"How are you doing?" asked Bobbi, adjusting his tie for him.
"Nervous as hell," admitted Phil, "It has been a long time since I've been on an actual date."
"Oh, how long? Or are you not one to kiss and tell?"
Phil looked indignant, "Bobbi!"
"I'm kidding," she grinned, "You need to relax. Women can smell fear. We're like wild animals."
She made little cat noises and curled her fingers into claws. Phil chuckled, a smile stuck on his face as he adjusted the sleeves of his suit. She picked out navy blue for him, a departure from his usual black suit. She said it was more approachable. He didn't need to look like an accountant when he was on a date. The blue and green geometric print tie was from Evelyn last Father's Day. He knew Maria was probably the one who picked it out but it was always the thought that counts.
"You can dive face first into a national disaster without blinking but for something as simple as a dinner date, you get nervous? Phil, your priorities are whacked."
"I'm not completely new to the dating scene. I chased a bit of tail back in the day," he explained with a smile.
"So long ago that 'chasing tail' was the term you used for it," noted Bobbi with a smirk.
"That's not the only thing that has changed between now and then. I'm in it for something with a bit more substance now. And, when you have a lot riding on the date, it becomes more stressful. And I really want this one to work out okay."
Bobbi's sass abated when she saw the pure sincerity on his face, eyes sparkling with hope and a nervous smile across his face. Nervous energy coursed through his veins. His eyes flicked anxiously to the clock to his watch and back to the clock as though my sheer force of will he could speed up time.
Evelyn lingered around her father's knees. After years of seeing him in a suite, she tugged on his pant leg to get his attention. "Papa, where are you going?"
Bobbi raised an inquiring eyebrow as Phil stumbled to attach words into a coherent line of sentences. He eventually lowered himself to one knee so he could look her in the eyes.
"I'm meeting a lady for dinner," he said very calmly and seriously.
"Like a friend?"
"Yes," he smiled, "a lady friend."
"Like Maria?"
"Oh my God," Bobbi snickered but stifled it in her fist. She swallowed her laughter and tried to look serious while Phil acted like a parent.
"Sort of," said Phil, choosing not to pay attention to Bobbi's outburst. "Her name is Jennifer and I really like her. So I am going to spend a little time with her. I'll be back in time to read you a bedtime story. But you need to be good for Bobbi, okay?"
"Yeah," she promised, "Can I meet your lady friend?"
Phil swallowed nervously. "Maybe. We'll see."
"When you say that, it means 'no,'" she pouted, crossing her arms.
Bobbi, again, had to stifle her giggles. Phil even found himself smiling. "I'm not saying no, I'm saying maybe. It's different."
"Whatever, Papa," sighed Evelyn. She ran to the living room to play with her toys, pigtails flailing behind her.
Bobbi raised an eyebrow, "She's getting to be a sassy kid. You better watch out when she gets to be a teenager."
"Yeah, we're not going to let it get that far," insisted Phil, grabbing his jacket, "So, do I look alright? Nothing too embarrassing? Nothing between my teeth?"
Bobbi grinned, "I think that's about as good as it is going to get."
"I'm leaving," announced Phil towards the living room, skipping out before there were any more digs at his ego.
Her long golden hair was slightly teased at the top so her bangs lingered in front of her eyes like lacy curtains in a window. Her wrap dress of cream calico clung in all the right places and billowed enough to leave everything to the imagination. A faint floral damask print flit in and out of sight in the shadows and light as she moved.
"You look nice," he said when they arrived at the small restaurant, hidden between two older brick buildings. If it hadn't been pointed out to him, he would have walked right past it and never ventured forth into the narrow shop. The warm goldenrod walls were decorated with frescoes of flowers and pastoral scenes. He ordered pasta and wine but barely paid any attention to the menu. The words wove in and out of focus. Somehow he ended up ordering red wine, like he actually knew what he was doing. He hoped to calm his nerves before the food arrived or else he may not have completely lost his appetite in favor of nervousness.
