by Lee, India
Bringing his hands together as if in prayer, Piersanti’s eyes sparkled wide. “I always dream of playing for the NBA! I dream forever. This is why I come here to play today.”
“I know.”
“Ah!” Piersanti shook his head, his prayer hands now curling into giddy fists in front of his mouth. “Garrett!” He reached for his hand again, shaking it vigorously as his brown eyes crinkled up at the ceiling in disbelief. “I thought no one will talk to me today because my performance on the court… it was so bad. But you make me full of relief. I thought the chances… I thought I ruin them already.” He laughed at himself. “You are a agent?”
Gavin blinked. “Yeah.” He swallowed before eyeing his once again puzzled intern, grateful that Osborne wasn’t the type to speak up. “I’m an agent.”
“Incredible! Ah, I thought I…” he lowered his voice to a whisper. “Fuck up already. I thought I miss my chance.”
“No. Everyone gets more than one chance.”
“Yes, it’s true.” Caramel curls fell over Piersanti’s eyes as he bowed his head while clasping Gavin’s hands between his. “Thank you, Garrett, for your invitation. I will absolutely love to go to dinner with you.”
Ignoring a weird snort from Osborne, Gavin nodded, slightly confused by the genuine nature of his own smile. “Awesome, man. I look forward to it.”
~
Gavin smiled wide as he crossed the cobblestone street to approach the door of his favorite restaurant, Lilac. Adjusting his black skinny tie, he shook his head at Osborne, clucking with disapproval.
“I knew you’d invite him, you ass. This your date for tonight?” he asked the intern, who stood guiltily next to Elliot Smiley. Elliot smirked, smoothing down yet another one of his Loro Piana suits.
“Hey, I don’t think you’re in the place to make gay jokes here. Considering the confirmation Oz has given me that you do in fact reserve your hard-on for Nicolo Piersanti.”
Gavin shrugged. “I’m a sucker for ringlets. And I’m guessing you are too since you left the Adidas party to be here. What happened to hunting for a bunch of Holly lookalikes?”
“Those I can find any day, but it’s a rare occasion that I get to witness Gavin Hunter come out of the closet.” Elliot held his phone up. “And in front of my future wife, Peyton, whom I’ve invited, by the way. Oz told me that you planned on leaving her in the dark about tonight’s dinner. Extremely rude, but don’t worry, I fixed the situation.”
Gavin swallowed the groan rising from his throat. “All good by me,” he lied, pulling open the front door. “Come on. Let’s go.”
He strolled ahead of the guys, heading toward the back of the dimly lit restaurant and to his usual booth. Upon reaching it, he was dismayed to discover Peyton waiting at their table instead of Piersanti.
“Oh… hey.” Gavin slightly tilted his head as he raised his eyebrows at her. She didn’t usually wear revealing dresses — she’d always claimed that true beauties could nab all the attention without showing much skin — but tonight, her outfit appeared painted onto her body. Gavin couldn’t help but stare for a few seconds, even as she sauntered over with smug satisfaction.
“Asshole,” Peyton greeted him. “I’m going to pretend that you told Smiley to invite me tonight because you were truly a very busy boy and you couldn’t be bothered to pick up your phone.”
“Sure,” Gavin said simply, hands in his pockets though his eyes dipped down the front of her nude bandage dress. Peyton’s lips wiggled into a triumphant grin.
“Saw that. Tell me how good I look tonight.”
“You look good tonight.”
She shook her head, removing his hands from his pockets and placing them onto her hips. “I know you can do better than that, Hunter,” she purred as she slid his palms to her backside. Without her direction, he gave it a hard squeeze. It was instinct. “Mm. See? Now tell me how good I look,” she repeated.
“You look insanely fucking good, Peyton. Happy?”
“I’m not sure. Who’s in your bed tonight?”
“You.” He wasn’t lying. There had been a reason as to why he’d broken up with her, but he couldn’t remember it with two fistfuls of her ass in his hands.
“Then I’m happy,” she murmured before pulling him back towards the table, where Elliot and Osborne were already awkwardly seated. “Now show me that you remember what I like to order.” She handed him a menu as the server approached their table.
Oh yeah. There was that side of her.
