Tessie D

Angel and I had our first date on Friday night.

I’ve never been on a date before–so I don’t have anything to compare it to–but it was perfect and the closest I’d ever come to feeling like I was living in a romantic movie. I remember the feeling of watching movies and music videos of people falling in love and wanting that for myself. Feeling that pining for something I’d never had and wanted so desperately. Feeling like a million butterflies were living inside my body. That every thought was about him. That I’d been living in a fog for so long, and now I know that the sun exists. And, all I could think about all evening was how I’d been so lucky to have found the sun.

Let me back up.

I worked all day on Friday, trying not to think too much about the evening. I skipped lunch since I was too nervous to eat anyways and left work early to head home to shower and get ready. Pamela offered to help me get ready. I borrowed one of her long, floral dresses, and she curled my hair and pushed it back with a wire headband so it looked like a mane of curls around my face.

I felt so pretty. I wished that Momma had been able to see me because I think she would’ve been really proud of me. How far I’d come after everything that’d happened over the past two years.

Angel got to the house at 7:00 p.m. with a bouquet of flowers, and Pamela gave me a sly wink as she took the flowers from me and ushered us out the door.

Angel took me to the Italian restaurant in town. I’d never been–we never had any money to go out to eat when I was growing up, and now that I live here, I still don’t have any money to go out. I’m sure there are fancier places in the metroplex, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else other than where we were. Small, unpretentious. Comfortable and relaxed. Nobody could have been any happier in the world than I was at that moment.

Afterward, Angel drove over to the bookstore so that we could look around a bit.

“What is your favorite book?” He asked me.

“Favorite favorite? Or, just favorite right now?”

“Is there a difference?” He asked.

“Well, it’s more a matter of being able to narrow it down. My favorite book of all time? That’s an impossible question. Are we talking about books written this century? Last century? Books I read as a kid? Books that I don’t want to admit are my favorite because I don’t want anyone to know?”

“Now, I’m intrigued. What is your favorite book from the last century and your favorite book from this century?” He teased.

I took a deep breath and scrunched up my face. “Last century? Wuthering Heights. This century? The Notebook.”

“I sense a pattern,” He winked.

“You’ve read them?” I asked.

“No, but I’ve heard of them. And, if they’re your favorite books, then I think I need to read them myself. Come on,” he said and grabbed my hand.

He dragged me to the bookstore’s fiction section and picked up a copy of both books.

“Alright, I got my books.”

“You’re buying those? Right now?” I asked.

“Yup. You said that you loved them, and I need to know why.”

I didn’t know what to say. Nobody had ever asked my opinion about books. Or, anything really. I’d spent most of my life feeling like my interests were frivolous and silly. That romance novels and romantic comedies were frivolous and unserious. But Angel not only didn’t make fun of me for what I liked, but he also bought the books I loved so that he could read them and understand me more. I felt like I’d fallen through the Looking Glass in Alice in Wonderland.

Angel smiled with a mischievous grin, “Now you have to read a book that I recommend.”

“Okay. I can play along. What is your favorite book?”

“I wouldn’t say favorite, but I just finished the first Harry Potter book, and I think you’d like it.”

“Isn’t that for kids?” I teased.

“Yes, but we won’t let that stop us from enjoying it.” He said, grabbing a copy from a nearby table and handing it to me.

“I don’t know,” I said, turning the book over and looking at the price on the back. I definitely did not have enough money to buy a book. “I didn’t bring enough cash with me tonight to go shopping,” I said, following behind him and trying to sound more casual than I’d felt. When we got up to the cash registers, Angel took the Harry Potter book out of my hand and handed it, along with the two he was carrying, and handed them to the cashier. I wanted to protest that it was too much money to spend in just one evening and that he really shouldn’t have. But it seemed like as soon as I’d started to speak, Angel had already pulled out his wallet and handed the cashier two crisp $20 bills.

After leaving the bookstore, Angel drove us over to the park. It was dark since the moon was hardly more than a sliver in the night sky, and the air was calm and crisp.

“Come on, let’s go for a walk,” Angel said, opening his truck door. He walked around and opened mine, and I stepped out. I could feel a breeze blow through my hair. Angel reached behind me into the backseat and grabbed a brown coat.

“Here, you can wear this,” he said, draping the coat across my shoulders.

We walked along the trail on the outer edge of the park without saying much.

“You’re not worried to be walking at night at the park…in the dark,” Angel finally asked. The question might have been more sinister if I hadn’t heard the teasing in his voice.

“I might ask you the same thing,” I responded back, my tone equally light.

“Fair enough,” Angel laughed. “Let’s sit down here for a bit,” he said and gestured toward a bench a few feet ahead of us.

We sat on the bench, and I looked up at the sky. There weren’t any clouds, but the ambient lights from the nearby houses and street lights meant that I couldn’t see any stars, not like I could at home.

“I miss seeing the stars like I can at home,” I said.

“Yeah,” Angel said, looking up. “I’d love to live somewhere that I can see the stars at night. An entire sky full of them every night.”

“I’d like that, too. If I could see the stars at night, I’d know I was home,” I said.