“Buono, Buono!” his mother grinned, her eyes shining. “Lorenzo, cut the bread for her.”
Lorenzo reached over and started slicing the bread. I realized that even pretending to have room in my stomach to eat was better than claiming fullness.
“Okay,” I said with surrender. “Can you pass the butter?”
Lorenzo shook his head. “You don’t need it. Try it first. My grandmother makes it the traditional way.”
I did, and of course, he was right. It was bursting with flavor.
Lorenzo drank my wine a few times when his mother wasn’t looking. This kept her from wondering why I wasn’t indulging. It meant something to me that he was safeguarding my secret. Unlike Noah had earlier, blurting it as part of an argument to gain the upper hand.
When the meal was over, I learned it wasn’t truly over. This was just some sort of intermission.
Later, I sat in a smaller sitting room flanked on each side with Lavinia on one side of me and Lorenzo’s silent Grandmother on the other. On the coffee table was a bunch of shoe boxes and each one told the story of their family. I felt utterly fascinated by the history. Lorenzo’s grandmother explained the pictures taken in Italy. Speaking only Italian, Lavinia translated for me.
“And this is the restaurant in 1923.” His mother handed me a black and white photograph of Cibo Degli Dei. “See and this…” she pointed to two men. “This is Lorenzo’s great, great-grandfather who started it, and this is the man who supplied the alcohol. It was all hush, hush. This was during prohibition.”
“Wow,” I looked closer.
“Lorenzo is very good friends with that man’s descendant… his name is Chance Urban. He’s a good boy. He’s been in prison a few times, run into some trouble, but he’s settling now, I think.”
Lorenzo had told me about his friend Chance, so at least this wasn’t a surprise.
“The restaurant has been in the family such a long time…” I commented.
“It is our legacy now. The DiGregorio’s have made a name for themselves there.”
I can tell how proud she is. “Lorenzo seems to love it.”
“He does, it was his and his father’s love. They put their soul in that place, and a little secret,” she pressed closer to me. “Each DiGregorio man met his future wife in there.”
My eyes widened. “They did?”
“Great, great-grandfather, was an immigrant, of course, yes? And he met his wife there, she was there to eat with her family. An affluent Italian family… they may or may not have been in the mafia, we don’t know, we don’t ask…” she shook it off. “Great -grandfather DiGregorio, he met his wife when she came to paint the sign. She did not speak English. She was also engaged to another man. Then there was grandfather, he met his wife because she was a health inspector’s secretary. They intended to shut the place down. They fell in love, she fixed the restaurant, so on, and so forth.”
“Did you meet the late Mr. DiGregorio there?” I asked.
“I did,” her smile was contagious. “He was a bastard,” she suddenly said, and I laughed. “But very silver-tongued.”
“And Lorenzo met Ruby there…”
She slowed her movements as she pulled another group of pictures. “Yes…” I could tell she had more to say, and I understood her reluctance but was also inquisitive.
“Is it okay? My being here?”
She pinched my chin. “Absolutely. That is not what this is.”
“Would it upset her? That I’m here?”
“I can’t imagine it would, she never liked this family. You have been more open to us than Ruby ever has. She does not even come here… not in years.”
I pushed my hair behind my ear.
“Look,” she showed me a picture of an older man, also in black and white. “This is my father… in Italy.”
I took the picture. “No way!”
“Yes,” she squared her shoulders. “Lorenzo looks just like him. You see it?”
“I do,” I looked closer. They were almost identical. In this picture her father had to be near the same age as Lorenzo, making them appear almost like twins. “Very handsome.”
“My Lorenzo is the most handsome,” she boasted.
He is. There was no denying it. Lorenzo’s looks were dark, fine, weathered by heartbreak…
“You’re right.” I felt her staring at me, so I handed the picture back. “All of your children are very attractive and caring people. How long have you been living in America?”