Unlike the Hollys, Peyton could more than carry her own weight in conversation, but she had always taken a bit too much pride in having others do things for her. But as Osborne put it, she was smoking hot and whenever it was past a certain hour at night, things like baby voices and bossiness didn’t bother Gavin much. All he needed were a few drinks to forget that he really only liked girls who made him laugh.
Unless, apparently, Nicolo Piersanti was around.
“Ah, I am very sorry to be late.”
Gavin rose immediately from the table upon hearing Piersanti’s voice. “Hey! I’m glad you made it, man.” He let Piersanti get halfway through his introductions to the table before ushering him away, making some excuse about more easily getting a drink at the bar.
Though of course, he mostly wanted to avoid having his sports agent cover blown since Elliot would be more than glad to out his status as an executive assistant. Because of him — and also Peyton — Gavin led Piersanti past the bar and up a small flight of stairs to Lilac’s mezzanine, an area of the restaurant-lounge that was closed off to the public. His own access had almost solely to do with the fact that his step-uncle, Hudson, owned the place.
Raising his eyebrows, Piersanti had a look around, seemingly oblivious to the stares as he nodded and grinned, taking a peek over the cast iron balcony. He looked even taller in a skinny tie and slim fit black suit. Only after noticing this did Gavin realize that he and Piersanti were wearing nearly identical outfits. He glanced down at his own body, annoyed at himself for wondering who looked better. While quietly debating to himself, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Earth to Gavin.”
Head snapping up, Gavin blinked, registering the familiar pretty face in front of him.
“Hey.” Shit. Her name was buried at the very back of her head. Eyes darting about her, Gavin searched for any clues that would help as he sifted the mental notes in his head. Crazy hair, amazing lips… nose piercing. He remembered that little heart shaped stud. “Noelle,” Gavin smiled. She had a jewelry store in Soho that she’d named after herself. “How have you been?” He kissed her cheek as she stuck it out for him.
“I don’t know.” Noelle clasped her hands together, shrugging her tanned shoulders inward so that her cleavage plunged. “Mad at you for never calling?” She smirked when she caught him briefly eyeing her neckline. “But you could make it up to me by either buying me a drink or introducing me to your sexy giant.”
Perfect. Gavin grinned, raising a finger to flag the cocktail waitress. “I can do both.” After ordering, he placed a hand on the leather part of Noelle’s dress, ushering her over to the cast iron balcony and to Piersanti, who seemed to quickly sense the presence of a pretty girl. He turned around immediately, pleasing both Gavin and Noelle for different reasons. Gavin shook his head. What a dirty bastard.
“Hello!”
But Piersanti’s impassioned greeting for Noelle was no different from the one he’d given Gavin in the locker room earlier. Gavin squinted, unsure of how to interpret that.
“I’m Nicolo. You are Garrett’s girlfriend?”
Gavin felt his shoulders slump. “No, Nicolo. Not my girlfriend.”
“Ah.” Piersanti raised his eyebrows, nodding politely as he waited for an explanation. Noelle provided it, and with the forward nature that Gavin suddenly remembered about her.
“No, honey. I’m interested in you.”
“Ah.” The prayer hands appeared once again as Piersanti smiled apologetically
. “But I have a girlfriend.”
Noelle threw her head back and groaned. “Of course you do.”
“Is she here?” Gavin asked.
“No, she is back in Italy. But I, uh,” Piersanti held his palms up around his shoulders, wavering from side to side, “She means everything.”
Noelle held a hand to her heart, cooing as the cocktail waitress approached. Plucking her martini off of the tray, she turned to face Gavin. “He’s too sweet. You should take a lesson from this guy. Asshole.” She winked, sipping her drink as she clicked away in her stilettos. Gavin heaved a sigh.
“You have no girlfriend?” Piersanti asked curiously.
“No. Last one was Peyton downstairs. The blonde.”
“She was a serious girlfriend?” When Gavin shook his head, Piersanti followed up his question. “Who was the last serious girlfriend?”
Gavin swallowed hard, unsure if he wanted to talk about it. He took in a deep breath. “This girl I met at a wedding. The wedding of the guy who owns this restaurant, actually. Awesome girl. Funniest person I know. You know, besides myself,” he joked.
