Chapter 3: First Date Truths
The following Friday, Mandy was proofreading a piece on urban green spaces when her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.
Wear something you don’t mind getting sauce on. 7pm. I’ll drive.
She stared at it. The area code was local. It had to be him. After the gym, they’d exchanged numbers with the vague, unspoken agreement that she would text him photo proofs from the fight. She hadn’t yet. The scraped knee had scabbed over, a tangible reminder of her clumsiness and his steadying hand.
Who is this? she typed back, a smile tugging at her lips.
The guy whose rope you tripped over. Don’t be late. Vic says punctuality is discipline.
What if I have plans?
Do you?
She looked around her pristine apartment, at the half-finished herbal tea and the sprawling notes on her laptop. Her only plan was a potential video call with her mother, which she’d happily sabotage.
What’s the dress code? she sent.
The reply came instantly: Stretchy.
At 6:55 pm, a faded blue pickup truck, its passenger door bearing a long, rusted scratch, idled outside her building. Drake leaned across and pushed the door open. He was wearing a simple black henley, the sleeves pushed up past his forearms. The stitches above his eye were out, leaving a raw pink line against his skin.
“You own anything that’s not a dress?” he asked as she climbed in, mindful of her knee. She was in dark jeans and a soft, emerald-green sweater.
“I own sweatpants,” she said, buckling her seatbelt. The cab smelled of old leather, clean sweat, and faintly of peppermint.
“Good. You’ll need them someday.” He pulled away from the curb.
They drove in a comfortable silence, leaving the gentrifying rows of her neighborhood for a maze of narrower streets where the buildings pressed closer together. He double-parked outside a storefront where the neon “Mamma’s Pasta” sign buzzed and flickered, bleeding a pink glow onto the wet sidewalk. The paint on the door was peeling, the glass covered by a gauzy red curtain.
“Classy,” Mandy said.
“You’ll see.” He led her inside.
The air was a warm, dense blanket of garlic, simmering tomatoes, and yeast. The room was small, maybe eight tables crammed together, each covered in red-checkered plastic cloths. Every surface held a candle stuck in a chianti bottle, the wax melted into decades-old stalagmites. The walls were covered in faded photographs of Italian scenery and a yellowed poster of Sinatra. From the back, the clatter of pans and rapid-fire Sicilian dialect echoed.
An older woman with a formidable bosom and hair dyed an impressive, inky black emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on an apron that read ‘Kiss The Cook’ over a picture of a snarling bulldog. Her eyes, sharp as tacks, found Drake and instantly creased with delight.
“Piccolo leone!” she boomed, waddling over. She grabbed his face in both hands and shook it, planting a loud kiss on each cheek. “You are skin and bone! They are not feeding you at that gym!”
“Hey, Mamma G,” Drake said, his voice softening in a way Mandy had never heard. He let himself be manhandled, a genuine, unguarded smile breaking across his face. “I’m eating. I brought a friend.”
Mamma G’s gaze swung to Mandy. The appraisal was swift, thorough, and entirely lacking Vic’s hostile suspicion. This was a different kind of scrutiny. She looked from Mandy’s face to her sweater, then back to Drake, her eyebrows rising. “A friend. Finalmente. You sit. The corner. Nice and quiet.” She shooed them towards a secluded booth in the back, its leather patched with tape.
She bustled off without bringing menus.
“She thinks we’re on a date,” Mandy whispered, sliding into the booth. The leather hissed under her.
“We’re eating food. That’s a date in her book.” He sat opposite, his knees bumping hers under the small table. He didn’t move them away.
“So you’re a regular.”
“Since I was about fourteen.” He took the chianti bottle acting as a candle holder, blew out the candle, and poured deep red wine into two water glasses that appeared as if by magic, courtesy of a silent teenage busboy. “Vic brought me the first time. After a particularly bad sparring session. Said I needed carbs and a mother’s love. Mamma G provided both.”
Mandy took a sip. The wine was rough, fruity, and perfect. “And the ‘piccolo leone’?”
He shrugged, looking slightly embarrassed. “Little lion. It stuck.”
