Chapter 12

There’s a small mom and pop Italian place near the Raleigh airport, La Cucina. It has the vibe of a small-town pizza parlor, but the owners, Joe and Anita, were surprisingly clever in the way they designed the layout and the lighting of the restaurant. I once observed Joe dim a couple of lights, turn down the television, and pull up some old Italian-language standards on his phone, turning a table into a reasonable facsimile of a high-end Italian restaurant for a couple having dinner there for their first date. In fact, the couple got engaged several months later, and the guy proposed at the same table.

Lisa and I also regularly had dinner there a couple of times a month, and Joe often afforded us similar courtesies, albeit with soft-rock music instead of Italian love songs.

Anita, herself a former track star, once saw us come in for lunch after a long Saturday morning run around the track at the nearby middle school and appropriated Joe’s phone to blast “Eye of the Tiger” as we seated ourselves. She also gave us half slices of low-fat cheesecake for dessert and ‘forgot’ to charge us for them.

When I landed (and mentally chastised the flight attendant announcing, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Raleigh-Durham...” “Liar! I’m in Morrisville!”) I made my way to the baggage-claim area in Terminal 1. I looked around quickly, but didn’t see Lisa. She still hadn’t appeared when my suitcase came off the carousel, so I sat on a nearby bench to wait for her.

Suddenly, a presence rushed up behind me, came around, and planted a firm kiss on my lips.

As she pulled back, Lisa blushed slightly and looked down. Shyly clasping her hands together, she said, “Hi. Welcome home.”

I stood up, kissed her on the cheek ... I was not quite ready to be more forward than that ... yet ... and hugged her. “Thanks. I’m hungry, how about you?”

She thought it over for a moment. “Yeah, I could go for an appetizer or a salad or something.”

“OK. La Cucina sound good?”

“You sure? It might be a little late.”

I checked the time on my FitBit. “We’re not planning a three-course meal or anything. It should still be okay.”

Joe’s car was the only one in the parking lot when we arrived, but he greeted us effusively as we walked in, and guided us to a quiet corner table. Lisa ordered a salad. I ordered an appetizer of grilled chicken strips. Naturally, these were two of the healthier items on the menu.

After Joe left to start preparing our order, an awkward silence overtook us for a couple of minutes.

Finally, I blinked first, and spoke, with eloquent stammering: “Where ... what ... uh...”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then I opened them and fixed my gaze on her.

“I know you’re a fan of country music. You know the song “Anything But Mine” by Kenny Chesney?”

She looked puzzled. “Yeah,” she answered slowly.

“You know the second verse of that song, where he talks about telling a girl he loves her, and then they laugh because they know it isn’t true? I’ve always yelled at the radio when that song comes on: ‘if it’s not true, why are you saying it?!’”

She chuckled softly, while I paused and took another breath, trying to organize my thoughts.

“Look ... I think we’re both on the same page about where this might be going. Where we’d like it to go. But I don’t want to just toss that sentence out, you know? And ... I...” I swallowed hard. “Are we on the same page here?”

Another of the many issues affecting my first serious relationship was that Millie was bipolar. Not to be crude, but when she was in a manic phase, we had incredible, passionate, high-energy sex on a regular basis, sometimes even multiple times a day. One might think that my fondest memory of the relationship sprung from one of those times.

However, the flip side of her mental health issues was that the relationship was quite stormy, with a lot of on-and-off periods. During one of our “off” times, I found out she was in the hospital for observation after she had several unexplained petit-mal seizures. I went to visit her, we talked for a while, and at one point I laid my head down on the bed alongside hers. She moved her head slightly forward, gave me a soft, brief kiss on the lips, and then smiled at me. It was her way of asking if we could try again, without ever saying a word.