His heart still had a hard time beating at a comfortable rate. It twitched nervously between his ribs. Sometimes he was acute aware of his own heartbeat, breathing, even the inner workings of his digestion. Other times, it seemed as though he was one with the air in the room and nothing mattered but lingering in that carefree moment.
"You know, you've never told me where you work," she noted. It was the time of settling into pleasantries to fill the void between them in hopes there might be a bridge between the gap. She sipped her water so a faint apricot-colored lipstick stain adorned the edge of the glass.
"Security," he said, falling back on the well rehearsed lie. He felt bad about being untruthful, but he feared she would not take well to the truth. Furthermore, Fury would have a fatal heart attack if he knew Phil was speaking so flagrantly on the subject.
"Like a bodyguard or something?"
"Yeah. Kinda like that. It's a private firm."
"Huh," she made a little curious sound, "Is it dangerous?"
"Can be," muttered Phil. His mind flashed back to green gas and blue eyes but he swallowed the memories with sip of cabaret. "Not so much anymore. I'll say this, the job is never boring."
"I'm sure," she chuckled.
He was eager to change the subject. "What about your job? Did you always want to own the bookstore?"
"Yeah. I started working there when I was about seven. My mother would give me odd jobs such as stocking shelves. I usually ended up reading the books as much as stocking them."
"Do you have a favorite?"
"Picking out your favorite book is like trying to pick out your favorite child. I don't know if it is possible," she paused and pondered it for a while. "I guess Little Women is my favorite. It always reminded me of me and my sisters."
"You have sisters?"
"Two older sisters," she smiled, "Abby and Sam. Abby is a children's book illustrator and Sam is a nurse. Because neither of them wanted the store, it ended up in my hands. What about you? Do you have siblings?"
"No," said Phil quickly, "No, I was an only child. My parents both died a while ago. I'm the last one of the family."
"Oh," she whispered, "I'm sorry."
"It's fine," he sighed heavily, "I have my daughter so…"
"You have a daughter?" she interrupted.
Phil froze. He hadn't intended to mention Evelyn just yet. He wanted to see how serious Jennifer was about kids before he brought up that he already had one. As cold sweat pooled on his brow, he prayed this wasn't a dealbreaker. He cleared his throat and clarified, "Uh, adopted daughter. Her name is Evelyn. She's four years old now."
"Oh," said Jennifer. Phil didn't know what to make of that sound. He may have been overthinking things, but he knew, but "Oh" could mean anything from shock to disappointment. Relief flooded him when he saw her smile. "That's adorable."
"She is," smiled Phil, relaxing again. "I love her lots. She's a... little shining light in my life."
She paused for a long moment, mulling over her glass of wine. Phil pondered over what he just said. It was so stupidly poetic, it would have been laughed out of a soap opera. Finally Jen broke the silence, "I'm just really curious why you wanted to adopt a daughter. It's interesting."
"Ah, well," Phil hoped he wouldn't have to explain. He didn't have a good story, or even a half-baked lie, to tell her. "Well, at the time, it seemed like the right thing to do… uh, given where she was. And, like I said, I didn't have any family so I guess…"
His pager buzzed in his pocket. As thankful as he was to have an excuse to stop his story, he couldn't help but wonder who would be trying to contact him at this time. Peeking down, he saw Nick's familiar number flash across the screen. Frowning, Phil fought to find the button to silence the buzzer.
"Do you need to get that?"
"No. Not important," insisted Phil, "Don't worry. "
She didn't appear convinced, a thin blond eyebrow quirking in interest. Phil sighed. Every nerve in his body yanked at him, trying to get him to get in contact with Fury. If it was an emergency, he would never forgive himself for ignoring his phone. But it just wasn't fair. He flagged a server.
"Do you have a phone I can use?" His cheerful smile belied how mortified he felt. He swallowed the sinking feeling that everything was going wrong and it was beyond redemption at this point.
"Just over here," said the server, jerking his thumb to a payphone by the restrooms.
Phil fiddled with the cord of the phone as it dialed. He gripped it, pretending he was throttling Nick for being an unwelcome third wheel on his date. If this was anything short of a nuclear bomb being dropped, he was going to give Fury a piece of his mind the very next time he walked into work.