Two plates of food arrived without anyone ordering. Spaghetti, tangled high and steaming, draped in a rich, glistening crimson sauce flecked with basil. A mountain of golden garlic bread on a separate plate. The smells were intoxicating.
“Eat,” Mamma G commanded, hovering. “No talk until you taste.” She watched, arms crossed, until Mandy twisted her fork into the pasta and took a bite. The flavors exploded—sweet tomato, pungent garlic, a deep, savory richness.
“Oh my god,” Mandy mumbled, her eyes closing for a second.
Mamma G nodded, satisfied. “Bene. Now you talk.” She disappeared back into her kitchen.
For a while, there was only the sound of forks on plates, the low hum of other diners, the clink of their glasses. The food was honest and magnificent. Mandy felt the last lingering stiffness from the gym melt away under the warmth of the room and the wine.
“This is the opposite of the Bistro Nouveau,” she said, swirling her pasta.
“Is that a good thing?”
“The best thing.” She took another sip of wine. “So. The scars.”
He paused, a forkful of spaghetti halfway to his mouth. “What about them?”
“Vic said… some weren’t from boxing.”
He set the fork down, chewing slowly. He looked at the candle flame, its reflection dancing in his dark eyes. The light played over the ink on his forearms—a stylized storm cloud on one, a series of nautical stars on the other. “Vic talks too much when he’s trying to scare people off.”
“He succeeded in scaring me. But not off.” She waited. The noisy restaurant seemed to recede, narrowing to the space between them in the flickering light.
Drake pushed his left sleeve up further, past the elbow. He turned his inner forearm toward her. Among the darker, more deliberate tattoos, there was a patch of skin that was different. A rippled, discolored landscape of shiny, tight flesh, about the size of a lemon. It was old, long since healed into a permanent ache of texture.
“Space heater,” he said, his voice flat. “I was five. Our power got cut. My dad had a kerosene one. It tipped over. I was the only one home.”
Mandy’s breath caught. She didn’t reach out, just looked. The scar was a fossilized moment of terror. “Drake…”
He pulled the sleeve down. “It’s fine. It was a long time ago.” He took a long drink of wine. “The tattoos… some of them are just cover-ups. Better art over bad history.” He tapped the storm cloud on his right arm. “This one’s new. After my first big amateur win. Felt like I’d weathered something.”
“And the stars?” She nodded to the other arm.
“Guidance. Or hope of it.” He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. “Sounds stupid.”
“It doesn’t.” She traced the rim of her glass. “My scars are all internal. Mostly from dinner tables. Conversations that feel like surgeries without anesthetic. ‘When are you going to use that degree, Amanda?’ ‘When are you going to settle with someone… suitable?’” She mimicked a brittle, upper-crust accent perfectly.
He smiled, a real one. “Suitable. What’s that mean? Owns a boat?”
“Owns a firm. Plays golf without keeping score. Knows which fork to use for salad. Never gets sauce on his shirt.” She plucked at her own sweater. “I’m a constant disappointment.”
“You seem pretty suitable to me,” he said, and then immediately looked like he wished he could catch the words and stuff them back in. He focused intensely on his plate.
The admission hung in the garlic-scented air, delicate and huge.
Mandy felt a flush creep up her neck. She changed the subject, but softly. “Why boxing, really? I know the answer about money, about a way out. But why this? It’s so… violent.”
He thought for a long moment, building a careful forkful. “Control,” he said finally. “In there, with the rules and the clock and the gloves… it’s all a choice. You choose to step in. You choose to take the hit. You choose to get back up. The pain has a reason. A point. It’s not…” He gestured vaguely, a tiny movement of his fork. “It’s not random. It’s not something that just happens to you in a dark room. You sign up for it. And that makes all the difference.”
She understood then. The appeal wasn’t the violence. It was the autonomy. The chaotic world rendered orderly, one three-minute round at a time.
“Do you like it?” she asked. “The fighting?”
“I’m good at it,” he corrected. “That’s not the same thing. I like the training. The grind. I like… being good at something hard. The fight itself is just the test.” He looked at her. “Did you like falling on my gym floor?”
“I hated it.”
“But you liked getting back up.”
