Does he really consider that the start of our relationship? And has it seriously already been a year? The Stone invasion and life takeover still feels like it happened just yesterday somehow.
Not Nice Naima keeps on warning me not to fall, but Old Naima sighs. You’ve been together for nearly a year, but it still feels like we just met. Isn’t that what happy couples always say? This must be. This must be—
Stone interrupts before she can drop the L-bomb. “I already talked to Cami. She says she’ll keep an ear out after Aunt Mari puts Garnet down if you want to go out or something?”
I freeze a little at the offer. Stone and I spend plenty of quality time together. Breakfast, dinner, every other weekend, plus lots of walking the dog around the block. And don’t even get me started on the magic that happens in the late night hours after everyone else has gone to bed. It’s become a problem, truth be told. I had to add a third late afternoon cup of coffee into my rotation this month just to stay awake.
But we’ve never been out on a date, just the two of us. Which is weird, when I think about it. My relationship with Rock went just the opposite way. Lots of chaste, fun dates at first, until I had to be returned to Luca’s condo prison.
I’d thought not having a weird curfew hanging over our heads would bring us closer together, when Luca let me go. But as it turned out, our relationship couldn’t hold up under the pressure of day-to-day intimacy without a bunch of fancy restaurants, movies, and dance clubs to pad out our time together.
Would Stone’s and my relationship suffer in the opposite way once we introduced dates into it? Could our strange dynamic withstand a full dinner conversation that wasn’t broken up with chatter from the patchwork tribe we’d managed to acquire over the course of the year since he showed up on my doorstep?
Old fears start to rise up, threatening to engulf me—but then I remember Dr. Nouri’s office. The promise Stone made while kissing my hand. The promise I made about trying.
“Okay,” I answer after taking a deep, brave breath. “Sure, why not?”
The phone, Stone keeps charging on top of his dresser starts vibrating and lights up.
“Sure, why not?” Stone throws me a surly look as he picks up the phone. “Real romantic, babe.”
He answers his phone, before I can tell him what a big step this feels like for me. “Yeah, whaddya want?” he asks into the phone.
But then the surly look disappears as he says, “Yeah, this is Stanley Ferraro.”
Stanley Ferraro Jr.…Stone’s real name, I remember from the marriage certificate and DMV paperwork I filled out for him. I finish buttoning my pants, but stay right where I am instead of heading downstairs for breakfast.
The conversation doesn’t last long. It’s basically a series of “yeahs” until Stone ends it with, “Yeah, I’ll let everybody know. You don’t have to call my ma. Yeah, let me tell her.”
Then he hangs up, walks over to the settee, and sits down.
Something’s wrong, I sense immediately. Something he doesn’t necessarily want to talk about.
But I walk over and sit down next to him anyway. Just letting him know I’m there, as I wait for him to talk.
“My pop’s dead. Heart attack,” he says eventually.
The words “I’m sorry” don’t feel right, given their history, so I ask, “How are you feeling?”
“Like I want to take four pills. Right now. Before I can feel a fucking thing,” he replies, his answer instant and frank. “So I don’t have to feel a fucking thing.”
He sits so large and rigid beside me. But when I tug on his arm, he immediately caves. His large body curls around me as I slip my arms around his waist.
“This emotion shit is for the birds,” he grouses, holding on to me tight.
“What do you need from me now?” I ask, rubbing his back.
“I want you to come with me to the funeral. But you know, Luca’s going to be there. He’ll probably bring the wife and the kids. And even if he didn’t, you know somebody in the family would break and go squealing to Amber.”
“I don’t care.” My words are both a decision and a suddenly realized truth. “I’ll come back to New York with you. Anything you need.”
“The baby, too,” he says. “And Cami and Talia. They need a see a monster buried. Closure and all that shit.”
“If they agree to it, then they’ll come, too,” I answer. I want to comfort him, to provide him something better than pills, but I don’t know if the girls are ready for that.
