“Crazy,” I say, feeling as if it isn’t that crazy because I feel something between us that I can’t put a name to. I’m wondering if I’m brave enough to put my hand on his arm when the driver catches Gio’s eye in the mirror.
“Sorry, guys,” he huffs. “Emergency construction this end of Chrystie tonight, burst pipe. I can go round but it’s gonna take a while.”
“We could walk from here?” I say.
“You sure?” Gio looks at me, checking if I’m just being polite on this cold Halloween evening.
The driver looks as if that’s exactly what he hoped we’d say, already slowing at the curb to total the fare and tick the job off on his cell.
* * *
—
IT’S SEE-YOUR-BREATH COLD WHEN we clamber out on the street, frost glittering on the sidewalk.
“Now I wish I had my Converse,” I say, putting a steadying hand out as my heel slips.
Gio catches it and pulls me into his side, tucking my arm through his. “Here, hang on to me.”
I cannot put into words how good it feels, just walking arm in arm at midnight with Gio Belotti.
“Will you always stay in New York?”
“Yes,” he says, no hesitation. “As long as Bella is here for sure, but Belotti’s is my life. Santo and Maria need me here.”
“Do you mind that? The obligation, I mean?”
“I owe them everything,” he says. “They gave me a home and their love—I lucked out when I was left with them. I’ll never take that for granted, you know?”
“I get that,” I say.
“And then after Penny…well, they held me and Bella together.”
I’m glad he had the love of his family around him at the worst time of his life. My life has been so very different from his. My mother was my only person. I felt like a fragile dandelion when I lost her, as if all the pieces of me had been caught up on a cold wind and blown in every direction. Adam snatched those fragments from the air and shoved them in his pockets, crushing them in his palms, making them small. No. I won’t let those memories in tonight, they have no place here. I’ve traveled too far and tried too hard to let him affect me anymore.
I slide on a frozen puddle and Gio catches me, his arm around my waist as he stops me from falling in a heap.
“God, I’m like Bambi,” I mutter, almost going again.
“I can hoist you over my shoulder, if you like.”
“I doubt it.” I laugh. “I’m sturdier than I look.”
“You did pack a hell of a lot of food away tonight,” he says.
“Rude,” I gasp and thump his arm. “I was just being polite to Maria.”
He laughs, shrugs. “Sorry. I guess I’m rusty talking to women.”
“Free tip—don’t tell them they eat too much,” I say, mock-offended.
“What should I say, then?”
“Are you asking me how to flirt?”
“I haven’t flirted in twenty years,” he says, then huffs. “God, that makes me sound old.”
I side-eye him. “You’re way too young to say stuff like that.”
He shoots me a look. “That’s flirting, right?”
“Just reminding you how it’s done.” I laugh softly as I do my best to stay on my feet.
“Got it,” he says, smiling into the collar of his jacket. “Bella showed me the video of you singing, you know.”
“Oh,” I say, glad my cheeks are already pink from the cold. Aside from Sophia, I thought I’d gotten away with the rest of the Belottis not seeing that clip.
“She just needed someone to step in and I was there.”
“You surprised me. It’s like you’re a different person when you sing.”
“People used to say that about my mum,” I say, remembering the way people sat up straighter in their seats whenever she took the mic.
“Are you a lot like her?”
“In some ways,” I say, picturing us as bookends on the sofa watching Sleepless in Seattle, reaching over to pass the popcorn between us. “In looks, yes, and I sound a lot like her when I sing, but she was more…more effervescent, I guess? Always the first one on the dance floor, a life-and-soul kind of person, someone people naturally gravitated toward.”
“And you don’t see yourself that way?”
I sidestep a frozen puddle. “There’s only room for one magpie in the family,” I say, because I don’t want to say that maybe I was more like that once, before life pressed me down.
“I don’t know, my family is full of them,” he says. “I see your shine, Iris. I mean, look at me—the guy who has locked himself behind the counter at the gelateria, according to my sisters, but here I am walking you home like a nervous teenager.”
“I make you nervous, Belotti?”
“Stop fishing for compliments or you might just get one, and then where will we be?”
“So awkward,” I say.
“Exactly.”
By my reckoning, everyone gets a handful of movie-worthy moments in their lives. Some people would probably pick out their wedding day or the birth of their child for their showreel, but for most of us it’s the unexpected moments life occasionally gifts our way that make for the best memories. This is one of my movie moments. To anyone looking at us, they’d see a man and a woman pressed together from shoulder to hip, her unsteady on her heels, his arm around her waist. The silver threads in her scarlet scarf catch the light of the streetlamps as they weave their way slowly along the frosted sidewalk, their conversation punctuated by hushed laughter whenever she slips and he stops her from falling. They look like lovers.
My feet slow as we approach the familiar sight of the noodle house. I’ve left a lamp on for myself upstairs, and there’s a string of orange pumpkin lights up at Bobby and Robin’s.
“This is me,” I say. “Thanks for not letting me break any bones.”
“It’s the bare minimum you can expect from a date, right?” he says.
“To not end up in hospital.” I nod. “Is that what this was, then? A date?”
He glances away and then back at me. “It didn’t start out that way, but it feels kind of like it right this minute.”
“Good flirting,” I murmur, and he laughs.
“So if this is a date, what happens next?”
“I don’t know, Gio,” I say. And I honestly don’t. There has been a shift between us tonight, but the road ahead is littered with obstacles he isn’t aware of coming in the other direction. But I see them and, because I do, I know that the more involved we become the more I’m likely to hurt him and myself in the process.
“It’s been a long night,” I say quietly. “I should probably head inside.”
I see his throat move as he swallows hard. “Okay.” He reaches out and cups my jaw for a moment, uncertainty filling his dark eyes. “Goodnight, Iris.”