She held his gaze across the checkered tablecloth. “Yeah. I did.”
Mamma G reappeared, clearing their empty plates with a grunt of approval. She replaced them with two small glasses of translucent, amber liquid. “Limoncello. For digestion. Made by my cousin.” She left again.
Drake lifted his glass. “To not being suitable.”
Mandy clinked hers against it. “To being stretchy.”
They drank. The liquor was sweet, bracingly cold, and packed a citrussed punch that made her eyes water. She laughed, coughing.
He was watching her laugh, his expression unreadable. The candlelight carved the planes of his face, highlighting the new scar on his brow, the strength of his jaw, the unexpected softness in his eyes.
“Mandy,” he started, his voice low.
The front door of the restaurant banged open, letting in a blast of cool night air and street noise. Two men walked in, loud, their laughter boorish and familiar. Both were big, one with a shaved head, the other with a goatee. They wore tracksuits and a sense of owned territory.
Drake’s posture changed instantly. The softness vanished, replaced by a tectonic shift into alertness. He didn’t turn, but his eyes flicked towards the mirror on the wall beside them, tracking their reflection.
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in,” the one with the shaved head said, his voice carrying. “The Cyclone. Hiding in a corner with a pretty thing.”
Mandy felt a chill that had nothing to do with the door. She saw Drake’s jaw tighten. He slowly placed his glass down on the table.
“Ignore them,” he murmured, his voice barely a breath. “Finish your drink.”
“Cole! Don’t be rude,” Goatee called out. “Come say hello to your old friends. Introduce us to your… date.” He said the word like it was a joke.
Mamma G stormed out of the kitchen, hands on her hips. “Ricky! Paulie! You sit down and be quiet or you leave! This is my house!”
“Sure, Mamma, sure,” Shaved Head—Ricky—said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. But his eyes stayed locked on Drake’s back. “Just paying our respects to the neighborhood star. Heard you got your face split open last week, Cole. Healing up for the big-time? Gonna leave us all in the dust?”
Drake’s knuckles were white where he gripped the edge of the table. Mandy saw a muscle twitch in his temple, right by the healing cut. This was a different kind of fight. No rules. No clock.
“Who are they?” she whispered.
“Nobody,” he said, but the word was heavy. “Guys I grew up with. They… didn’t like it when I started saying no to certain kinds of work.”
He finally turned, just his head, to look at them. His expression was neutral, a careful, practiced blank. “I’m having dinner, Ricky. Take a walk.”
Ricky smiled, showing a gold-capped tooth. “Yeah, you’re real busy. Real important now.” His gaze slithered to Mandy, a long, insulting once-over. “She know what you are? Where you come from?”
The air left the room. All the warmth, the safety, the shared secrets evaporated.
Drake moved then. It wasn’t a dramatic stand. It was a slow, deliberate unfolding from the booth, a predator uncoiling. He was on his feet, his body positioned slightly between Mandy and the two men. He wasn’t big like them, but his presence filled the space, taut and dangerous.
“Hey, take it easy, champ,” Paulie with the goatee said, but he took a slight step back. “We’re just talking. Friendly conversation.”
“The conversation’s over,” Drake said. His voice was quiet, but it carried a finality that silenced the entire restaurant. “You’re leaving. Now.”
Ricky’s smirk faltered for a second, faced with the absolute, glacial certainty in Drake’s eyes. This wasn’t the scared kid he remembered. This was something else. Something that had been forged in a different fire.
Mamma G hefted a cast-iron skillet from a nearby table. “You heard him! Out! Vaffanculo!”
Ricky held up his hands again, backing toward the door, his eyes never leaving Drake. “Fine, fine. We’re going. Enjoy your spaghetti, Cole. You’ll remember where you belong. Sooner or later, everyone does.”
The door shut behind them, the rattling bell breaking the silence.
Drake stood there for another five seconds, breathing slowly in through his nose, out through his mouth. The tension slowly leached from his shoulders. He turned back to the booth. His eyes found Mandy’s, and the mask was gone. In its place was a raw, shamed apology.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough. “We should go.”