To my relief, Cami and Talia agree to come up to the funeral at the breakfast table, without even pausing for a few seconds to decide.
“I always wanted to go to New York. See that Statue of Liberty and Times Square,” Cami says, reminding me that technically, she was one of those tourists real New Yorkers like me hated so much.
“We’re staying in New York, but the funeral will be in New Jersey,” I answer. “We’ll have to see if we have time to go sightseeing.”
“We can go wherever you want,” Stone says to Cami, totally contradicting me. Then he asks, “What?” when I shake my head at him.
“You are way more indulgent than I thought you’d be when we first met.”
“You think that’s indulgent, wait till you see what I’m getting her for her college graduation.”
Showing how far she’s move past the overly prideful girl she was when she and I first met, Cami asks, “What are you getting me?” Her voice unabashedly excited.
Stone just smirks.
“C’mon Stone, tell us. I wanna know… c’mon,” Talia whines over her breakfast plate, proving that even a traumatized kid will eventually return to a baseline setting of whining about anything and everything.
But Stone remains impervious to their pleas, at the breakfast table or on the multi-hour first class plane trip we undertake the following weekend.
And the girls abruptly break off with all the questions about Cami’s graduation gift when the car service drops them off in front of a glittering Manhattan skyscraper.
Talia gasps. “This is where you live?”
“Technically, the building belongs to the Ferraro Family,” Stone answers. “But yeah, I snagged one of the top floor apartments.”
Cami just shakes her head. “If I lived here, I’d never come back to Charlotte.”
“Yeah, but here don’t have all you guys,” Stone answers.
He squeezes my hand and murmurs in my ear, “Now I’m at a hundred and ten percent.”
Weirdly indulgent, I think as we all enter Stone’s luxury apartment building together. Also, weirdly sweet.
It’s been nearly a year of breakfast and dinners, not to mention all the holiday celebrations and Sunday dinners at our house. But strangely, I never feel as much like a family, as I do when we all walk into the building where Stone’s other life takes place. Together.
Chapter Thirty-Five
All of those warm familial feelings disappear when we walk into the New Jersey funeral home for the wake the next day.
A ton of people have gathered, wearing sharp black suits and designer dresses. Most of the men have black or gray hair, and most of the women are either blonde or the darkest brunette. They speak with thick Jersey accents “like ya heard about.” And they all seem to freeze when we step through the door.
“Did you not tell anyone about us?” I ask in a hushed voice, drawing Garnet a little closer at the abrupt silence that follows our entrance.
“I gave Luca a heads up.”
“Luca, that’s all?”
Before I can point out that he probably should have pre-warned the rest of his large Italian family that we were coming to the funeral with his dead brother’s baby in tow, Stone’s mother descends on us.
She’s one of the older women who’s opted for blonde side of the not gray spectrum. She’s thin, but her face has that plump dewy cast without a hint of wrinkles, only Botox can provide to a woman her age.
“What’s this?” she dem
ands, coming to stand toe to toe with Stone, even though he has a good foot on her.
“Peg, calm down,” a taller and even thinner woman comes over to stand behind her. She has long, silky black hair, and bright blue eyes. Luca’s mother, I realize, looking at the “best friends” in a new light as she tries to pull Stone’s mom away. “Don’t want to start anything. It’s a wake. C’mon now.”
But Stone’s mom doesn’t budge. “You brought your moolie?” she hisses at Stone. “To your own father’s wake?”
Okay, I’m not sure what a moolie is, but I get the feeling it isn’t good.
“Not my moolie, Ma. We’re married just the same as Luca and Amber,” Stone answers, proving that even off anti-depressants, he’s the kind of guy who pulls out lighter fluid, instead of quietly trying to putting a small fire out.
“Maybe we could move this to…” I start to suggest.
“You got married?” another relative screeches in the background. “Without telling your mother?”
“And who’s the two other kids?” another stage whispers so loud, she might as well be shouting. “They both got Italian eyes, but one of them looks like she’s mixed.”
