Page 40 of Fake Date with the Mountain Man

He strips off his sage green work shirt and drapes it over the back of a chair. The black t-shirt underneath shows off his muscular arms and chest and I try not to stare. He empties the pockets of his dark green rec jeans, depositing his wallet, phone, and keys onto the chair as well.

Ryan isn’t as bad at yoga as I imagined he would be, but he’s not exactly good at it either. I’m also pretty new to it, so we both laugh as we struggle through some of the more challenging poses. He can hold downward dog longer than I can, but he also falls on his face while attempting crow pose.

We make veggie burgers for dinner and eat them standing over the counter. We try to eat the vegetable soup he brought from downstairs, but it’s a salty, mushy mess. Afterward, Ryan grabs two ciders from my fridge and plops down on my sofa.

Sofa is the wrong word, really. Love seat or oversized chair would be more accurate. There are only two narrow cushions, so when Ryan sits there with his legs splayed and his arm draped across the back, it doesn’t leave a lot of room for me to join him. I sit facing him with my legs curled under me. I’m tucked into the furthest corner of the sofa, much to Ryan’s amusement.

“Please don’t make me use that stupid line about how I won’t bite unless you want me to,” he laughs.

I relax a little, allowing myself more room even if it means that I’m nearly touching Ryan. He’s already flipping over to my Netflix account and scrolling through my recently watched items. It’s an embarrassing mixture of chick flicks and total garbage that I only watched for a few minutes before giving up.

“I hear this is pretty good,” Ryan says as he hovers over the icon for the showShameless. “Have you seen it?”

“No, let’s give it a shot.”

The show starts and we enjoy exactly three minutes of distraction before…boobs, butts, and the most graphic sex scene imaginable. By the time two of the actors are desperately screwing on the kitchen floor, Ryan and I are both barely breathing for fear of brushing up against each other.

Later, during a distinctly nonsexual scene, Ryan asks, “Is this what Chicago is really like?”

“Parts of it.”

“What about the part you’re from?”

“I was born on the south side, but I moved around a lot. Most of the group homes I went to were on the south side, but the foster families were usually in better neighborhoods.”

Ryan takes a long draw of his hard cider and then looks at me. He has more questions, but he’s afraid to ask. I’m afraid to answer. The last time we did this, it made everything even weirder than before.

My fingernails pick at the label on my bottle of cider.

“Would you mind if I asked why you were in foster care, or is that too personal?”

I ponder this for a minute and shake my head. “No, it’s fine. My mom is an addict. When I was younger, she was in and out of jail and rehab facilities all the time. Sometimes she would OD and have to stay at the hospital for long stretches until she dried out. As soon as she got home, she’d have another needle in her arm.”

I can count the number of times I’ve told anyone this on one hand. It’s not something I like talking about.

“Where is she now?” Ryan asks carefully.

“She’s been clean for a little over six years. She got a job at one of the rehab facilities that treated her up in Chicago. We talkover the phone once a week. It’s probably the closest we’ve ever been.”

“That’s good,” Ryan says quietly.

I shrug. “Yeah, but I’ll never really trust her. I used to get my hopes up whenever she got clean. I’d get to go home for a while and stay with her, but it was always the same thing…always another relapse. Once a person is an addict, they’re always an addict. Sobriety isn’t a single achievement, it’s a lifelong challenge for people like my mom.”

Ryan seems to ponder this for a minute before he speaks again.

“And your dad?”

“No dad,” I say quickly. My mom never even knew who he was.

It feels good to tell someone all of this, but then I see Ryan lean back ever-so-slightly. Like he’s afraid that if he breathes too hard in my general direction, I might shatter.

“Look, you asked,” I say. It comes out so defensively that it even surprises me. Ryan is obviously taken aback by my remark as well. His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and his mouth gapes open a little.

“Whoa, where did that come from?” he asks.

“Sorry, I just don’t want you treating me differently because of this. I’m still the same person; growing up in foster care doesn’t define me or mean that I’m some damaged, fragile mess.”

“I know,” he says gently.

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