Mandy stood up. She pulled some cash from her wallet and tucked it under her glass. She walked to him, stopping close. She could feel the residual energy vibrating off him, see the pulse hammering in his throat.
“You asked me if I knew what you are,” she said, quietly, for him alone. “I’m starting to. And I’m not finished my drink yet.”
She took his hand, the one still clenched at his side, and gently pried it open. She laced her fingers through his. They were warm, solid, scarred. She led him back to the booth, past the staring other diners, past a worried-looking Mamma G. She pushed his glass of limoncello toward him.
“Sit down, piccolo leone,” she said softly.
He stared at their joined hands on the tablecloth, then at her face. The shame in his eyes began to dissolve, replaced by a dizzying, profound wonder. He sat. He didn’t let go.
Outside, the city hummed. Inside, under the flickering neon and the watchful eyes of Sinatra, they held onto the quiet they had built, one scar at a time, and finished their drinks.
The limoncello glass was empty, its sour-sweet ghost still on his tongue. Drake’s thumb moved slowly, a rough caress against the back of Mandy’s hand. The contact was an anchor. Outside, a siren wailed past, fading into the hum of the city.
“We should probably go,” he said, his voice low. He didn’t let go.
Mandy nodded. The spell wasn’t broken, but it had been fractured. The intrusion of his old world had left a hairline crack in the evening. She squeezed his fingers once before releasing them, the warmth lingering on her skin. Mamma G appeared as they stood, her earlier fury softened into maternal concern.
“You take care, piccolo leone,” she said, patting Drake’s cheek. She pressed a wax paper bundle into Mandy’s hands. “Biscotti. For later.”
The night air outside was a crisp shock after the restaurant’s cloistered warmth. Drake’s truck sat like a shadow at the curb. He unlocked her door first, a small, old-fashioned gesture that felt huge after the ugliness inside.
The truck cab was quiet, just the rumble of the engine and the city sliding by the windows. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh. The silence wasn’t empty. It was full of Ricky’s words, hanging between them like smoke.
“I’m sorry about that,” Drake said finally, turning off the main drag onto a quieter street leading up into the hills.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Yeah, I do.” He tapped his thumb against the steering wheel. “That… that’s the stuff I’m trying to outrun. It follows you. It rubs off on anything good.” He glanced at her. “On anyone good.”
Mandy looked out at the passing houses, their windows glowing yellow. “He said you started saying no to certain kinds of work. What did he mean?”
Drake was quiet for so long she thought he wouldn’t answer. The road began to climb, the buildings thinning out, the sky opening up above them. He pulled the truck onto a gravel overlook, a scrap of city park that offered a panoramic view of the downtown grid, twinkling like a spilled jewelry box.
He killed the engine. The sudden silence was vast, filled only by the whisper of wind through the pines framing the lookout. He stared straight ahead, his profile etched in the dashboard lights.
“When I was sixteen,” he began, the words measured, “my old man was long gone. Mom was working two jobs, drowning. Ricky’s older brother, Marco, ran a crew. Small-time stuff. Theft, mostly. Fencing stolen goods.” He exhaled, a slow, controlled release. “They needed a kid. Someone small, fast, who could slip through an open bathroom window and unlock a back door.”
Mandy kept perfectly still, listening to the rawness in his voice.
“I did it twice. The first time, I threw up in an alley afterward. The second time, I got caught. Not by the cops. By the homeowner. An old guy, maybe seventy. He had a baseball bat.” Drake’s fingers tightened on the wheel. “He didn’t swing it. Just stood there in his robe, looking at me. He said, ‘Son, you’re better than this.’” Drake shook his head, a sharp, painful motion. “I ran. But his face… I saw it for months. In my sleep.”
“What happened?” Mandy asked softly.
“I told Marco no. He laughed. Said I didn’t get to say no. Offered me more money.” Drake’s jaw worked. “When I said no again, he sent Ricky and Paulie. They cornered me behind the bodega on 5th. Gave me a choice: do the job or take the beating.”
The wind buffeted the truck. A pine cone clattered off the roof.
