Hidden Worthiness

by Susan Fanetti

  The place was as crowded as she expected on a Saturday evening, but not so packed there wasn’t a place to sit. Donnie found a booth in the far corner and took that, directing Ari to take the seat that faced the wall. He took the seat that faced the restaurant, though it put his right side most on view. Now that she’d noticed his tendency to present his unscarred side, she couldn’t help noticing when he didn’t.

  He was dressed much more casually than she’d seen him before. In the weeks since their date, she’d imagined him in the only way she’d known him: tuxedoed, in varying stages of put together. Tonight, he wore jeans and a black hoodie, with a plain white t-shirt under it. The hoodie wasn’t a sweatshirt; instead, it was made of some soft, knitted material. Probably cashmere. He looked good. Maybe better than the tux, because it seemed more true.

  She shook that romanticized bullshit right out of her head and reminded herself what a bastard he was.

  “So talk,” she said as he took the menus from their place between the napkin dispenser and the condiment caddy and handed her one. She set it aside; eating was not her purpose here.

  “Wait,” he said, and put the menus back.

  A waitress Ari didn’t know came over with two pots of coffee. “Regular or decaf?”

  “Arianna?”

  It was late for caffeine, but Donnie’s little ambush had pretty much guaranteed a sleepless night, anyway. “Regular.”

  “And for me,” Donnie said.

  The waitress filled their cups. “You know what you want?” She looked down at the table when she spoke, not making eye contact with either of them.

  “Coffee’s enough for me,” Ari answered first.

  “Just coffee for now,” Donnie added. “I’ll let you know if that changes.”

  The waitress turned. She didn’t look up until she was clear of the table. Weird.

  Alone again, Donnie pushed the bowl of creamers her way. He remembered. “I need to tell you that I’ve put a guard detail on you. They’re shadowing you now, so you won’t see them unless there’s trouble. It would be easier, and safer, if they could come closer. But I’ll leave that up to you.”

  She froze with the little plastic cup of creamer hovering over her coffee. “A guard? Like that guy tonight?”

  “Basically, yeah. It’s two men, because you’re not armed yourself. Like I said, you won’t see them unless you need them, but you’ll be safer knowing they’re there.”

  “You’ve got two big guys with guns following me around, and that’s supposed to make me feel safe?”

  “Yes.”

  It didn’t. “Why are they there? How long have they been there?” She thought of that maddening prickle on her neck. Several times in the past couple weeks, she’d been sure she was watched but had seen no one.

  “Just since tonight.”

  Oh. Well, then maybe she was going crazy. Maybe it was just Baxter worming his big head into hers and making her generally paranoid. Wonderful. She went back to fixing her coffee and let herself figure out what questions she had next.

  “Why? Who am I supposed to be safe from? And what difference is it to you if I’m safe? Since when do you care?”

  “I care, Arianna.”

  “Right. Whatever.”

  He didn’t like her response; a strong wave of anger flashed over his face. Just the left side. The right side didn’t move nearly as much. There, it was only a faint crimping near his eye.

  “When we went out to dinner, somebody saw you with me. They took photos of us at our table. They sent them to me and made threats. I know you don’t want anything to do with me, but it’s my responsibility to keep you safe now.”

  “So you’re to the The Bodyguard chapter in your book of romantic hero clichés?”

  “Please?”

  Her hurt feelings were convoluting the issues here. He’d just told her some mobster had threatened her, and that was way more important than snarking about what a bastard he’d been six weeks ago. “They threatened me? Why?”

  “They must have thought we were together. These men target loved ones. They must have thought you were that to me.”

  “But I’m not. You don’t have loved ones. You only have arrangements.” Welp. The hurt feelings would not be silenced.

  He stared steadily across the table at her.

  She’d just gotten him out of her head. Mostly. And here he was, being cold and detached, reminding her of the dazzling night they’d shared and the nasty mess he’d made of it the next morning. “I don’t want to be part of this.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you giving me a choice in this?”

  “No. If you don’t want to see them, you won’t. They’ll stay back, out of your way. But they will be there. You don’t have to see me again after this meeting, but my men will protect you until the danger is over.”

  She sipped her coffee and stared at the table, and she thought about what she felt. She wasn’t scared. He’d told her there was a threat against her, somebody in his mobster world that wanted to hurt her to hurt him—because men sucked and always turned to women when they wanted to cause the most pain—but she wasn’t scared, at least not primarily. Primarily, she was just hurt. Old hurt and new. Heart and ego. She’d misread this guy so badly. That night, she’d been crushing on him so hard, skipping down the primrose path toward loving him, and then, in the harsh light of day, he’d simply said, Yeah, I don’t do love, but if you fuck me when I want, I’ll buy you something nice for your trouble.

  So why did he care if she got hurt now? Was it some Mafioso honor thing?

  Of course it was exactly that. The code. Their honor. Why they maintained they weren’t criminals while they stood elbows-deep in crime and violence. They considered themselves honorable men. It had nothing to do with her at all.

  “That night really meant nothing to you.”

  “That’s not true. I told you then that I liked you, and I wanted to see you more.”