“Maybe they had her first and it took the moolie this long to get him to agree to marry her,” another relative suggest. Way too loudly.
“Then why’s the other one white?” the original stage whisperer asks.
“Okay, maybe we shouldn’t have come,” Cami says, her voice nervous.
Talia’s now trying to hide from all the blatant stares behind her sister.
“Can we not be that stereotypical Italian family for maybe one whole second,” Luca calls out, appearing like an angel in a bespoke black suit and getting between us and the rest of the crowd.
Proving why he was able to take over the family at such a young age, Luca calms everyone down.
He directs Stone’s mother and him to the viewing room to see the body. Then he hands Cami and her sister over to one of his personal bodyguards, telling him to “make these kids a plate and introduce them to Daniella and Luca Jr.”
I look in the direction of Luca’s adopted daughter and the son I was originally slated to raise with Amber. Luca Jr. is almost two now and a perfect match to his beautiful parents’ set. His huge eyes and curls put me in mind of a Botticelli angel. However, unlike those darling cherubs, he’s already shed all his baby fat, as if his genes decided something as pedestrian as kid chub wasn’t befitting of a boy who was destined to grow up to be movie star gorgeous.
To my surprise, looking at him doesn’t hurt like it used to. As I watch him play on a Nintendo Switch with his adopted sister, I no longer see the baby I didn’t get to co-raise. Now he’s just Amber and Luca’s weirdly good-looking kid.
“Thanks,” I say to Luca when he’s done shutting everyone up and issuing orders. For more reasons than one.
Luca doesn’t say you’re welcome, though. “Kidnapping you is the gift that just keeps on giving, isn’t it?” he asks with an annoyed sneer. “Now I have to figure out how to tell everybody that this is actually my dead cousin’s kid without causing another scene.”
He glares at the both of us for a few moments. But then his face drops into a silly look, as he tickles Garnet’s belly and says, “Yes, you are, aren’t you? You’re a little friggin’ soap opera come to life!”
He reaches out to pull her from my arms, “I’ll take her while you go talk to Amber. She’s waiting for you in the bathroom.”
“Oh, I’m not sure if she’ll go to someone she doesn’t—”
But I’m cut off by Garnet’s happy squeal as she practically jumps into Luca’s arms.
Ugh…even babies aren’t immune to Luca’s ridiculously good looks.
Feeling completely out of my element, I cross through a sea of staring Italians to finally face the friend I’ve been avoiding for nearly two years.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Amber’s standing at the sinks when I come in, and her head turns in my direction at the sound of my entrance.
“Hey, Amber, it’s Naima,” I say. Still too trained in dealing with the blind not to announce myself right away.
Amber doesn’t answer. And I know it has nothing to do with the fact that she’s blind. Amber is basically Daredevil in an always zipperless dress.
She can hear me, smell me, and fight me, easily.
In fact, she looks like she wants to fight me when she finally answers, “I know who you are, even if you seem to have forgotten who am I in the twenty months since you left New York.”
“I’m sorry,” I say pre-emptively, even though I know that won’t stop Amber from lambasting me.
And I’m right about that.
“You didn’t return any of my calls or texts, not even one. And I had to find out from Luca that you had a baby by Rock and then, married Stone? What the hell, Almonte. I thought you hated him!”
“I did hate him,” I concede. “But now I don’t anymore.”
“Why? Because he was there, available? The latest wrong guy to wander into your life?” Amber demands in that vicious lawyer way of hers. I’ve heard her use the tone so often with others. But only once before with me. When she predicted Rock’s and my relationship would fall apart.
“That’s…that’s not fair,” I answer, trying to find the right words to defend myself and my decisions. God, fighting with Amber is like facing down and even more vicious and particularly articulate version of Not Nice Naima.
“What’s not fair is my supposed best friend, dropping out of all contact for almost two years!” Amber instantly shoots back. Of course, she has all her words ready to go, locked and loaded. “Me questioning the validity of a relationship that began with Stone kidnapping you from your home is entirely fair.”