She took the picture back but then readied the next bundle. “I came here, met Flavio, Lorenzo’s father in the same year. We married, had Lorenzo, so,” she fanned herself. “Thirty-seven years.” She reached across me to pat her mother’s leg. “My mother and father kept Lorenzo in Italy a while off and on. Sometimes I would go back too. But then my father passed, the villa they owned and the vineyard, that all went to my older brother, and Mamma moved here to America. That was not long ago.”
One of Lorenzo’s nieces came in with a flower made of green pipe cleaners and pink construction paper. She handed it to me. Her shy little face round and pink with a blush.
“Thank you!” I took the flower and sniffed it, pretending to find a sweet scent. “Mmm, this smells amazing.”
She giggled, shaking her head at my imagination. “No,” she said in a rasp.
“No?” I asked. “Isn’t this a real flower?”
She shook her head, ebony curls bouncing.
I touched my chest. “Are you sure? It looks real to me.”
She laughed, shaking her head with more vigor.
“How old are you?” I asked her.
She held up four fingers.
“Four?” I widened my eyes. “That is a very special number.”
She ran away, returning five or more minutes later with another crafty flower. I had a bouquet after a while.
“This is Flavio’s mother,” Lavinia showed me a picture and told me the story. Lorenzo’s niece, whom I learned was named Danny, brought three more of his nieces to play with my long hair while his mother continued.
“Ma,” Lorenzo held the back of our couch and loomed behind us. “Don’t do the family album thing.” He bent and kissed his grandmother’s cheek, making her smile.
“She likes it!” his mother argued. “You like it, don’t you, Lydia?” she asked me.
I turned in my seat and showed him the one of the restaurant. “Lorenzo, look. How amazing is it, to see something last the way your place has? Still holding on to so much culture…”
He nodded to the door. “You don’t have to look at all that.”
“No, I want to.”
“Leave her alone, Lorenzo,” his mother returned to the pictures. “She is not like certain people…”
Even I saw the transparent insult flung at his absent wife. His grandmother patted my knee, and I saw a lot in her eyes. She seems to see through people, not at them, and her touch calmed my nerves.
Lorenzo ignored his mother’s jab and grabbed one of the nieces, slinging her over his shoulder and walking away with the little girl squealing and twisting away from his tickles. The other two running their fingers through my hair stopped to chase after him.
When the visit came to its end, Lorenzo walked us back to his sister’s car and opened my door. I stopped before getting in and looked up at him. “You are so lucky.”
“Yeah, why’s that?”
“Them…” I watched Mia close the curtains in the living room, his nephews being called in from the yard by Aunt Irene, and listened as a wave of laughter rolled from the open door just before it closed behind the kids. “My family wasn’t anything like this…”
“What’s yours like?”
“Quiet, internal, terrible food,” I laughed.
His slow smile made me smile back.
“You can’t be a stranger now, they like you too much,” he said.
I got in the car and relaxed as he drove me back, his soft Italian music playing over the radi
o, his cologne filling my nose, all of it lulled me to sleep. When I woke up, the car was still, and my hands were protectively holding my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I made myself sit up.
“You’re fine.”
We were back, but parked much further down. No cars in the drive. I checked my phone and found a text from my husband. “Noah is… he says he won’t be home tonight; he’s staying with Lark…” AKA Ruby. But Lorenzo knows that. “You want to come in for tea?”
He tapped the steering wheel a few times in thought, but then got out with me.
I put hot water on the stove and took off my coat. I found Lorenzo exploring my work area where my scrapbooking was.
“This is good,” he said, gently turning pages.
I came over. “I love pictures. Moments of time just, trapped in one image. Scrapbooking brings them alive. It’s a story, you know? Everyone has a story and scrapbooks are binding for a story.”
He made a grunt that could be agreement. Then he saw my other workspace, where I restore toys.
“You said that you restore,” he circled my last project. “But this is…”
“That’s a Lionel train from before World War II. See, during the war, there were metal restrictions, so the company made paper trains… this one is from 1940, before the war.”