  “No. You wanted to fuck me more.”

  Again he stared silently at her, and again a riot of emotions flashed across his face in an instant.

  “Arianna, look around this diner right now, and tell me what you see.”

  She looked, and saw exactly what she expected to see: a bunch of people eating hamburgers, chicken fingers, grinders, stuffed quahogs, drinking cabinets and soda—the usual. It was a diner. People were dressed casually, chatting casually. Some had children with them. Some were in larger groups, talking animatedly. Some were pairs, obviously on a date. Near the door was the big man who’d pulled a gun on her. Donnie’s bodyguard.

  That reminded her that Donnie had a gun stuffed in the waistband of his jeans.

  She started to turn back and tell him he was the only thing of note in the place, when she caught something at a table near them. A group of four, three men and a woman. Young. Early twenties or so.

  They were staring. One of the men pulled on his own right cheek, misshaping his face, and his friends laughed in that hunched, high-school way people laughed when they were being mean and didn’t want to be caught. Laughing at Donnie.

  Her lens refocused now, Ari looked around the diner again and noticed that a lot of people were looking at Donnie. Some of them with sympathy, many with shock, some with evident disgust. Most tried not to look but couldn’t help themselves. The children stared most unabashedly, but their parents tried to make them stop. A few people, like the table near them, were casually cruel.

  As she looked, she understood that just about every person in this place had taken their turn to stare at the man with the melted face.

  When she turned back to Donnie, tears blurred her vision. With that cold, impassive expression, he watched her master them and said nothing until she had.

  “You brought me to a restaurant where there’s a fucking spotlight over my head, but I’m here, sitting here, explaining the trouble to you, because I do care. I do like you.”

  “I’m sorry.” She couldn’t think of an
ything else to say, could barely get those insignificant words out.

  He waved her apology away, and tilted his head toward the rest of the restaurant. “For twenty years, this is the world I’ve lived in. I understand what people see, what they feel, when they look at me. I don’t turn away from it. I don’t hide. I live my life, and I don’t pretend it’s anything more or better than it is. I have arrangements because that’s all I can expect.”

  Once again, he was sitting across from her, perfectly cool, upending everything she thought she knew about him. “But that’s not true. Until you turned it all ugly in the morning, what I saw when I looked at you was a man I really liked.” She tried to hold back the next words, but they pushed on anyway. “I even thought I could fall in love with you.”

  He left those words lingering in the air between them for an uncomfortably long time.

  “Let’s say I believe you. You say it now, while we sit here, and let’s say I believe that you think you really like me. That the way I look doesn’t matter, and you’re honestly attracted to me. Not my power, not my money, me. Maybe you think you could feel more than that for me someday. Let’s say that right now, we both believe that’s true. But you don’t know. If you were to spend some time with me in the world, when those stares that just made you cry are turned your way too, eventually it would be too much. You don’t know, because you haven’t lived in this world that I see every day. But I’ve been here for twenty years. I’ve been here with many women, and I know. Love doesn’t grow in this world. So it’s best not to pretend it can.”

  “But Donnie, how can you be happy if your heart is so closed off?”

  “A closed heart is better than a broken one.” He flinched, hard, as that sentence ended. He’d said much more with those few words than he’d wanted to. He’d said enough to make her heart ache. With a brisk shake of his head, he tried to take them back. “My happiness is not your concern.”

  “What if I want it to be?” She reached across the table and took his hand. The second time she’d touched him in this way. As the first time, he flinched, but let her hold on.

  Julian would never understand, he’d never let it rest, but Ari felt herself slipping all the way back to her first feelings for this man. All the harsh things he’d said, they meant something different now. As he’d made her see the diner in a different way, he’d made her see him newly, too.

  Finally, he spoke. “You’re asking me to do something I don’t do.”

  She responded by returning his silence.

  “Are you with Trewson? Do not lie to me, Arianna.”

  “No. I’ve already answered that question. He’s my best friend, and it’s all he’s ever been.”

  “You told him you love him.”

  “And I do. As I said, he’s my best friend—wait.” She took her hand back and thought for a moment, replaying her conversation with Julian as they left the theatre tonight, and came up empty. They’d been talking about the news that Devonny needed another surgery. “When did you hear me tell him I love him? Have you been following me? More than tonight?” Was it Donnie she’d been sensing at the back of her neck?

  “Last night. After I got the photos, I came in to check on you. You were going into your apartment with him, and you told him you love him.”

  She didn’t remember much of last night. Julian had gotten her drunk so she could forget that Baxter fucking Berrault was a fucking son of a bitch who persecuted her for no reason except she didn’t want his dick.

  “I don’t remember. I was drunk. But he’s just a friend. Who I love as a friend. Does it matter?”

  “It does if you’re willing to reconsider spending time with me.”

  She didn’t like the way he said that—like he was offering her an arrangement again. “I don’t do arrangements, Donnie. I do relationships. Two people with open, hopeful hearts.”

  When the silence stretched forward again, she added, “I spend my life being stared at, being judged for the way I look and what my body does. I know it’s not the same at all, and I’m not suggesting it is, but I am good at filtering out whose gaze doesn’t matter from whose does. The people in this restaurant don’t matter. When I look at you, I see a man I want to be with.”