She shakes her head in my general direction. “And I see after ditching me, you decided to surround yourself with people who don’t question your obviously broken decision maker. Luca told me you and Stone took in two more of your case files.”
Her words hit me like slaps. “You don’t know anything about this. Anything about us.”
“So what? You didn’t case file him?” Amber asks, closing in for the kill. “Didn’t see a broken toy and pull another ‘oh no, look, he’s so wounded! I must fall in inappropriate love with him, stat!’? Because according to Luca, the last time he saw you and Stone in a room together, you were kneeing him in the crotch for calling you a lesbian.”
“People change, Amber,” I answer between clenched teeth. “He’s changed.”
“Nobody changes that much,” Amber answers with a dismissive roll of her neck. “If they did, I wouldn’t be here with you having the same damn conversation about Stone that I had with you about Rock.”
“Stone isn’t anything like Rock.”
“Oh yes, I know he isn’t anything like Rock,” Amber answers, pointing both her index fingers in the air. “Rock was an almost sane choice under the circumstances. I have no idea what would possess you to…”
Okay, Amber’s smart and one of the most capable people I know. When it comes to most things, Amber’s usually right. But she’s not right about this. And suddenly I can’t take her lawyerier than thou attitude anymore.
“Shut up!” I scream at her. “Shut up. You have no idea who Stone really is, the lengths he’s gone to, the way he’s up-ended his life…”
It feels like I’m realizing my next words at the same time I’m saying them. “Stone is a good man. Better than Rock even. At least he’s authentic. At least he loves me flaws and all. He one hundred percent loves me. He told me that, and he continues to tell me that every day, even though I’m so messed up, so scared to make myself vulnerable and get left, that I still haven’t figured out how to believe him. Or to say it back. But you know what, Amber?”
I roll my neck even more fiercely than she did when she was trying to dismiss me. “I’ll say it to you. I’ll say it proud right here and now. Stone isn’t a case file, and this isn’t Stockholm. I love him
. I one hundred percent love him. And I’m sorry for not telling you about us earlier, but I’m not going to stand here and let you drag his name through the mud.”
By the time I’m done yelling, the “know it all lawyer” look has faded from Amber’s face.
“Oh, Nai…” she says, her voice going soft as a flower. “Do you really? Do you really love him?”
I study her sharply, but the judgmental expression has disappeared along with her disapproving tone. All I see is my best friend. Amazed at the words that just came out of my mouth.
“Yeah, yeah, I do,” I answer, a new lump forming in my throat. Then I admit to my best friend. “And it scares the hell out of me.”
“I get it.” Amber does that graceful thing where she makes it seem like an exploratory swipe of her arm is actually an intended move all along, and pulls me into a hug. “Believe me, I get it more than most.”
I can hear her and Luca’s own epic romance in her wry tone.
“I still don’t get it,” a gruff voice says behind us. “But I’ll take it.”
Amber and I draw apart to see Stone, filling up the restroom’s doorway. “Came in to tell you two broads to quiet down. This wake’s already got enough drama without you two getting in a fighting match.”
“Sorry,” I mumble.
But Amber resets right back to Super Lawyer and asks, “You really love my best friend, Stone? This isn’t just a bunch of fucked up psychology wrapped in a marriage license?”
“Well it ain’t not psychology,” he answers, shrugging his head to the left. “But it is love. One hundred and twenty percent now. At least for me.”
He turns from Amber and looks down at me, his eyes asking questions that don’t make it all the way to his mouth. Did he hear me right? Do I really love him, too?
“It’s love for me, too,” I answer his unspoken questions, my voice soft but not tentative. Not tentative at all. “One hundred percent. I’m all in.”
And would you look at that? The sky doesn’t come crashing down. The funeral home doesn’t collapse on all of our heads.
STONE: Her Ruthless Enforcer: 50 Loving States, North Carolina Page 16
