“Can I ask you something first?”

Sal took a deep breath. He didn’t care what it took he was getting an answer tonight. “Go ahead.”

“Why does it matter?”

He squeezed the bottle of beer. “Why wouldn’t it? We are on a date right? I’m not in the habit of dating girls who are seeing someone else. That’s not my thing.”

“What is your thing?” She took a pan down from where it hung and splashed a little cooking oil on it, setting it aside. “Because I hear serious relationships are not it.”

Sal was usually very patient but for some reason this really irritated him. “Who said this? Oscar?”

“No, your sister did, actually.” She began dicing peppers.

Sal noticed how at ease she seemed in spite of the nature of their conversation and his obvious growing impatience. She appeared a little nervous earlier but it was almost as if being in her element had calmed her. He wished he could say the same for himself. He’d grown more anxious by the minute.

She shrugged. “Just seems that if that’s the case, dating someone who’s not looking for anything serious because they’re already seeing someone else would be ideal.”

He clenched his jaw, surprised at how much that irritated him. “No. It wouldn’t. And for the record, just because I’ve never had a serious relationship doesn’t mean I don’t do them.”

She hadn’t looked at him since she begun dicing but she stopped now and glanced at him. Then she took a drink of her beer, but still didn’t answer his damn question.

“So is that a yes?”

She shook her head and he exhaled slowly. Now for his next question: something he’d thought about all night. “So whatcha do last night? With your dad’s friend.”

“Step-dad.” That had a little bite to it and she began dicing a bit faster.

“Okay, step-dad’s friend. Were you two on a date?”

“Sort of.”

Sal clenched his jaw. Was she being vague on purpose? “What does that mean? Are you into this guy?” He was going to throw all the questions at her tonight. He had to know now.

“Just because I go out with someone doesn’t mean I’m into them.”

Ouch. “Is that right?”

“Yeah, my mom wanted to make sure my step-dad got a job with this guy so she asked me to entertain him a few times.”

“What? Your mother asked you to? What kind of entertaining?”

Adding to the incredible annoyance he now felt, Grace laughed. “Nothing bad. Just go out and have dinner one time and last night we took a walk on the pier then had a drink. ”

Even that pissed him off. What kind of mother asks her daughter to entertain a man to get her husband a job?

“So tell me about Melissa.” She started frying chorizo in the pan.

At this point Sal had given up trying to figure out what she was making. He’d fill her in on Melissa, but he was getting back to her mom. She did say it was a long story and they had all night. At the time her mother hadn’t interested him much but now she did. He knew where Grace came from, she couldn’t have the best lifestyle but having a mom that pimped her out was a whole other ballgame. He wanted to know more.

He told her about how he met Melissa, not mentioning too much about Melissa being so clingy, but he did make it clear that he wasn’t interested in her.

“So you were just using her for her basketball tickets?” She smirked, taking a break from her cooking and drinking the last of her beer.

Sal took the empty bottle then opened another one for her. “No. I wasn’t even going to respond but I made the mistake of mentioning the tickets to Romero and he went all crazy, insisting I get them. Otherwise, trust me I wouldn’t have.”

Grace went back to cooking, taking the done rice away from the heat then sautéing the peppers, onion and chorizo with a generous amount of shrimp. “She seems very into you.”

“She’s persistent. I’ll give her that.” He was beginning to love watching her cook. He’d watched many cooks at work in his time but none were as graceful as she was. His mom was the only one that came close, but he’d never look at Grace like he did his mom, so there was no comparison. “You said your mom was a long story too. Tell me about her.”

The smirk went flat as she cracked an egg off the side of the pan in which she was sautéing the vegetables and shrimp and began scrambling it. She took a deep breath. “My mom is actually my step-mom, but I’ve always called her mom because she’s the only mother I’ve ever known.”

Feeling an ache for her, he had to ask. “What happened to your real mom?”

She dumped the rice into the large frying pan in which she’d been sautéing and added more spices. “She died giving birth to me. In Mexico, it’s not like the states. There is no insurance. My dad couldn’t afford to take her to the hospital so a mid-wife was called in. There were complications and they rushed her over the border to a hospital in El Paso. They barely made it to the hospital in time to do an emergency C-section. I nearly died, too, from what my grandmother told me, but my mother didn’t make it. My dad never really talked about it.”

She paused to take another drink of her beer and Sal wondered if she was getting upset again like the night she told him about her dad. He was ffraid to ruin the night so he wouldn’t push for more unless she offered on her own. She did. “It was just me, my dad, and grandmother for years. Then when I was five, my dad started dating my step-mom and I begged him not to marry her. I didn’t want anybody else in our family. He promised he wouldn’t, then a few months later she was pregnant and he said he had to do the honorable thing. They were married and my grandmother assured me having a sibling would be a good thing.” She finally smiled. “She was right about that. Rose was my little doll, then she became my little shadow. But my step-mom didn’t seem to have the same adoration for her as the rest of us did. My grandmother told me when I got a little older that some women just weren’t meant to be mothers and my step-mom was one of them.”