"Nick!" He exclaimed when it connected, "What the hell are you doing?"
"What the fuck is with the attitude?" Nick sounded downright irate, "We have a compromised agent in the Maggia operation and they need a place to lie low. He needs a couch to crash on. You're in the neighborhood."
"No. I actually am not. I'm in Greenwich right now."
"What the hell are you doing in Greenwich at this time of night?"
"I'm on a date, Nick!"
Nick was quiet on the other end of the line. "A what?"
"A date! When you go out with a nice lady and you buy her dinner and go to a folk concert."
"You're at a folk concert?" Judgement oozed from Nick's voice, "I am disappointed in you."
"She likes folk. I'm giving it a try. I actually need to get back to her because she is going to be concerned."
"Is your cactus baby with you?"
"On a date? No! Of course not. Bobbi is watching her."
"You are leaving her with a kid?"
Phil rolled his eyes, "Look, Boss, I can't talk right now. We can debate my bad parenting choices later. Meanwhile, I am keeping my date waiting. Sorry I can't help but... in fairness, this is my night off!"
"Fine. I'll dump him with Hill!" Nick chuckled, "Good luck. Hope you get laid."
A burning red blush crept onto his face, "Nick, that's not what I'm-"
"Jesus, I was trying to be funny."
"It's not!"
Phil went to the restroom to splash water on his face in a futile attempt to remove his painfully burning blush. He hurried to straighten his tie and pull the batteries from his pager. He wasn't sure how bad things were blown, but this couldn't have made any sort of a good impression.
"Can today be over?" he groaned into the mirror before nervously returning to Jennifer. He arrived just in time for the lights to go down and the first set of the music to start. Jen appeared to be examining her fingernails. The man at the table behind them was standing behind her, leaning over her shoulder. His long, blond hair brushing against her cheek. She was sitting up straight in her chair and making a point to stare straight forward and not look at the creep.
"My date will be right back," she said intensely, her voice with an uncharacteristic edge, "You need to back off."
"Come on, Babe…"
"I'm not 'babe,'" she interjected, "Leave me alone."
Phil stepped up to the table, "You heard the lady."
"The lady is not havin' any fun," he insisted. The man smelled like alcohol, his eyes unfocused. Clearly he stumbled over from the bar and was not thinking clearly. Phil sighed, straightening his tie.
"Now you're getting personal," stated Phil. The man was standing right in front of a chair. Phil noticed that a green patterned rug ran the length of the room. He planted one foot on the tile floor and one on the rug, jerking the rug backward so the man stumbled and fell back into the chair. Phil smirked,"Have a seat. Enjoy the show. Stay away."
Fortunately, the man seemed to be terribly shocked that he ended up thrown into a chair and too inebriated to figure out exactly how it happened. Phil glared at him until he managed to slink away back into some shadowy corner of the bar. Perhaps to nurse another margarita.
"Sorry about that," whispered Phil over the twang of acoustic guitars and banjos.
"Don't worry," she said, relaxing as he took his place across from her, "Thanks for that. He was being a creep."
"I'm sorry you had to endure that," he said sincerely, "If I had known…"
"Don't worry," her smile reassured him, "It happens. Did your call go well?"
"It was my boss. Needed to ask me about a work thing."
"You said it was nothing important," she replied with a soft smile.
"It wasn't," he assured her, "routine stuff."
Phil tried to maintain composure as his ears were assaulted by the mocking laughter of the banjo. Folk was not his favorite. He never was able to find out how people could listen to more than one Bob Dylan song in a row without wanting to sew their own ears shut. Was the off key singing meant to be ironic or did people just tolerate it because they liked the rest of the music? He never received a clear answer.
Fortunately, the food was good. He could bury himself into a pile of cheese stuffed ravioli and meat sauce, relishing in the pungent tomatoes and explosion of spice and green herbs. Jen ate about half of her pasta, something creamy with clams. Her eyes, the color of robin's eggs, became lost in the music. She stared beyond the players, belong the sounds, in the direction of something which wasn't there, or perhaps something between reality and imagination.