Piersanti blinked. “You’re funny?”
Gavin looked at him, though he didn’t know what to say in response.
“You… are serious, no?” Piersanti shrugged. “But maybe you like to joke at home?”
Gavin laughed. “Eh. Not really. I’m not much of a… joker, I guess. Not since we broke up.”
Piersanti bowed his head sadly. “Why you’re not together anymore?”
“We tried for almost two years. Biggest thing was that we lived too far apart. I was here, she was across the country. Sometimes Prague, sometimes Spain, depending on where her job took her. If there was anyone worth trying to make that shit work with though, it was her. But in the end, it was still too hard.”
Piersanti nodded. “You loved her?”
Gavin winced as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Ah, you did. But you never told her because you were a funny guy, you liked to joke.”
Gavin stared, unblinking. He wasn’t sure Piersanti even knew what he was talking about for someone who was so strangely accurate. “I… it’s hard enough to talk and be open about things when you’re with a girl. It’s harder when you’re with her but you never actually see each other in person. I mean she was used to that life but I wasn’t. And I was in a transition period coming out of college. I was trying to act like everything was fine but I couldn’t find a job, still acted like a kid, wasn’t making my own money yet while she was already out there and successful and… I don’t know. Thought she deserved better.” Gavin’s eyes fluttered, perplexed but mostly surprised by his own sudden admission. He swallowed, eyeing Piersanti self-consciously. “Jesus. Anyway.” He decided to transition into the topic that he’d been waiting to hear about most. “Tell me what your girlfriend’s like.”
“My girlfriend?” Piersanti raised his dark brows. His eyes crinkled into a smile. “She’s the reason I will not leave this country in tears. My heart is in America but when I think of seeing her, I’m happy to go home.”
“What if you got to the NBA? Would she follow you?”
“Oh, she will! I want to play for Los Angeles. Lakers or Clippers, I don’t care. I will play for Warriors or Kings too, if I must. I want California.”
“What, no love for New York?”
Piersanti shrugged. “But I am originally from Sicily. I like the sun. My girlfriend too. We are accustom to good weather.”
Gavin nodded. “How’d you meet her?”
“My girlfriend? I, ah…” Piersanti rubbed his chin while wincing and making a goofy face. He shook his head. “It will sound strange to you.”
Gavin felt himself laughing already. “I’m sure it will, but let’s hear it.”
“I… at a restaurant in Ozieri. It is close to Sassari, where I play basketball. She is with her friends, I am with my teammates. My teammates, they ask the waiter, ‘Can you tell the girl there to be quieter? She is too loud.’ The waiter says ‘yes’ and he goes to her table. He comes back and he is holding a very good bottle of wine. He says, ‘The girl would like to buy you a bottle of wine because you are not loud enough.’” Piersanti grinned, the memory visibly sparkling in his eye. “I say to the waiter, ‘Then I would like to buy her champagne. Please pick the best bottle you have.’ The waiter picks a bottle but he returns to our table. ’The girl has enough wine and champagne. She would like you to buy her your favorite dish on the menu. But sir, I am very sorry, our kitchen has closed and our chef has gone home. We have packed away everything but in the basement, we have casu marzu.’”
“What’s casu marzu?”
“It is an illegal cheese in Sardinia.”
Gavin burst out laughing so hard that Piersanti laughed too. “What the hell? What kind of toxic-ass cheese is this?”
“It is a cheese with live maggots.”
“Oh shit.” Gavin’s face fell, his amusement replaced with a horror that Piersanti laughed at as well.
“Garrett, I am born in Italy, raised in Italy. I love three things: basketball, my mother, and food. But I have never eaten casu marzu. I don’t know anybody who eats casu marzu.” He shook his head, grim for a second as if imagining the bug-infested dairy. Slowly, however, a smile touched the corners of his lips. “But this girl at the restaurant? My teammates, they think it’s funny to send her the casu marzu. I tell the waiter, ‘No, she is not from Sardinia. The casu marzu will disgust her. Please do not put the cheese on her table.’”
Gavin was riveted. “But they did it anyway?”
Piersanti nodded. “My teammates say to her it is my favorite dish, she must eat it. And the girl, her friends are screaming but she is laughing. She drinks her wine and she says, ‘Chi non risica, non rosica! Mangia e statti zito!’”
