11. Chapter Eleven #3
“I’m forty-three,” I said cautiously. “And I am painfully aware of the fact that you could be down the block at that brewery right now with someone who was actually born in the same decade as you. You didn’t do that.
You asked me.” I paused, hoping I wasn’t whiffing it right now.
“And I’m having a great time and neither of us are thinking about it, but everyone else is going to think about it.
They’re going to have opinions on it. So, I want to tackle the elephant in the room right now. ”
Miki put a hand to her mouth, her eyes sparkling with… mirth? “Please. Tackle it.”
“There’s eighteen years sitting between us,” I said. “Is that going to be a problem?”
I waited, my heart in my throat.
Miki lowered her hand slowly.
And began to laugh.
It wasn’t a pretty little giggle. It was a full-body snort—the kind of thing you do when you’ve seen something so hilarious that it’s temporarily difficult to get air.
I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or not. “It’s not funny…”
“Oh my God,” she said, gasping. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Know? Know what?
“I figured you didn’t,” she said, recovering. “Someone I matched with on a dating app once actually sought me out because of it, and that was super weird.”
“Miki, what are you talking about?”
Her lips trembled, another wave of laughter threatening to overwhelm her. “You think I’ve got a problem with an age gap,” she said, wiping her mouth with her napkin. Something absolutely wicked danced in her eyes. “Tom, you have no idea.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
She cleared her throat. “Do you remember that wedding video that went viral a couple years ago?”
I didn’t. And then, suddenly, it clicked.
“The thing with the… with all the women?” I blurted. “Where they were all marrying the same guy?”
“Just three of them,” Miki said, clearly enjoying herself. “Three of them that day, at least. You’ve seen it, then.”
Actually, I hadn’t. What I had seen was the Weekend Update sketch Saturday Night Live did the next week making fun of it.
They’d “brought in for comment” the pastor who’d performed the ceremony (actually Sarah Sherman in a ridiculous technicolor suit) and she’d tried to marry herself to both of the co-anchors and several members of the cast. Bailey thought it was hilarious.
Personally, for Sherman bits I didn’t think it cracked my top five. I liked the Nosferatu one a lot better.
When I told Miki that, she cackled. “My cousin was one of them. Is one of them.” Her face told me just how fond she was of her.
“She is the single most terrifying person I have ever met. Beautiful, brilliant, runs her whole life the way an architect designs a building. She plans everything.” She giggled.
“Running off with that guy was the first impetuous thing she did in her entire life. And it ended up being the best decision she ever made.”
“That’s… wow.”
“You should see what the Christmas cards look like.”
She said it deadpan, and the dam inside of me finally broke. Suddenly I was the one laughing so hard I could barely hold it back. Our waitress came by to make sure I wasn’t dying.
“God, her kids are so stinking cute,” Miki murmured.
Then she straightened up. “So no, Tom. Eighteen years doesn’t scare me.
Honestly, you could be a serial killer and I still wouldn’t be the craziest girl in the family.
Kiki’s going to have that title for life.
” She picked her chopsticks back up, the wicked grin softening into something else. “Does that handle the elephant?”
“Consider it well and truly tackled,” I said.
After that, the walls were completely down.
We finished our dessert and talked for what felt like hours, the excitement between us growing all the while.
By the time I paid the check, I was amazed.
What I had with Bailey and McKenna was practically indescribable.
But I’d never been on an actual date with either of them.
And this one wasn’t just the best date I’d had in twenty-one years.
It was the best date I’d ever been on. Period.
Miki tried to insist on paying, but I cut her off. “You can get the next one,” I said.
She lit up. “Setting up the second date already,” she said with a coy smirk. “Sneaky. I like a forward-thinking man, Tom.”
Outside on the sidewalk, the temperature had dropped. Miki put on her coat while Atlantic Avenue hummed, all the streetlights on. Neither of us moved towards our cars.
Neither of us wanted to.
In retrospect, I wish we had.
“Listen,” I said, the word forward-thinking rattling around in my skull like the ball at the bottom of a can of spray paint.
“There’s this little hole in the wall place I know about that’s maybe four blocks from here.
One of my coworkers raves about it.” I mentally thanked Mark for the tip.
“How about we walk over, I’ll buy you a drink, and we can continue this conversation? ”
Miki looked up at me, the wheels turning behind her eyes.