“I took the beating,” Drake said flatly. “Two against one. They had pipes. I woke up in the ER with Vic holding my hand. He’d found me. After that, he brought me to the gym. He said if I was gonna get hit, I should learn how to do it for a reason. For money I could hold in the light.” He finally turned to look at her. The dashboard glow lit the shame in his eyes. “So that’s the scar under the storm cloud tattoo on my ribs. That’s where I come from, Mandy. A kid dumb enough to think a few hundred bucks was worth his soul, and then too proud to keep taking it.”
The city lights shimmered below, a world of distance and possibility. Up here, in the dark, his past felt painfully close.
Mandy unclipped her seatbelt. The movement was deliberate. She shifted across the worn bench seat until her shoulder pressed against his. She didn’t reach for his hand. She didn’t try to fix it. She just leaned into him, offering the solidity of her presence against the weight of his confession.
“That old man with the bat,” she said after a moment, her voice quiet against the wind. “He was right.”
Drake let out a shaky breath, a half-laugh, half-sob. He dropped his forehead to the steering wheel. The tension in his shoulders finally broke, not into weakness, but into a profound exhaustion.
“It never goes away, does it?” he murmured, his voice muffled. “The stuff that marks you.”
“No,” Mandy said, thinking of polished dinner tables and the scars they left. “It doesn’t. It just becomes part of the map.” She rested her head against his arm. “You navigate by it.”
He lifted his head, looking at her. His eyes were dark pools in the dim light. “Why are you here, Mandy? Really. After tonight… you got a preview. The whole ugly show.”
She thought about her article, now sitting incomplete on her laptop. It felt irrelevant. A flimsy excuse.
“I told you,” she said. “I’m tired of being suitable. I want something real.” She gestured vaguely toward the glittering city below. “Down there, everything is layered. Curated. This,” she placed her hand over his heart, feeling the strong, steady beat through his shirt, “this isn’t. It’s just… true. Even when it’s ugly.”
He turned his hand over and laced his fingers through hers. His palm was calloused, warm.
“It’s gonna get uglier,” he said, a plain statement of fact. “The fight Vic’s lining up… it’s a big step. More eyes. More people like Ricky, pulling at the threads. My past isn’t a secret. It’s just a story waiting for the right person to print it.”
“Let them,” she said, her voice gaining strength. “You’re not that kid in the alley anymore. You’re the man who took the beating and walked away. You’re the one who gets back up.” She echoed his own words from the gym back to him. “That’s the story I see.”
He brought their joined hands to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. It wasn’t romantic. It was fierce, a gratitude and a pledge. The gesture sent a current through her, warm and devastating.
“You should go,” he said, his voice rough. “This is a lot. Too much for a first date that wasn’t even a date.”
“It’s the best non-date I’ve ever had,” she said, a smile touching her lips.
He smiled back, a real one, tired but true. He started the truck. “I’ll take you home.”
As the truck descended back into the city grid, the intimate dark of the overlook gave way to streetlights and traffic. The space between them hummed with a new understanding, a shared silence that needed no words. He pulled up to her building, leaving the engine running.
“The biscotti,” he said, nodding to the wax paper package she’d forgotten on her lap.
“Halfsies,” she said, tearing the paper open. She broke one of the almond cookies in two and gave him a piece. They ate in the quiet cab, the simple, sweet crunch feeling like a sacrament.
She got out, the gravel crunching under her shoes. He rolled down the passenger window. “Mandy.”
She leaned down. “Yeah?”
“Thank you,” he said. “For not running.”
“I told you,” she said, her hand resting on the window frame, just beside his face. “I’m a terrible runner.”
She walked toward her building, feeling the chill of the night and the warm ghost of his touch on her skin. She didn’t look back. She knew he was watching until she was safely inside.
Upstairs, in the quiet of her apartment, she placed the remaining biscotti on her counter. She could still taste the garlic and wine, the sour limoncello, the almond cookie. She could still feel the ridge of the scar on his forearm beneath her fingers.
She opened her laptop. The document titled “Local Athletes Profile” stared back at her. She deleted the headline. Her fingers hovered over the keys, then began to type a new sentence, the truth landing clean and hard.
He fights because he decided, one night in an alley, that every hit he ever took again would be on his own terms.