21. Lady LoveBaby Mama?
21
Lady Love or Baby Mama?
Hope Is the Thing with Pomegranates
In a pitcher filled with ice, combine equal parts verjus and pomegranate juice. Stir. Strain into a champagne flute until half full. Top with sparkling water and stir again. Garnish with raspberries.
DANNY
W hen Leo fiddled with the dial on my stove for the hundredth time, I finally asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nervous?” He shot me an evil smile. “Because your baby mama’s coming for your birthday?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking nervous.” I scanned the salad. Were there enough croutons? Or too many? Had I put them in too early? Would they be soggy by the time Lucie got here? “I’m asking if you are too.”
“I hate your shitty stove,” he said. “There’s gas downstairs. Why didn’t they run the fucking line up here?”
I shrugged and tossed a few more croutons into the salad.
“If we’d done your birthday dinner at my place, like usual, I wouldn’t have to stress about whether the braciole’s going to be raw or burned.”
“If we’d done it at your place, it’d be harder for Lucie to come.”
“You think if she had to do more than walk down a flight of stairs, she wouldn’t come to your birthday party?”
“Fuck off,” I said. I hated how well my brother knew me.
He cranked the stove dial down. “How’s the risotto coming?”
“My arm’s sore from all this stirring,” Lizbeth whined.
Leo checked her pot. “Just a little more, baby. It’s almost done.”
“Yeah? I’ve still got a little more broth,” she said.
“Pour it in, then when it’s incorporated, kill the heat and stir in the cheese. Five more minutes, tops,” he said.
“I’m going to need a shoulder massage later,” she said.
He kissed the tip of her nose. “I got you.”
I wasn’t sure if I was jealous or revolted. Leo and Lizbeth had been dating about a month, since she started working at his favorite tomato stand at the farmer’s market. They interacted so easily. I’d given Lucie only one shoulder massage, three months ago, and I hadn’t been in her apartment since. She’d never, ever let me kiss her nose.
Lizbeth glanced at me over her shoulder. “So, this woman isn’t your girlfriend?”
“Not really, no.” I picked a crouton out of the salad and crunched into it.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.
I grimaced. “God, no.”
“Danny’s staying faithful to a woman who doesn’t give a shit if he’s fucking anyone else,” Leo said, summing it up.
“Fuck you,” I said. She might care. A little. I hadn’t told Leo about kissing her in front of the church last week. She’d kissed me back. Though physical affection had never been a problem for us. It was the rest of her, her head and her heart, that I couldn’t break through to. She’d made that obvious when I’d asked her about her family, and she’d called it “typical.” No one’s family was typical. She just wouldn’t let me see all the weird, wonderful ways it was different.
The knock at my door made me jump, and I dropped the bag of Leo’s homemade croutons. They bounced off the counter onto the floor, and crunchy bread cubes spilled everywhere.
“Shit!” I muttered. “Lizbeth, can you answer the door while I sweep up?”
“Nah, I’ve got it,” Leo said. “Go kiss your lady love.”
“Shh! She’s not my lady love . Please don’t say the word love tonight. Or baby mama. Or?—”
“Answer the door,” Leo said, “before she changes her mind.”
“Go to hell.” Stepping carefully over the mess, I jogged to the door and flung it open.
Lucie cradled a bottle of wine. She wore the same knee-length black dress she’d worn to the anniversary party last weekend. It looked comfortable, like an oversized T-shirt. Her tan legs were bare down to her black combat boots.
“You came.” Something inside me slotted into place. My heart hammered at my ribs, but I felt like I could take a full breath for the first time in hours. When I did, I got a whiff of the coconut product she used on her hair. It smelled amazing.
She held out the wine. “Happy birthday.”
“Thank you.” I took it.
“It’s not so bad,” she said.
I checked the label on the wine. “It’s pretty good, actually. Barb’s too cheap to serve this.”
“I meant your thirties.” She scratched her arm. “When I turned thirty, I thought it was the end of my youth. And it kind of was, but there are good things about being in your thirties.”
“Like?” I stood aside so she could come in.
