Chapter 19
ENZO
TEXT CONVERSATION WITH GIOVANNI
Get over here. My place. We’ve got some planning to do. Bring Nico.
He’s back behind the sandwich counter, man.
Then you come.
Giovanni?
Giovanni? Hello?
Fucking Wi-Fi.
Lucy is a beautiful genius.
This is what we’ve been missing.
This is the idea that’s tried to bob into my head for days—finally brought to the surface in The Sweetest Thing. It wasn’t just the comment Lucy had made; it was the whole atmosphere. The songs, the dancing, the sweetness.
It made me think differently about togetherness.
We need to work with the other businesses around us, the way the Sip works with Making Whoopie.
If we can develop specialty items with other shops specific to our brand, it’ll help everyone.
I’m thinking cannoli whoopie pies, limoncello candy canes, and chest hair taffy (okay, the name needs workshopping).
Hell, we can even ask Chowder House Rules to make a special minestrone for us.
Working together. Making the tourism seasons stronger for everyone. This is it..
This. Is. It.
I’m scribbling in my notebook, brainstorming, when a knock lands on my door.
I answer it, and Giovanni gives me a long look. “Did you even take a shower? You still smell like a can of air freshener.”
No, my mind has been whirring too fast.
If other stores want to get in on the action, we could hand out bucket lists or scavenger hunts: Try all the whoopie pies in Hideaway Harbor! Or, Find every place that carries The Sweetest Thing’s candies!
What could we stock at other shops?
“I think we need to get other shops to carry our mini panettones,” I say, excitedly.
“Then you can be the one who tells Nico,” he huffs. “And you’ll have to help him.”
He steps in, pushing an envelope at my chest.
I look down at it, frowning, as I close the door behind him.
“What’s this?”
“It’s from the cabbage lady down the hall. I saw it outside her apartment.”
“Right, yeah, thanks,” I mumble, sticking the card in my pocket for later. I can’t lose focus now. “I’ve got it, Giovanni. I’ve got a way to fix all of this for us.”
He grins at me. “It’s been a minute since you’ve thought you could conquer the world. Maybe it’s Lucy who has kept you anchored to earth. She’s good at chipping away at your ego.”
Lucy.
Shit. I shouldn’t have left her like that, but I’d needed to get this down on paper. I’d needed the ideas to flow out and give me peace. But I plan on making it up to her this evening at the trap tree lighting.
“How’d she seem when you left?”
“Are you ready to tell me what’s going on between you two?” he asks, lifting his eyebrows. “This goes beyond that dumb hate-off game of yours. We all saw you together at The Sweetest Thing.”
“The only reason I took my shirt off was to cover for you,” I say. “And I threw it to her because she backed me into it. It’s part of our…thing.”
“Good, then you won’t mind if I ask her out. She’s very sexy, you know. Something about all of that curly hair. I can just imagine—”
I’m holding a fistful of his shirt before I’m even aware of having reached for it, growling, “You’ll shut your mouth if you know what’s good for you.”
He grins, and I know I walked right into his trap.
“Yeah, fine,” I admit, releasing his shirt. “Maybe I’m interested in her. This has all been kind of…” I search for the right word and land on, “fun. But she’s looking for a nice guy like Hudson.”
“Which is why you sabotaged her date with him,” he says with amusement.
“Yeah, fine. I did that. I haven’t been acting rationally with Lucy.”
“No, which is why I know you genuinely like her.”
Sighing, I pull the note out of my pocket and slump onto the couch with it. “I’m gonna read this.”
“Yup. Changing the subject.” He pauses, giving me a good, hard stare.
“But you’re not as smooth as you used to be, Enzo.
She’s got you rattled. Rachelle never had you rattled.
Not even when she dumped you so she could spend the weekend getting massages and terrorizing the staff at The Haven.
You were pissed off, but you weren’t unsettled. ”
I rest the note card on my chest. “What do you want from me? Why do you suddenly care about my love life?”
“Nonna’s not the only one who’d like you to stay, you know.”
It feels like he just punched me in the chest, or maybe put a shackle around my wrist. The old longing to leave—to go just like our mother did—wraps around me.
“I’ll stay as long as I’m needed.”
“We don’t need you,” he says, which is another punch.
“Whatever idea you have, I’m sure it’s fucking genius, and I’m equally sure it’ll work.
But we don’t need you. Nico and I aren’t kids anymore, Enzo.
We can take care of ourselves and the business.
We would have figured it out if you hadn’t come home. ”
“I never said I thought you needed me,” I say. “It’s not like I quit my job to come here. It wasn’t some big sacrifice for the family. Like I said…I was ready to leave and the timing was right.”
“Why were you suddenly ready to leave?”
I don’t know why it’s so hard to admit to my little brother that I fucked up.
That I’m fallible. That I took a swing and missed.
I was hoping my boss wouldn’t call my bluff—that he’d say, yeah, Enzo, you’re right, it would be fucked up to lay those people off right before Christmas, and I’m not going to lose you, so we won’t do it.
Instead, I was the one who lost out.
Worse, I let my damned pride get in the way of collecting severance pay.
The one thing I am proud of is the thirty-five-page document I sent to his boss a couple of days ago, explaining how the situation could be addressed differently, without eliminating jobs right before the holidays.
It’ll probably be thrown away, but I’m proud of myself for going through with it.
