Chapter 3

After more than an hour of conversation in the restaurant, Cindy knew Mandy wasn’t Mexican. Her mother was from Puerto Rico, and her father was from the Bronx. Mandy had lived in Harlem until she was ten, then they moved to The Gardens, a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles. It was more the hood than a neighborhood and where Mandy had met Alberto, her husband.

Candy leaned forward and lowered her voice, “But you were only fifteen.” A year younger than Sierra, she thought.

Mandy shrugged. “Things are different in the hood. Don’t get me wrong, my mother warned me about men like him, but you know how it is with bad boys. They’re hard to resist. He had the coolest car, a muscle car. All red with black stripes and Chevy 454 emblems on the hood scoop ... Ah, so sweet. Man, the way that Chevelle rumbled, I think I creamed my pants once while we were racing his cousin, Dario.”

The truth was, Cindy didn’t know how it was with bad boys or the hood. She met her husband, Dick, in church. They waited until their wedding night before having sex, or at least she had. Richard had been her only dick. She thought they would live happily ever after in their fancy Pacific Heights home. They went to church, he worked, and she stayed home and cared for the house and Sierra.

When Cindy found the sexting messages on Dick’s phone, she could tell from his expression when she asked, “Was she the only one or were there others in between?” that there had been others. How the fuck could he have an affair with someone in church? He was the praise and worship leader, and he was screwing Betty, the lead vocalist, a woman more than ten years younger than Cindy.

“What happened with you and Alberto?” Cindy asked. “Why aren’t you together anymore?”

“He’s dead,” Mandy said and sipped her margarita.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she hadn’t asked. “What happened?”

“Switchblade,” Mandy said. “He got stabbed with his own knife.”

“God, that’s horrible. It must have been so hard on you and Tori.”

“On her more than me.” Mandy downed two-thirds of her drink. “But I think she was starting to hate him, too, by then. He got mean. Selling and using drugs will do that to a man, or maybe he was always that way. I don’t know anymore.”

Cindy wanted to know more, but Mandy stopped talking, so Cindy let it go, for now. She was impressed with this young lady and how she was raising Tori on her own. Cindy was still trying to get Dick back because she was afraid to be alone.

They finished their drinks and headed back to the convention center.

At the end of the day’s festivities, the younger woman’s animated and boisterous nature had grown on her. Cindy invited Mandy and Tori to join Sierra and her for dinner. She also promised herself that she would stop being such a mother hen to Sierra and enjoy their time together.

They went to a Chinese buffet, like a mother-daughter double date. After dinner, the girls suggested a switch of hotels so they could all be together. Cindy knew with the convention in town it would be improbable that there would be a vacancy at any hotel, but, oddly, she wished it could happen. It was silly for a thirty-five-year-old woman to be thinking like a schoolgirl, but she hadn’t felt so alive in years.

Cindy told the girls there wouldn’t be anything available, but Tori suggested they stay in the same room. Mandy’s brows rose, and her lips twitched, but she didn’t speak. Could she be considering it, Cindy wondered. Why not?

Cindy reminded Sierra that their room only had two single beds. Of course, the teenagers offered to sleep on the floor and let the adults have the beds. That was ridiculous, sharing a hotel room with a young lady and her stepdaughter. “I’ll go online when we get back to our hotel,” Cindy promised. “We’ll see.”

The teenagers got excited, but Cindy knew it wasn’t going to happen.

Two days later, Cindy was glad the convention was coming to a close. She wanted to get home and sleep in her bed, but at the same time, it was sad. It had been a long time since she had so much fun with Sierra, and it felt good to have the young, energetic Mandy at her side through it all.

It had been seventeen years since Cindy became Mrs. Cooper. Her whole life had been built and arranged around being a good wife and mother. There hadn’t been any real girl time, not that the stuffy women she knew would ever let their hair down the way Mandy and she had.

Cindy was going to miss this Puerto Rican woman’s big smile and even bigger laugh. Sierra and Tori had pledged their love and swore never to stop communicating, but Cindy couldn’t bring herself to tell Mandy how she felt.