He decided he liked her profile, the curve of her nose and the way her lips were shaped. He liked her voice: somewhere between a spinning waltz and birdsong. She had an easy presence, but that only served to make him feel more guilty about fibbing. He almost broke down and told her everything, interrupting the music to sneak in little truths. But he couldn't stop worrying about what she would say or think. His finger tapped nervously against the table as he fret.
"Are you okay?" she asked, pulled out of her trance.
"Yeah," he hesitated. This was his chance, his perfect opening. He didn't take it. "Just jitters, it's nothing."
The band began to wrap up. Phil insisted on paying the bill even though Jen made the reach for her purse. They walked out into the warm night, the almost summery sky reached down from the heavens into the city streets discussing what they admired about the city. Velvety dark fingers coiled around streetlights and buildings. Pinpricks of light shimmered orange and the neon signs glowed like an aurora against the vastness of space. Tracer beams shot across the dark windows of the car as they joined the flood in the city streets. He took her home, helping her out of the car and escorting to her front door.
She lived in a narrow townhouse wedged between other townhouses. Glowing golden windows shimmered against a dark brick facade and curling wrought iron gates. Her front door was painted spring green, with brassy fixtures.
"I had fun," smiled Phil. It wasn't a total lie. He walked her to her apartment door.
"I'd love to do this again," she returned his smile. He wondered if she meant date or the folk concert. He hoped for the former.
"How about we catch something in next time? I can introduce you to Evelyn," he said, hedging his guess.
"I can't wait to meet her."
"I'm sure she will be happy to meet you too," smiled Phil. The idea was thrilling. He has visions of a future of a home with a mother and a father and all the proper trappings of a family dancing through his head. He had the idea of a home, a life, and a real future. A smile lingered over his face as he drove home.
"How'd it go?" asked Bobbi when he got home.
"Great!" he smiled, "She's… she's fantastic. Jen is a sweetheart."
" You're so gooey. Can't wait for the wedding bells." She wore a cheeky grin as he loosened his tie at long last. Phil shot her a look.
"It's a first date. A good first date just indicates potential, nothing more. And I think there is some potential. She's nice and she wants kids. She is checking off a lot of boxes for me."
He decided to leave out the fact that he had no idea how to introduce her to his life in SHIELD or explain exactly how Evelyn came into his life. And he had no idea how to break it to her that folk music made his ears bleed. Discussions were eminent if this relationship was to work out at all. The main concern was finding out where to start.
Phil arrived at work the next morning running off of a few hours of sleep and excessive amounts of caffeine. Evelyn had kept him up half the night with questions about Jennifer. What color was her hair? What color was her dress? Did she have kids? She should have kids because she wanted to play with them. Did she like Captain America? Phil was not allowed to continue to see her if she did not like Captain America. What kind of food did she like? Did she like cookies? What kind of cookies? It was very important that she like chocolate chip cookies or it was obvious that she was a horrible person.
Phil eventually had to cut her off and tell her to get to bed or else she would be too tired to stay up for a movie night the next evening. He was too excited to sleep that even with the prescribed sleeping aids he only was able to get a few hours in with mixed results. Sleepy feelings lingered in the corners of his eyes, dragging him down into a mire of incomplete thoughts and uncontrollable yawns. He had yawned so many times, tears rolled from his eyes and his jaw was actually becoming a bit sore from the strain of being forced open. Maria brought him a coffee as he slogged through his morning work load. It was a neverending swamp of paperwork and memos of varying degrees of relevance.
"You look worse than the guy who crashed on my couch last night," she as Phil gulped down half the mug of coffee in one swallow. It took a long second before he resurfaced.
"Yeah, thanks. Evelyn kept me up last night with questions about Jen."
"I'm sure you would have rather have been kept up all night with Jen instead."