For listening to Dancing Queen’s good advice.
I rub my forehead. “I had a disagreement with my boss.”
He claps his hands. “Ah, we’re getting closer to the truth. Finally! Honestly, getting personal information from you is harder than pulling taffy.”
I blow out an annoyed breath. “As if you’d know.”
“So you had a disagreement with the guy. What about? Did you call him a lazy piece of shit too?” I roll my eyes, because, yes, I did call my brother that last week.
When he suggested calling in one of the kids to clean up after a tourist broke a huge glass bottle of lemonade and it spilled all over the floor.
“No. The work wasn’t right for me anymore.
” I stop short of telling him that I didn’t like letting people go, that I had no stomach for it anymore, because he’ll think it’s a sign of weakness.
A sign, maybe, that I should settle down in Hideaway Harbor and have a family that I take boating every weekend. A little Lobster Scout of my own.
A voice in my mind wonders if that would really be so bad.
Living in New York City is exciting. Something’s always happening, there are always deals being made, and you can walk around with the confidence that dozens of people you barely know aren’t discussing your personal business in detail.
But most of the people I know there are good time friends.
They’ll do you a favor, no problem, but only because they think you could return it in the future.
The only friend I have in the city who isn’t like that is my best friend Will, and he’s from Hideaway Harbor too.
Still…the logical thing to do would be to finish my work here and return to New York City. I’ve actually had a couple of job offers since I left my old position, so I could take one of those jobs. Slip back into the life that’s waiting for me.
The things is, those positions are basically carbon copies of the one I left. I’d be doing the same work—work I was fucking good at but maybe don’t have the edge for anymore. I’d rather train people to do their jobs better than tear away their livelihoods.
As if he senses my weak resolve, my brother says, “You know, bud…you could come back home and not work at Hidden Italy, as crazy as that sounds. God knows, you’ve got the brains in this family. You could probably find a job you could do from anywhere.”
“Nonna expects—”
“She expects someone to run the place, and Nico will never leave.”
“And you?” I ask, surprised. I’d assumed he felt the same way as Nico. I’d assumed it, right up until this very minute.
“Me, I don’t know. But I don’t hate the business the way you do.”
“I don’t hate it either,” I say automatically. “Nonno won it in—”
“A game of cards. Yup. Crazy. And good for him and Nonna, they made a good run of it. But it’s been an anvil around your neck ever since you were ten years old.
I know what that was like for you. All that responsibility.
You never learned how to relax. How to have fun. But you’ve been having fun with Lucy.”
“And with you,” I say quietly.
Because it’s true, damn it. It’s been a while since we’ve spent this much time together, not just as brothers but friends.
My throat feels clogged with emotion, and I don’t like it one bit.
“Ah, he admits it,” Giovanni teases. “Maybe if you were nice to that girl she’d want to date you instead of publicly ridicule you.”
“What would be the fun in that?” I joke, but then I nod, conceding the point. “I’ll talk to her tonight. I told her I’d find her at the tree thing. Now, can I tell you my damn idea already?”
“Yes,” he says, “but I need a beer.”
“That makes two of us.”
He gets us both a drink, and then we discuss my thoughts, Giovanni getting as excited as I am. “We should definitely stock the Six-Pack Santa taffy,” he says. “It was a hit, so Portia’s making more of it. She’s even making them look like little six-packs.”
“Six-Pack Santa?”
Eyes twinkling, he says, “Your girl came up with the name.”
I smile at that. So Lucy liked what she saw, did she? I would hope so, because I can’t seem to stop looking at her. Or at those damn photos she took on the phone she won’t accept.
“You think she’d accept the cell phone as a Christmas present?” I ask.
“She didn’t like you sending her the phone because she’d already told you no. She wants to know you’re gonna listen, so no, you’re not giving it to her again unless she asks for it.”
“When did you get so wise?” I ask, kind of blown away. Giovanni’s always been so carefree and easygoing. I didn’t expect him to understand women like this.
“There you go,” he says with a half-smile. “Learning to listen already. That’s good, because I’ll only have to tell you once: you’ve gotta get her something more thoughtful than a phone as a Christmas present.”
“Like what?” I ask, surprised. “Jewelry?”
He snorts. “You ever seen her wear jewelry? She only wears earrings, and it’s always the same pair.”
“Maybe she wants a new pair.”
His eyebrows go up. “Or maybe the ones she has are sentimental, like that mangy stuffed animal Aria brings everywhere. Earrings would be the wrong move.”
Well, shit. From my experience, women want expensive presents.
Women other than Nonna Francesca, that is.
She’ll only ever accept useful things—extension cords and salad bowls and help with household chores we would have done anyway.
Still, Aria always gets away with getting her something special.
Bottles of limoncello from the Amalfi Coast. A clay trivet with the Trinacria symbol of Sicily, like the tattoo on my back.
It’s all in the delivery, she always says.
Then again, Aria’s kind of a wizard with Nonna.
“We’ll get Aria to help,” he says, as if reading my mind.
I groan.
“What? You don’t want our little sister to know you have a serious crush?”
“Jesus, no, especially not when you put it that way. Anyway, I’m not sure I do like her like that. It might just be…” I wave my hand suggestively because I don’t want to discuss lust with my brother.
“Nah. But you’ll figure that out eventually. You’re a quick study when you pause to listen to what other people are saying. Now, go take a shower, peppermint boy.”