A few minutes later, we sat side by side, each with a glass of Montepulciano in front of us. I angled my body toward his. “So besides writing diddies like ‘Kimmie Long was in my pants’, tell me more about your love of music.”

His face turning red, Nicholas started laughing.

“What’s so funny?”

Still laughing, Nicholas covered his mouth with one hand and held two fingers of his other hand up to me.

“What the…” I started laughing along with him even though I wasn’t in on the joke.

Finally, Nicholas stopped laughing and wiped a tear from his eye. “I’m sorry about that.” He started laughing again.

“C’mon!”

“Okay. It’s really stupid.” Nicholas clamped his lips together.

“What’s really stupid?” I took a sip of my wine.

“Diddies,” he said without embellishment.

“What about them?”

His lips trembling again, he said, “I assume you mean ‘ditties’, as in the plural of ‘ditty’ or short song. But it sounded like you said diddies, which is different.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for the grammar lesson, counselor.”

Nicholas scooted closer to me and gently moved a hair away from my face. Smiling softly, he said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that ‘diddies’ is slang for titties and, well, hearing it come out of your mouth made me…” he started cracking up again.

I threw my head back and laughed out loud. “That’s why you broke out in uncontrollable laughter? Because you thought I said ‘titties’?” Shaking my head at him in disbelief, I said, “How old are you?”

Nodding, he said, “I know. I’m totally embarrassed that I lost it.” He started laughing again.

“I can see that!” We laughed together for a second until we both stopped at the same time and smiled at each other, neither of us saying anything.

Breaking the silence, Nicholas raised his shoulders in a shrug. “I’ve always loved music. Started listening to punk and new wave as a baby and saw my first concert as a toddler – The B-52s.”

I pictured a young Nicholas clapping his hands and dancing along to the music. “So even as a young’un, you enjoyed diddies, huh?” I flashed him a devilish grin.

Nicholas winked. “Yeah. And I thought music was pretty cool too.”

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