Phil choked on his coffee. His throat constricted so the liquid made a U-turn and came out his nose. Hill was renowned for her lack of tact as well as her uncanny insight into seemingly everyone and everything under the sun. After five years, she never ceased to find new ways amaze him. She continued as he tried to clear his head into a box of Kleenex.
"Bobbi told me that Evelyn was hilarious as you tried to explain dating."
"I'm surprised how much she understands," shrugged Phil, snorting to make sure he could breathe through his nose again, "And how much she misses the point entirely. It's never boring."
"You know what else isn't boring? Being there for your teammates," said a sardonic voice behind Hill.
"Morning Director Fury." Maria quickly addressed him and went to her work station, her own pile of paperwork awaiting.
Phil said good morning but added, "In my defense it was my night off, Boss."
"I know." Nick responded relaxing against the doorframe. "I wanted to know how it went."
Phil struggled for a second to find a word for what he wanted to express. He didn't want to sound overly sappy but it seemed like there was no other way to explain things. "I really like her Nick. She's just... she's..."
Beautiful? Interesting? A figure from a dream? He was having trouble with adjectives today. Language fell apart like paper in the rain. Anything he managed to slap together was a poor representation of reality.
"Did you sleep with her?" He was rudely pulled from his brief solipsism by Nick's pointed question.
"You're never one to beat around the bush," commented Phil. "No, I didn't because I'm a gentleman."
Fury raised an inquisitive eyebrow but fortunately did not press further or go into depth why Phil was painting himself with a rather broad brush nor did he begin to list of the ungentlemanly things Phil may or may not have done in the past. Instead he changed gears, "How much did you tell her about your day job?"
"I didn't realize I was getting the full interrogation," Phil leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms indignantly across his chest. "I didn't tell her anything. I said I was in the security business. Don't worry. I didn't spill any trade secrets. Gonna take more than a pretty lady to loosen my lips."
"Depends on the lady," sassed Nick, "In that case, you should know if you are going to run with scissors you better be damn sure you aren't going to trip."
"You're being cryptic again, Nick," warned Phil, "If you have something to say, say it. Don't make me break out the 'Nick Fury decoder ring.'"
Fury shot him a look from his one good eye. His voice lacked mirth for the first time in the conversation. "You start on the slippery slope of lying, it's going to become hard to maintain. Everything will come to light one way or another eventually."
"You're one to talk."
"I'm very good at what I do," countered Fury, "I've had years of practice. You, on the other hand, have no poker face."
"So, what's your point?" He didn't even bother trying to deny the poker face accusation. Nick wasn't exaggerating too much.
"My point is, you need to figure out what it is you want so I can figure out what to do with your tangled mess of a life."
"I doubt my life is the most tangled one here. We all live in a tangle of our own design."
"But it's gotta be the sort of tangle that you want to deal with. If you are twisting your life in a mess for something that isn't worth it, that isn't what you really want, what do you have at the end of the day?"
"So you're saying don't date her?" Phil challenged.
"No, I'm saying make sure it's what you want and that it's worth it. I mean, she could get freaked out if you tell her the truth. We're not exactly normal."
Phil glanced down at his desk at the stacks and stacks of case files of mutant students. A stack of applications for the academy, lined up in neat little rows awaited his order. Life leaned more toward the abnormal with every passing day.
"I'll think about it Nick," he offered, "I know what you are trying to say and I get it. But Jen is special. I wouldn't have asked her out if I didn't think there was something there. I wouldn't have subjected myself to folk music unless I really liked her."
"Folk, man, seriously," Fury shook his head, "make her a mixtape of some real music. Not that twangy hippie nonsense."
Phil opened his mouth to say something when an intercom system rattled through the halls. "All Level 6 and 7 Agents please report to conference room A."
"What?" Phil stood, grabbing his service side arm and following Fury out the door. "Nick? What's this about?"
"Duty calls, Coulson."
"Carlton."
"Whatever. Nobody calls you that," he said, "You need to get on a bus. This is an observation mission for you."
"Observation?" he asked, "What am I observing?"
"You're going to meet someone who is going to become a thorn in your side," Fury turned, "His name is Magneto."
