First Meeting - July 1997

When I was in college, I waited tables at the restaurant where David's mother Lynda, a career waitress, had worked for over twenty years.

One bright July afternoon, about a year after I was working there, I saw a tall, lean, extraordinarily handsome guy wearing dark blue scrubs and bright white sneakers saunter into the takeout area of the restaurant. I watched him curiously as he spoke to Lynda, and recognition dawned on me almost immediately, although it had been over ten years since I'd seen him. We'd gone to grade school together back when I lived in Upper Darby. The last time I'd laid eyes on him, we were both eight years old.

A few minutes after he left, I wandered over to Lynda as she punched in an order on the computer at the waitress's station. "Is that your son?"

She looked up at me, her smile proud. "That's my David."

"I think I know him."

"Really?"

"Uh-huh. I think we went to St. Alice together."

She nodded. "Yes, he did go to St. Alice for a couple years. Isn't that funny?"

"Yeah, small world! So is he a doctor or something? I saw him wearing scrubs."

"No, sweetie, he's not a doctor," she chuckled. "He works in a dialysis clinic."

"Oh." I paused, wondering what a dialysis clinic was, exactly. "He's very good-looking."

She beamed. "Isn't he?"

"Is he, uh, attached?" In my mind, there was no way someone who looked like him didn't have a girlfriend already. Couldn't hurt to try, though.

She shook her head. "No, he's not seeing anyone right now."

My eyebrows shot up in disbelief, but before I could reply, she said smoothly, "Look, give me your number and I'll take care of everything. I'll make sure he calls you."

Game on. I scribbled my first name and phone number on the back of an order slip and handed it to her, not expecting anything to come from it.

The following afternoon at work was slow. I stepped through the side door of the dish room to the loading dock behind the restaurant and perched on an orange plastic milk crate, waiting for the dinner rush to begin. I lit a cigarette from the billowing flame of my silver Zippo and studied the tops of my scuffed black sneakers.

Out of the far left corner of my peripheral vision, I saw a dark blur moving in my direction. I snapped my head around and my eyes fell upon David, wearing his navy blue scrubs, Walkman headphones tucked into his ears, bouncing down the sidewalk below me. He looked up at me and waved, shouting a friendly "Hullo!" as he passed.

My left arm shot up quickly, self-consciously, my face growing hot. "Hi," I called back.

David grinned at me and continued down the street just as my best friend Carolyn stepped out on the loading dock. She settled down on the milk crate next to mine and pulled a cigarette from the pack in her apron. We watched in silence as David hopped effortlessly up the concrete steps to his mother's front door and disappeared into the house.

"Who was that?" Carolyn asked, her cigarette bobbing between her lips as she spoke.

I stared at Lynda's front steps. All of a sudden, I felt funny. Queasy, almost.

"That," I said finally, "was David…Lynda's son. She told me to give her my phone number yesterday. He's supposed to call me sometime."

I could sense Carolyn studying my face in profile and I imagined her small, knowing smile. We had been best friends since fourth grade. She'd seen me with countless guys, and she could tell when I was a goner.

I took a purposeful drag on my cigarette and chewed on my bottom lip, then exhaled a long, slow stream of smoke above our heads. "He is the hottest thing I have ever laid eyes on."

Carolyn snickered. She didn't think so, apparently, but it didn't matter to me. There was something about him that attracted me instantly. I was drawn to him for reasons that even I didn't understand at that moment.

And I was going to have him, by God. He would be mine.