Chapter 2

“How come I’ve never seen him at one of your parties?”

“Uh, because you haven’t beento one of our parties in two years. Anyway, Darren’s very sweet. He’s a high school teacher in the city and he coaches the girls’ basketball team.”

“Hmm,” was all I said before Chris pounced.

“You want a taste of that, don’t you?” he asked. “Don’t deny it, Mark. I can see it in your eyes. I believe Darren’s single. He was seeing a Puerto Rican guy, but they broke up and I don’t think he’s with anyone now. You two should totally get together. You’d make a really cute couple.”

I laughed. “Have you picked out a china pattern for us yet?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.”

“If you’re interested in Darren, you should let him know.”

“The question isn’t whether I’m interested in Darren, but whether Darren’s interested in me.”

At that moment, I heard a voice behind me respond, “Oh, he could be.”

I nearly dropped my drink as I turned to see Darren, who’d been standing quietly behind me and Chris, listening to us.

“You’re blushing,” Darren told me.

“I’m embarrassed,” I admitted. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Enough to think that maybe we should talk.”

“And, on that note, I’ll leave you two alone,” Chris said, putting out his cigarette.

I shot him a pleading look not to go that was ignored as he slipped away into the crowd of party guests. While I would have preferred that he stay and serve as a crutch for me to use with Darren, I was also intrigued at the prospect of speaking with Darren alone.

“So, Mark,” Darren said, “let’s talk.”

We talked and talked and talked. I gave Darren the abbreviated version of my life: born and raised in Chicago’s northern suburbs, college at Northwestern, dental school at the University of Illinois, the middle child sandwiched between two sisters, a dental practice partnership downtown. But I was more interested in his story. He told me he was born in Chicago, but grew up in Evanston where his parents moved when he was a child. He had an older sister named Deena, a widow whose husband was killed during a tour of duty in Afghanistan, and an eleven-year-old niece named Ashley. He played basketball in high school and got a scholarship to play at Michigan State. But he wasn’t good enough to go pro and he knew it, so after college—that included a semester abroad in Panama—he became a Spanish teacher-slash-girls’ basketball coach at a high school on Chicago’s west side. Darren was polite, funny, and charming. I totally let my guard down with him and, after a few drinks, I wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the night with him. But when I asked him to come home with me, he refused. I was surprised and a little hurt that he turned me down. We’d been getting along so well and we clearly liked each other, so I couldn’t understand why we weren’t on the same page. I asked him what the problem was.

“There is no problem,” he said. “I just want to get to know you a little better.”

“You can get to know me a lot better if you come home with me.”

He smiled. “How about I take a rain check?”

We exchanged cell numbers and he suggested we have breakfast together in the morning. We agreed to meet at a restaurant in the Andersonville section of the city at nine.

“You’re not going to stand me up tomorrow, are you?” I asked him.

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“You’d better not.”

He took my warning with a smile and assured me he’d see me for breakfast.

* * * *

When we met the next morning, I was nervous. It didn’t matter that I’d spent two hours talking with Darren at the party the previous night, I still felt like a high school kid on his first date. I drank a lot of coffee that morning which only added to my anxiety. Darren, on the other hand, seemed perfectly cool, calm, and collected.

Even though Chris had told me he’d heard Darren had broken up with his boyfriend, I asked if he was seeing anyone.

“Not anymore,” he said with a dry laugh. “I’m living in my sister’s basement now because things didn’t work out with Carlos, the guy I used to live with.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. We just stopped enjoying each other. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not seeing anyone.” My last boyfriend, Allan, and I had broken up nearly a year ago with no great fanfare and no great loss on either side. Our relationship had petered out long before we finally cut our ties for good. I think we only stayed together as long as we did because we were both too lazy to look for someone else.