She bent to take off her boots and set them next to the pile of Leo’s and Lizbeth’s sneakers. “Like, I’m surer of myself than I was in my twenties. I sure as hell don’t know everything, but I know what’s important to me and what I want.”
“I guess that’s the one thing I’m ahead on. I already know all that.”
“Huh. I wish I’d had my head together when I was your age. Maybe my career would’ve taken off.”
I stared at her, hard. “Your career is amazing. You write incredible pieces all the time. The one about the assault weapons protest made me truly understand what those people were trying to say.”
“Oh, god. You don’t agree with them, do you?”
“No, of course not. But you made them seem like real people and not nutjobs.”
“Thanks.” She sniffed the air. “It smells amazing in here.”
“It’s Leo’s famous braciole. Don’t tell my ma, but it’s better than hers. You’ll love it.” At least I hoped she would. I hoped spending time with my family would help her see that we could be a family too. That despite how we began, we could find a way to love each other. That someday we could pull a highchair up to the table and have a special meal with all the people we cared most about.
I led her into the kitchen. “You already know Leo, and this is his girlfriend, Lizbeth.”
“I’m not really his girlfriend.” Lizbeth stuck out her hand. “We’re just fucking. Who wants to settle down? But I couldn’t pass up the chance to try Leo’s braciole.”
I widened my eyes at my brother. He shrugged. “I’m a superstar in both the kitchen and the sack. Sue me.”
No, no, no. This was exactly the wrong message to give Lucie. Family, not fuck-buddies. I should’ve invited Giuliana instead. At least she wouldn’t have brought a casual hookup to my birthday party. Probably.
“Who wants a drink?” I asked, going to the refrigerator. “I mixed up some nonalcoholic negroni sbagliatos, Lucie.”
“Yes, please,” Lucie said. “I’ll open the wine for the rest of you.”
I set the pitcher on the counter and passed her two wineglasses and the bottle opener. “I’ll drink the phony negronis,” I said. The pomegranate juice had given it a gorgeous red color like the real thing.
When Lucie stepped to the counter, I heard a crunch.
“Ow. What was that?” She looked down.
“Crouton. Sorry.” Stepping on a crouton had to be almost as bad as stepping on one of my cousins’ LEGO bricks. Without thinking, I bent and scooped her into my arms.
She squealed, a very un-Lucie-like sound, but her arm went around my neck as I carried her to the table. “What the fuck, Danny?”
“I, um, didn’t want you to hurt your feet.” I set her in a chair at the table.
“On a goddamn crouton?”
Leo set her glass in front of her. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, my brother’s always saving someone. Even if it’s only from croutons.”
My cheeks burned, and I turned away to open the wine.
Fortunately, dinner was amazing, and Lucie forgot to yell at me about picking her up without her consent as she devoured the beef, risotto, and salad. Leo and Lizbeth finished off Lucie’s bottle of wine, and I’d stood to open another bottle when Lucie asked Leo about his food truck.
“It’s incredible,” Lizbeth gushed. “He gets more requests to show up in front of office buildings and events than he can physically do. He’s thinking about getting a second truck.”
I jammed the corkscrew into the cork. “No, he’s not. He’s going to sell his truck so we can buy the bar.” I figured he’d have told Lizbeth that much, even if they were only fuck-buddies.
When Leo said nothing, I glanced at him over my shoulder while I twisted the screw into the cork. “Right, Leo?”
“Oh, yeah. It was just an idea I was tossing around. If I had a commercial kitchen, I could run two trucks. You know, in case you changed your mind about the bar.”
I set the wine bottle on the counter harder than I meant to, and it made a clanging sound. “In case I changed my mind about the bar? This is our dream. We both want this. Not just for ourselves, but for the whole family.”
“Why would Leo want that?” Lizbeth asked, her eyes narrowed in a challenge. “His food truck is hella successful. He could have a whole fleet. And his own catering kitchen.”
Ignoring Lizbeth, his not-girlfriend, I stared at my brother. “When we buy the bar, he will have his own kitchen.”
Leo stared at his plate and nodded.
“Is that what you want, Leo?” Lucie asked. “The kitchen downstairs is hardly bigger than this one. And it comes with Norm.”
