“And then there was you up there onstage too,” he says. “I saw how you made room for Bella. Your voice…you could so easily steal the show, but you didn’t. I noticed all the moments where you held back to let her shine. I went to watch my daughter, but I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
I don’t think I’ve ever felt as seen, and it moves me beyond words as we walk the quiet streets back through Little Italy. Belotti’s striped awnings beckon us, and when we reach the doorway he tugs me in and presses me against the wall with his body weight, the glass door in shadow beside us.
His kiss says thank you for tonight, and then the inevitable fire between us takes hold and his kiss tells me he doesn’t know how to handle this heat. I don’t either. My kiss tells him that I can’t control how much I want him, that it’s always like this when he touches me. He drops Bella’s school bag and pushes his hands into my hair, tipping my head back to slide his mouth down my neck. I don’t feel trapped. I feel desired, and outrageously turned on.
“If I was twenty years younger I’d unfasten your jeans right here,” he whispers, breath hot against my ear.
“What would the neighbors say,” I reply, half laughing, half gasping when his cold hand slips inside my sweater.
He stops just long enough to open the door and tug me out of the way of prying eyes, and then we throw our coats off, he tips me back over the nearest table and, as promised, unfastens my jeans.
We clutch each other afterward, breathless and spent, and I know I’ll never walk through that door again without looking at this table and remembering tonight.
“Bella asked me if I’ll stop coming here once we find the recipe,” I say.
He strokes my hair and sighs.
“Am I a selfish man, amore? I’ve allowed her to love you a little, because I do, and now I risk her marshmallow heart.”
There is so much to unpack in that sentence that I have to pause to drink it all in. He called me amore, and it fell from his lips so naturally that it almost went unnoticed. He said his daughter loves me a little, and that he does too. A little is not nothing. It’s a conversation we’ll have another day, because right now his concerns are for Bella.
“Marshmallow heart?”
He shifts me into the crook of his arm, his palm resting on my hair.
“You know how it is at that age,” he says. “So tender. My heart is nearly forty years old, and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s been through catastrophe and magic, chunks missing and given away, a mangled thing held together by gelato and tradition and famiglia. But Bella…her heart is still soft, unprotected, no shell. I know it can’t stay that way forever, that there will be”—he pauses, grimaces as if he just sipped acid—“boys.” He fills the word with such darkness that I fear for those future boys. “But I don’t want to be the one who puts the first crack there, and I’m afraid that the closer she gets to you—that I get to you—the more possibility there is that she will be hurt.”
I appreciate his honesty. I think he’s asking me what the future holds, and is standing guard for Bella and himself because they’ve been through something catastrophic. He’s right to be wary. I don’t have a crystal ball, but if I did, I think I’d see us walking blindly toward oncoming traffic, the secrets I’m holding on to flashing their lights at us to get out of the way before it’s too late. He asked me just now if he’s a selfish man. He isn’t. I’m the selfish one. I stepped through that glass door and tumbled into the Belotti universe, a place so seductive and all-encompassing that I’m finding it almost impossible to walk back out of the door for good.
* * *
—
WE WALK HAND IN hand to the noodle house, quiet, caught up in our own thoughts. He lingers outside my front door, pulling me into his arms.
“Thank you for tonight, cucchiaino,” he says, his voice rough in his throat. “You sing like a fuckin’ angel.”
“Stop already with the sexy swearing, you know what it does to me,” I whisper, and he laughs under his breath before he kisses me, slow and searching. I press my fingers against the imprint of his lips on mine as he walks away, and I watch him until he’s swallowed by the darkness.
* * *
—
I THINK ABOUT GIO’S marshmallow heart analogy as I go through the motions to prepare for bed, of his heart glued together by family and gelato. He’s been both terribly unlucky and terribly fortunate, the Belotti safety net always stretched out beneath him to ensure he doesn’t injure himself irreparably. My life has been more precarious. My mother was my only safety net, and without her I fell so far and so hard that I almost lost myself completely. That I didn’t is on me. I remembered whose daughter I was just in the nick of time, and found the strength from somewhere to claw myself up out of the well and run away. The real miracles in my story are that I kept running as far as Chrystie Street and that I found Bobby, who picked my trampled self-worth up from that damp sidewalk and held it when I couldn’t. So, yeah. My heart isn’t marshmallow either. We share that much in common, at least.
20.
MARIA HAS INVITED ME TO spend Thanksgiving with them, but I find myself relieved to have to politely decline. I’ve had long-standing plans to eat with Bobby and Robin, who are excited to be hosting a fancy dinner for Robin’s family. I offered to cook, and Robin almost successfully hid his horror behind assurances that he’d hired in caterers. “You spend every night behind the stove,” he said. “Enjoy the gift of time off feeding people.” I chose to accept his offer gracefully, but in truth I’d love to have cooked dinner. I’ve had so little opportunity to use my finer culinary skills here, I miss the adrenaline rush of creating food for people to feast on. This will be my first experience of Thanksgiving. The effort of keeping secrets from the Belottis weighs heavy on my shoulders, a constant reminder that I don’t truly fit in. It’s a depressing thought. My entire life I’ve felt that way, never settling anywhere long enough to feel part of the landscape. Until Bobby, that is, so I’ll put on my nicest clothes and head upstairs to eat turkey I haven’t cooked myself with them later and thank my lucky stars for the noodle house on Chrystie Street.
* * *
—
ROBIN’S FAMILY TROOPED PAST my door a few minutes ago, so I hang back to give them time to say their hellos and settle in before I show my face. I’ve bought a decent bottle of red I know Robin will hide at the back of the cupboard and I’ve made them a batch of cinnamon rolls—if I can’t contribute to dinner, they’ll at least have something to nibble on in the morning. I’m sitting on the sofa browsing recipes on my phone to pass the time when a message alert scrolls over the top of my screen. I glance at it and go cold, all fingers and thumbs as I fumble to open it, hoping I misread the sender. I didn’t.