“It looks new.”
“Well, I’m not done, but I’m close.”
He bent to see better. “Takes skill.”
“Thank you.” I put my hands on my hips. “What is thank you, in Italian?”
He pulled to his full height. “Grazie.”
“Grazie…” I lit up on the inside. “Hey, wanna see something cool?” I led him to the room behind him and flipped on the light.
He was stunned for a minute, his eyes going all over.
“This is where my finished products go. I don’t know what I’m saving them for. Maybe they are just a nest egg, maybe I’ll always keep them, I don’t know. But I put all my refurbished toys in here.”
He appreciated the work I put into each one, careful not to touch but taking an ample amount of time to look them all over. “You’re incredible.”
“It’s fun,” I said.
“But it takes dedication,” he studied my Chatty Cathy. “Diligence…” He walked the room some more. “You commit to what you do.”
“So do you,” I chanced my next question. “Even when you don’t have to. Like with Ruby.”
He looked at me over his shoulder, a dare in his eyes. He knows where I’m going.
“Why do you stay with—” we heard the whistle for our tea.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets as he passed me. “Tea water is ready,” he said, ending the conversation.
LORENZO
When I arrived back at my mother’s house with my sister’s car, I found Liam sitting with most of my nieces and nephews, playing his guitar. Having once been in a band, his voice was good and his playing skills even better. He made the walls reverberate with each pluck of the strings and it was nice.
I stood and watched, feeling Giada come up to hug my waist. I opened my arm and held her close. She’s proud of Liam. She loves him and I see it. I just like certainty, and when it comes to my Giada, I’m never certain.
I left her to go help my mother clean the kitchen, but she smacked me with her wooden spoon a few times until I backed off.
“Amore,” she called me back when I was about to leave the room.
“Hmm?”
“Come here,” she commanded. I returned to her side while she placed leftovers in a Ziplock. “The girl…” she said it like a question and quietly so my sisters, who were likely hovering, wouldn’t hear.
“No, Ma. Just friends.”
“Friends?”
“Mmhm.”
She eyed me. “Be careful, Amore.”
“I am.”
“You are a married man.”
“I know that.”
“Even if Ruby is…” she rolled her wrist and then lifted conflicted eyes to mine. “I did not raise you like that.”
“I never have, I never will…”
“Good,” she stopped and touched my chest. “But I know my son.”
I growled with annoyance, not liking the way she seemed to feel my feelings before I did.
“I know my son,” she said again.
“I don’t see her that way.”
“You should.”
I laughed, taking a slice of her bread. “You tell me, be good, be good, then you say that.” I set my back to the counter near her.
“She is so perfect,” she sang the word. “Perfect! I love her!”
“She is special.”
“Divorce Ruby.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why won’t you do it?” she slung the Ziplock. “I do not like to see you like this! You are a good man, a good husband, you need a good woman. Lydia is a good woman.” She punctuated the last words with a bop to my forehead with the spoon.
“She is not my type.”
“You marry her, you feed her, you let me feed her, you make babies, and her hips, they’ll come in. So will her breasts.”
“Ma, don’t.”
“Divorce that other one.”
I shook my head. “I like Lydia as a person, not the way you think.”
“I’m done,” she flicked me away. “Go, go, it’s like talking to a wall. Go away. I’m done.”
Chapter Fourteen
NOAH
I held Ruby in my arms for over an hour. I haven’t seen her in two weeks, not since Lydia told me she was pregnant. But after my parents came and my father initiated that argument, all I wanted, was the one person in the world that never expected anything from me… except for my presence.
“I feel like if I let you go, you won’t come back this time,” she said, pressing her naked body closer to mine.
I listened to our breathing, so in unison. “I tried,” I said it brokenly. “I tried to stay away from you after she told me… That’s what a good man would do.”
