“When I finally realized that I don’t have to be what the likes of Papà want me to be. You taught me that,” he comments, leaning into me a little. “You taught me that when you gave way to your heart and not your head.”
“It works both ways,” I tell him and watch him question me with one gaze. "You do know I'm proud of you, don't you?" I say as he goes back to eating his ice cream. I didn't want this moment to slip away from us and be left forgotten. When he looks up at me with utter incredulity, I smile. "You came out to us as gay without worrying. Even after how Giovanni reacted, you didn't lie or give us some spiel about another matter. You trusted us to know."
"I trusted you to protect me," he states wryly, a small smile gracing his face as he looks back at his tub of ice cream. "I always trust you to protect me."
"Good," I utter and turn back to my own ice cream. "I'll be doing that until my last breath, Manuel. You, baby brother, are the one who's got the brightest future, and I won't let anyone take that away from you like us lot."
"Not even Gio?"
I splutter on a chuckle. "Least of all him, and least of all, Salvatore,” I quip, reverting back to using Papà’s real name. “They think they know how the Abbiati name is going to look ten, twenty years from now but I know otherwise, and I would rather have faith in the little I know than the mass information our father and brother like to tell us."
“What is it going to look like?”
I don’t say much, but what I do say comes with a bright smile. “Something unforgettable.”
***
“So, correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve been going to gay clubs without me?” I ask, feigning horror and hurt all in one. “You’d dare to go there without me as your wing woman?”
“You only need a wing woman if you’re looking to pull,” Manuel remarks, winking at me before diving in to take one of the few remaining scoops of ice cream left.
“And you aren’t?” I ask, amused at his coyness. I watch him bashfully shake his head and my jaw slackens until my lips form a perfect ‘o’. “What aren’t you telling your big sister?” I ask, excitement brewing for me. “You’ve met a guy, haven’t you?”
“Might have,” he replies in a small whisper, delving back into the tub of almost fully melted ice cream.
I reach out, snatch the pot away, and pull it a little further down the counter away from his arm’s reach. I sit and watch him and slowly, but surely, his lips begin to pull into a small smile that reminds me a lot of the smile I used to wear when Zane and I started dating.
“Spill it,” I coerce him, pressuring him with a harder tone. “Or I’m removing all ice cream from the house forever.”
Manuel remains silent.
“I mean it, Manuel Abbiati!”
“His name is Ryan,” he begins. His tone is impish, squandered by that burst of feeling over your first true love. “We met a few months back at that same club you and Zane argued at. He’s six foot of handsome. He has blond hair and blue eyes. He’s tougher than he looks and he loves me unconditionally,” he comments, coy and yet proud to finally tell. “Enzo knows all about him, but only because he overheard a phone call.” Manuel looks at me, his eyes now full with so many mixed emotions it’s hard to assume where he’ll go with this verbal assault. “He knows nothing about who I am, Amelia. I’ve been lying to him but only about that. He knows I have a dysfunctional family, that I have a sister and three brothers, that my madre’s dead and my father couldn’t care less. He knows all that, but he doesn’t know who I really am.”
“That’s a formality,” I say, squishing his worries over that. We can deal with that part of his deceit later. “Do you see yourself heading toward a future with him?”
“Do you see yourself heading toward a future with Zane?” he bats back.
I shake my head and laugh a little. Touché, baby brother, touché, I think to myself. I push him a little and try to compose myself. This isn’t about me right now. This is about him, and I won’t let him use my tattered romance as a scapegoat.
“Do you see a future with him or not?” I ask again, making my tone a little harsher so he doesn’t try to go off on a tangent because I will not let him fucking run from him this like I did. “Because if you do, tell him about who we are. I’ll even come with you to meet him. Hell, I want to meet him. For the most part, he’s been keeping a pretty, little smile on your face since I got back.” I now take note of my brother’s soured expression. “Was the frowning to do with not being completely honest with him?”
“Yeah,” Manuel answers and sighs in resignation. “Why did everyone else have to get the simple life?”
“Because then we wouldn’t have anything to strive for,” I muse wistfully and bring the ice cream back. “Life can only get simple.”
“Those fucking assholes!”