“What’s that mean?”
“He who risks nothing gains nothing! Now shut up and eat!”
Gavin felt a wide and real smile spread his lips. “That’s awesome. And she ate it?”
Piersanti covered his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut for a second, appearing to be reliving trauma. Gavin burst out laughing. “Yes. She ate the cheese. And what happened on her second bite?” Piersanti drew a high arch in the air with his finger. “The maggot jump off her bread.”
“Oh Christ, I would’ve shit myself.”
“I shit myself.”
Gavin howled. “What?”
“I mean I was close. I felt I was.”
Gavin couldn’t contain his laughter. It actually tingled and hurt in his cheeks. He hadn’t laughed so hard in awhile. “So that made you fall in love with her.”
“She ate this terrible cheese for me. Would it not make you fall in love with her?”
He considered it. “I think I’m already in love with her.”
Piersanti beamed. “Exactly. This girl was so brave, so funny, so beautiful. I said to her, ‘Please let me take you to dinner, but understand if I do not kiss you on the first date. I just watched you eat the casu marzu.’” He shrugged, pressing his lips into a tight-lipped smile. “Eh. But then I kiss her that night.”
Gavin wiped a surprise tear from the corner of his eye as he came down from his fit of laughter. “Awesome. So by the transitive property, you ate maggot cheese that night too.”
“Yes! She use this same expression!”
Gavin laughed. “Nice.” He shook his head. “Goddamn. Sounds like a dream girl.”
~
Groggily wiping at his face, Gavin wasn’t sure if it was the bright light or Peyton’s sharp voice that made him wince.
“What in the hell are you doing out here, Hunter?”
He opened his eyes, squinting into the sun until Peyton’s body moved in front of it. Her lip curling, she ripped away the blanket that Gavin had managed to carry out with him in the night.
“Do you care to finally talk to me and tell me what the fuck you think you’re doing to me here? Like it wasn’t enough that you left me at dinn
er alone last night with your fat intern and fucking Elliot Smiley? Why did you even take me home if you weren’t interested?”
Gavin rubbed his eye as he recalled Peyton having waited for him outside of the front door of Lilac, catching him upon his exit from the restaurant. She’d climbed into his cab and he hadn’t said anything in protest. His mind had been too occupied. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t look good.
“Jesus Christ, are you seriously going to ignore me right now?”
Gavin ran a hand over his face, finally focusing his eyes on Peyton, her hair a mess as she stood before him in one of his Beauford Athletics T-shirts. He grimaced. “What?”
“Did you hear a word of what I just said?”
“I’m sorry, I was thinking.”
“About what?” Peyton fumed. “Nicolo fucking Piersanti?”
Gavin squinted at her. “Actually, yeah.”
She stared. “Oh. My. God.” Chucking the blanket back onto his body, Peyton grabbed a handful of her already messy blonde hair, her long legs storming back into the apartment. Gavin’s lips parted to form some sort of apology but all that came out was a strange sigh. Frowning, he blinked straight ahead at the view of blue sky and Midtown high rises.
When he returned to his bedroom, he found Peyton tearing through his closet. “I’m not doing the walk of shame in my dress, asshole,” she explained through gritted teeth. “I won’t.”
Gavin knit his brows together as he rubbed his temple. “That’s fine, I don’t want you to,” he murmured, opening his drawers and looking for the thin, soft sweaters that his ex-girlfriend had loved and borrowed so often that he’d considered them hers. Lifting some old T-shirts, Gavin located the pile. But as his fingers touched each sweater for the first time since they’d brushed her skin, he decided suddenly that he didn’t want Peyton wearing even one of them.
But as it turned out, she did just fine making herself an outfit of his other pieces of clothing. Impressed, Gavin checked out the way her lithe body pulled off his jeans, letting them hang slightly below her hip bones with the bottoms cuffed messily above her thin ankles. He wanted to tell her that she had on his favorite Beauford Athletics shirt — the one he’d worn in so perfectly — but he decided against it. She was upset enough as it was. Plus, she’d knotted it to look stylish enough for even him to notice. He figured she somewhat deserved it at this point.