  Her phone rang right then, and she grabbed it to shut it off, but it was Julian—it had been thirty minutes since she’d sent him on his way. “It’s Julian. I was supposed to call. If I don’t take it, he’ll send in the troops.”

  Donnie nodded, and Ari answered. “Hi, I’m fine.”

  “You didn’t call. Where are you? You need to come home.”

  “I’m fine, Jule. It’s good. I’m not in danger.” Well, that wasn’t true, but that was a much longer conversation not to have over the phone. “I’m not coming back yet, but everything’s fine. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Ari, please think about what you’re doing. A guy pulled gun on us tonight!”

  Looking straight at Donnie, she said, “I love you, Julian. I’m fine, and I’ll be home soon.”

  “I love you, too, but you are being a fool. I’m calling every half hour until you are in this apartment.”

  “Fine. If it makes you feel better.”

  “It doesn’t, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  She ended the call and set her phone away.

  Donnie stared at it, jealous contempt firing in his jewel-blue eyes. When he met her eyes again, he said, “Let’s say I’m willing to try a relationship. I need rules.”

  “The no-touching, no-kissing thing? No.”

  “Then we’re done. I need that.”

  “Why would you not want someone who cares about you to touch you? Why would you not want to kiss that someone?”

  The waitress came back and refilled the coffees. Now Ari understood her unwillingness to make eye contact as something other than shyness, and she wanted to kick her in the face.

  When she was gone, Donnie stared at his coffee. “Again, you ask me to do something I never do. I don’t talk about this. Why do you expect me to?”

  “Because I don’t understand.”

  He exhaled frustration, but he answered. “As I said before, you can touch me, and kiss me, everywhere but my head. As for me kissing you, my mouth doesn’t work right. I know you see that. I can’t kiss you, and I can’t do anything else with my mouth, because I don’t have the motor control on half my face to do it right. It would feel wrong to you.”

  “How do you know how it would feel to me?”

  “I’ve been told.”

  The insights were flying at her now, and she wanted to find the woman who’d fucked Donnie up so badly and kick her in the face, too. Repeatedly.

  “That’s why you don’t want your face touched, too.”

  Another answer of silence.

  “Okay, let’s negotiate.”

  “I told you, my rules aren’t negotiable.”

  She grinned. “You also told me you don’t do relationships, so clearly everything is on the table now.”

  He laughed, and suddenly the atmosphere of their table changed completely, the sun breaking through storm clouds. “Make your offer.”

  “I’ll table the question of kissing. I won’t promise never to bring it up again, if things go well I’m sure I’ll bring it up again, because I love kissing. But for now, it’s tabled. In exchange, I get to touch your face at least once. We’ll both be honest about how it makes us feel, and if it’s awkward, we’ll work through it. If you hate it, or I don’t like it, I won’t do it again. But I don’t like being punished for something some other woman did to you.”

  “What makes you think it was only one woman?”

  “Intuition. I think you put your hand on a hot stove and decided you’d never go near a stove again.”

  Again, he flinched hard at her words. She was like a human taser to this man. This time, though, he stunned her by laughing. His laughter held more surprise than humor, but it went on for a while, long enough that Ari felt herself smiling along, not quite unders
tanding.

  “It wasn’t my hand on the hot stove, but I get your point.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what happened. I was held down on a commercial grill until my face cooked off.”

  Both her hands flew up and covered her mouth. The horror of that pain broke over her in a single, overwhelming burst. “Oh my God. Oh, Donnie.”

  His cold mask was back in place, and with it the dark clouds loomed overhead. “I don’t want pity. I never want to see that look on your face again.”

  How could she not feel sorry for his pain? “It’s not pity, Donnie. I told you before. It’s empathy. It hurts that you were hurt.”

  He shook that off. “Call it what you want. What you feel for me, whatever it is, I don’t want it to be about that. Don’t be with me for that. Don’t pretend you like me, or try to love me, for that.”

  “I won’t. I wouldn’t. You’re more than your face, Donnie.” He was, for example, the underboss of the Pagano Brothers. How strange that a man so feared, so powerful, could be so raw and afraid.

  “I am The Face, Arianna.”

  “Not to me.”

  He pulled his wallet out and put a twenty on the table. “We’ll see. Come on, I’ll take you home.”

  ~oOo~

  On the ride, Donnie was quiet, and Ari spent her time watching the side mirror, trying to decide which of the vehicles behind them was Donnie’s guard, and hers. They were being followed by two different cars, right?

  Though his guard had been in the diner with them, she hadn’t seen him leave or get into a car or truck or anything. They were good, these Pagano Brothers men. Donnie had said she wouldn’t see them unless she needed them, and even when she tried to see them, he was right.

  “They’re back there,” he finally said. “If you agree, I’ll have your detail move in. They can be right on you, if it makes you feel safer.”

  “Will I be safer?” She couldn’t quite get her head around the idea that one of Donnie’s enemies had threatened her. Why did they think she was important? Because they’d had one date?