Is This Pew Taken?

I managed to fake a reverent performance at Mass without incident.

Casey had waited at the end of his pew for us. The kids greet him like an old pal. He's a kid's grownup.

This was not a Hospitality Sunday so we had no destination. Just walked and talked on the way to our cars. It was as easy and breezy as before. I was actually enjoying myself. (Coffee breath concerns handled discreetly with half a piece of Bubbalicious that I'd snuck as we filed out of Our Lady of Condemnation's narrow side aisle)

Enjoying hearing the sound of someone's voice other than my own for a change, I ask Casey if he's like to come to Starbucks with us. We go every Sunday...

He declines saying he is meeting his brother (who lives a block away) and his father (who doesn't live much farther) for breakfast and has plans to watch the football game at some local sports bar.

That takes care of that! Fine with me. Would have been fun but not the end of the world that he'd said no.

He gets into his car and drives around to where I am piling the kids into my own. He's driving a Honda. A new one. But I remembered he'd been driving a BMW before. Guess the mortgage industry woes were more real for some than for others.

He says he'd gotten a new phone and needs my number. This time, we need to actually get our brothers connected. (Had I been insane to go along with that suggestion last time? That would be a full on epic disaster. His brother is an Obsessive Compulsive bean counter who will never leave his 3 bedroom twin home even if money begins to grow on the trees in his yard. My brother is lucky to remember his name and address on a good day.)

We add each other as contacts.

This is the most unromantic thing about meeting someone in this day and age. And technology is so permanent. At least you used to be able to say you lost the matchbook. Now you have to pretend you dropped your Droid in the toilet.

The kids and I roll out of Our Lady's lot and zoom in the general direction of Starbucks, visions of lattes and lemon pound cake dancing in our heads.

My phone buzzes and jingles as it does when I've received a text message. I am driving, and in new found respect for the trauma doctors and nurses where I work, refuse to look at my phone until I am safely ensconced in a parking space and have exited the vehicle. I also threaten to snap off the fingers of any passenger in my car who dares touch my phone before I do.

While we walk toward the dizzying aroma of caffeinated coffee products, I flip open my phone and see that I have a message from Casey.

"Good to see you. That was fun."

I reply. "Yes it was fun."

Before I cross the threshold of the Starbucks, I have another buzz and jingle.

"We should get together for dinner some time."

I am smiling. My daughter, reading me like a book, wants to know why. Asks to see my phone.

"Mom! I told you he likes you! What are you going to write back?"

I tell her what I am going to write and then write it.

"That would be fun too," I write.

And immediately there is another buzz and jingle.

"Yes. It will be."

My daughter is practically turning a cartwheel that I have a date.