“I know,” he said. “But it’s what Danny and I have always said we’d do when we got the cash. And Danny’s given up so much for me, for all of us, it’s the least I can do.”
“Giving up your dream is the least you can do?” Lucie asked. “That seems like a lot to give up for someone else’s dream.”
“Wait,” I said. “You don’t want to buy the bar with me?”
“Sure, I do,” he said, standing and picking up the empty plates. He still wouldn’t look at me. “It’s what we’ve always talked about.”
“See?” I glared at Lizbeth. “It’s what he wants.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”
“It is!”
“Lizbeth,” Leo called, “where’d you put the candles?”
With another eye roll, she stood and went to the kitchen.
“Need some help, Leo?” I asked.
“Nah, it’s your birthday. We’ve got it.”
But sitting while others worked made me nuts. “Want another drink? Or some decaf?”
Lucie stared at Leo as he sprinkled powdered sugar on slices of lemon ricotta cake. “I’ll take a water, please.”
As I poured her some from the pitcher in the fridge, I tried not to listen to Leo and Lizbeth’s whispered argument. Still, I caught Lizbeth’s angry, “Tell him,” and Leo’s muttered, “Don’t want to?—”
I thunked the pitcher on the counter. “You don’t want to what, Leo?”
He looked up from the slice of cake with the candle in it, his eyes round with guilt. “I don’t wanna have this argument here.” He tipped his chin toward the table, where Lucie didn’t bother to pretend she wasn’t listening. “Not on your birthday.”
“I’ll go.” Lucie stood. “You guys need to talk.”
“Don’t go,” I said.
“You haven’t even had cake,” Leo said.
But Lucie was already jamming her feet into her boots at the door. “Thanks for dinner, Leo. It was delicious.”
“I’ll walk you up.” I grabbed a plate of cake, slipped on my shoes, and followed her out.
We climbed the stairs in silence. When we reached the third floor, she said, “I hope I didn’t spoil your birthday.”
“Nah, it’s fine.” Though it wasn’t, not really. Finding out my brother was having second thoughts about something we’d promised each other for years wasn’t great. Especially not on my thirtieth birthday, when my life was supposed to be settling into place. And definitely not in front of my baby mama who I was trying to woo.
She put her key into the lock, and something clenched in my chest.
“Can I come in?” I asked. “Leo’s cake is the best. We can share it.”
She pushed open the door, then looked up at me. Her brown eyes shimmered with kindness, and I almost stumbled back in surprise. Lucie was driven and sexy and upstanding. I’d never seen such a soft expression on her face. “You and your brother need to talk.” She put a hand on mine. “You can’t hide from him up here.”
I growled, “I’m not hiding. I’d much rather spend time with you on my birthday.” I bent and hovered my lips over hers for a second, then I brushed her lips, a question.
She curled her fingers around the back of my neck and buried them in my hair, pulling me to her, answering. With the hand that wasn’t holding the cake, I clutched the back of her dress, then I licked inside her mouth, tasting spice and garlic and her. She slipped her tongue against mine, a caress softer than any she’d given me before. This was way better than last weekend’s kiss in front of the church.
A hungry sound escaped me. I imagined waking up to her touch with a glide of her smooth hand down my chest or a gentle kiss on my shoulder. Silky bedsheets and a pillow that smelled like coconut. Sliding my hand down to the delectable curve of her ass, I tugged her closer so she could feel my arousal against her belly.
When she pulled away, her pupils had swallowed her irises. She looked a second away from pulling me through the door. “Happy birthday,” she murmured.
“I’ll show you how happy I am,” I rumbled.
She shook her head slowly, and the lust faded from her gaze. “You need to talk things over with your brother.”
I had a brother? “Now?”
“Tell me how it goes. Goodnight.” After taking the plate of cake from my hand, she closed the door gently—in my face.
I stood there for a moment. She was probably right. I needed to talk to Leo about our plan, our dream. Or maybe it was only my dream. But I didn’t want to have that conversation on my fucking thirtieth birthday, so I did something I never did.
I jogged down the two flights of stairs to the bar to get drunk.