“You are a good man,” she sat up on her elbow, making slow circles with her fingertip around my nipple, the bed creaking beneath her. “Even I can’t take that away from you.”
“I don’t want it like this. If there’s a kid coming, what am I supposed to do? I won’t have the time to come to see you, and even if I did, what kind of life is that?”
Ruby pushed her tongue into her cheek before answering. “We said we needed time. Time to do more than just fuck. Time to see if we could fit in one another’s lives. You were going to avoid getting Lydia pregnant and go away with me for a while.”
“But now she’s pregnant—”
“We could still go away, we have time.”
“I can’t if we’re about to have a kid!”
“It’s called split custody!” she moved away and sat on the edge of the bed in frustration.
This was all headed toward an argument. I tried to sum it all up in my head alone, but it feels like I’m in first grade doing a high schooler’s math.
“I can’t cut, copy, and paste you into my life. Are you ready to go to Sunday services, make baked goods for Church sales, and wear longer skirts and looser shirts?”
“Why am I the one that would have to make all the changes?” Ruby flicked her hair back. “You need a Stepford wife, right?”
“My work with the kids in my Youth class is as important to me as the kids I’m walking through parole.”
“My work is important to me too.”
I saw the stalemate we were at.
“If all of it went away, the jobs, the religion, the plans…” I asked.
“I would choose you.”
“I would too,” I found her wrist and tugged until she curled close to me again. “So let’s hold up on going away. I can’t now, it’s too suspicious. But we can make moves to get closer, to know each other better. To bond.”
“Yeah?”
“Let’s do it,” I s
aid as she messed with my beard. “I know this is the worst possible time, but it’s also the best. Lydia is only eight weeks pregnant. Maybe we could figure this out before the baby is born and then work around the change.”
Ruby looked uncertain, exhaling slowly.
I lifted her chin. “Can you handle it? A kid? Would this thing we have… would it— would a kid be too much?”
“I don’t think so,” she squinted. “I regret not having my baby. I don’t regret the abortion, but I regret that I haven’t tried since. Maybe this would be a way for me to have a taste of being a mom. Helping with your baby.”
“Then let me into your life, just a peek. I’ll do the same, and let’s see what’s there with us when we aren’t sneaking around or on a timer. Giving up what we have already, might be worth it.”
“Okay,” she moved to straddle me, brazenly letting her nude body be on display, oozing confidence. “Take me…”
“I will,” I smoothed my hands up her thighs.
She grabbed a condom from the nightstand and used her teeth to rip the wrapper. “I want to know who you are,” she took out the condom and rolled it over the head of my dick, then down my shaft, sending shivers through me. “I want you to show me your life and knit me into it. I want to see where you eat, where you sleep, where you shower,” she guided my cock inside her, making us both hiss. “And then… I want you to make memories with me, in all those places…”
LYDIA
At woman’s Bible study a few days later, I brought my newest book by Leslie McAdams… The Stars in the Sky. There’s this cocky cowboy playing jump rope with my ovaries in this story, and once again, a strong, independent, and opinionated female lead. Since the last book, I’ve had quite a sex education. This one, even more so.
It’s making me aroused all the time.
Though, my doctor says that too could be blamed on pregnancy. Which is very uncomfortable a feeling, since I have no desire to sleep with my husband, but also feel sexually combustible.
While all the women from my church are sitting in a circle, Bibles open in their laps, reading about the book of Luke. I’m sitting with my dirty book laid over my Bible so I can read undetected.
“Hi!” Sara came power walking into the church. “Sorry, I’m late. Work was rough and I don’t usually leave the office until after seven on Tuesday nights,” she got a chair from the snack table and dragged it over, back legs making a horrid sound on the tiles. Sara pushed her chair next to mine, forcing another woman to move over and then sat. “Phew! It’s colder outside than a grave digger’s…" she panted with a smile until she saw the sour expressions.
The Affair (The Relationship Quo Series Book 5) Page 17
