her hand.

“Are we going home?” Soshee asks.

“Home,” I repeat absently. We come to the edge of the alley and I look around, trying to figure out where the car is. I see it in the parking lot across the street and start heading that way. “Yeah. We’re going home.”

“You’re sure? I mean, we’re already in Boulder. I can think of a lot of unique ways to spend date four right here.”

“Such as?”

“We could go to the park and make fun of the hippies. Or stand in front of a random Subaru Outback and pretend we’re the cool outdoorsy cats who own it. Oooh, I know. We could get drunk on a craft brewery tour. Or maybe buy some pot, smoke out, and then crash a chemistry lecture at the university and giggle like idiots until we get kicked out.”

I look at her and shake my head. Because I could totally picture her doing all those things. “Now who’s trying to get out of the end of date three?”

“Me?” She points to herself as we stop in front of her crappy Corolla. “Why would I want to get out of the end of date three? You were wearing nothing but a towel two hours ago, mister. I was ready to end date three before it even started. Now we’re an hour away from a decent place to fuck, probably gonna run out of gas on the way home, have to hitch a ride into Berthoud on a tractor, and fuck in a gas station bathroom as we wait for the tow truck to drop the car because we won’t be able to stand the sexual tension for one moment longer.”

I toss my head back and laugh. She laughs too. But then I get serious and place my hands on her hips and press my chest up to her breasts. I lean into her ear and whisper, “I’m only going to warn you once, Soshee Ameci. If you talk dirty to me like that again, I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

“Mmm,” she hums. “Now I’m intrigued. What would happen next?”

“I’ll throw you down on the hood of this car, hike that cute tennis skirt up to your hips, and fuck you into oblivion in front of this whole town.”

She hisses out a chuckle and pushes me backwards. “Get in the car, before I decide that sounds like a pretty good time.”

God, this woman. I like her. A lot.

But as fun as the whole public fuck thing sounds, that’s something I would do with Rosalinda back in the day. And I’m done with her. One hundred percent done with her. So done with her that I want everything I do with Soshee from this moment on to be the exact opposite of how I’ve handled things in the past.

So I get in the car and we leave Boulder and her crazy tea-reading mother behind.

Soshee talks the whole way home. Just like she did while I was in the shower earlier. It’s a habit of hers that I could get used to. She has baggage. Everyone has baggage. But she’s not one of those girls who dwells on it. She’s always in the present. Not looking back or forward. Just enjoying the moment.

She articulated this philosophy of hers last night when she was talking about her apartment. She knew it was temporary but she was going to enjoy every second of her experience there until it ended.

I heard her. And I believed her. Didn’t have a reason not to. But I didn’t really think about what that meant.

She is comfortable in her skin. That’s what it means.

It’s a skill I’ve never really mastered. I’ve spent most of my life thinking about the past and how it relates to the future. Soshee Ameci is a breath of fresh air.

When she finally pulls her car into the parking lot behind the Fort Collins Theater, it’s a little after noon. She turns the engine off and turns in her seat to look at me.

“So,” she says.

“Here we are,” I say.