Julia Bobkoff

Mojave Rain

He promised me coffee…not Starbucks (too stuck up he said), and not Dunkin’ (I have something better). He didn’t want to meet in the silvery light of a November afternoon, sipping drinks in the front seat of his Impala convertible. And he didn’t want to take a walk at any of the beaches that beckoned from Marblehead to Revere. No, for the first date he insisted on showing me his espresso machine and promised a perfect cup of Italian roast. He sang the praises of its masterful mechanism and offered to grind the beans for my pleasure. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I preferred tea, that my mother was British and I’d grown up on endless cups of Earl Grey and Scottish Breakfast, perfectly steeped, with a spoonful of raw honey. I didn’t share that my heart rocketed out of my chest when I drank coffee. Nor did I reveal that I’d never gone to a man’s house before meeting him first publicly. And I certainly didn’t add that the last time I even went on a date with someone I truly desired was two decades ago, when I danced to Springsteen’s “Love is an angel disguised as lust,” and wore skin-tight Guess jeans secured at the ankles with a row of my mother’s safety pins.