28. Paige
“Do you know the code to unlock this one?” Gina’s tugging on the doors of the cabinet that Damiano pulled his guns out of the other day.
“No. And stop snooping through his stuff.” She’s gone through his kitchen and most of the living room already. She found his drawer full of knives and another full of souvenir grenades from his military time.
“Of course we can snoop. When a guy leaves you at his place alone, it’s allowed. It’s expected. It’s actually super weird not to.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It absolutely is. Snooping shows you want to know more about him. That you’re interested in his life before you came into it. It shows you care.”
“Or it shows you’re deranged.”
She stops and looks at me. “You really don’t go through a guy’s things?”
I smile. “I’m screwing with you. Of course I snooped through this whole place. I did that, like, day two that I was here. Want to see his closet? It’s massive and insanely organized.”
We stumble through the bedroom and into his closet. The original layout for this apartment was as a two-bedroom, but Dom told me that, since he was going to live alone and was going to ‘live Italiano,’ he’d had it reconfigured into a one-bedroom with a huge closet for all his suits, designer clothes, and shoes.
I plop down onto the comfy chair in the middle of the closet, my wineglass almost sloshing over the sides. After my first week at my new job—my new job courtesy of Damiano—I’m exhausted and need this drink.
After I was sad saying goodbye to Tango, Damiano had the idea that instead of rescuing wildlife that I’m going to release back into the wild and never see again, why didn’t I get a job at a veterinarian’s office so that I can help animals that I will see again when they come back? He took me to the vet in his neighborhood. Damiano talked to the guy in the back for a few minutes alone, and then the guy offered me a tech job without bothering to look at the application I’d filled out. He’s even paying me more than what I made as a paralegal.
Gina places her wineglass on the bureau and spins around. “Oh my god. You have got to marry this guy. This is like a magazine closet.” She opens a drawer, then another. “He organizes his socks? I didn’t think he was so anal.”
Do I tell her that we. . . I don’t know. Maybe it’s weird to talk about that.
She opens another drawer. “So do you live here permanently now?”
I take another sip of the delicious Barolo Damiano bought. He doesn’t drink much because he likes to stay in control of his environment, but he went out and bought six bottles of wine, plus olives and cheeses, when I asked him if Gina and I could have a girls’ night in while he went to work. “I’m not really sure.”
“What’s going on with your place?”
I shake my head. “I still have it, but Damiano doesn’t want me to go to that part of the city without him, and I don’t know, I’m not sure I want to go back. And Dom bought me all new clothes.” I motion over to the part of the closet he cleared out for me.
She’s too busy flipping through his hangers to notice me point. “This is an insane number of suits. He must have thirty. Forty? Does he wear a suit every day?”
“When he goes to work, yeah. And sometimes around the apartment too.”
“So fucking hot.”
I bite my lip and nod. I love him in a suit. “But sometimes he goes casual.” I motion to the other side of his closet. Stacks of Gucci trackpants, Prada shirts, Luca Faloni sweaters.
“Do you care that when he ‘goes to work,’ half the time that means going to their strip club?” Gina is holding up one of Dom’s shirts and looking in the three-sided mirror.
I take another drink. A huge gulp this time. “I don’t know how to feel about that.” I really don’t. “He says the girls are just in the background and they all know not to approach him. Apparently, that’s how it’s always been there.”
“That he’s never fucked the girls there? No fucking way that’s true.”
“No, I don’t think that’s what he meant. I think he meant like, they didn’t approach him ? Like, he would approach them when he wanted to. . . to do whatever?”
“And now he isn’t going to approach them?”
I nod.
“Do you trust him?”
“I do.” I really do.
Gina starts taking her jeans off.
“Uh, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying on one of his suits. You grab one too.”
“What? Why? Is that creepy?”
“Come on. It’ll be fun. Let’s be gangsters for the rest of the night.”
“Oh my god, yes!” I grab one too. The pants are too long, and the waist is too big, but he has a whole rack of belts.
“Do you know how to tie a tie?” Gina’s holding two up, trying to decide which goes better with the shirt she has on.
“No, but let’s YouTube it. Oh, I totally forgot. If you want to be a gangster, look in that cabinet, to your left. You’ll love it.”