Chapter 31
ENZO
Dinner tonight was loud, chaotic, and probably very stressful for Nico, who made us all lasagna. It was also a couple of the best hours of my life.
Lucy agreed to stay at my apartment, in my bed, and it feels like a victory. Not over her, but over myself. I was so reluctant to come home, so convinced Hideaway Harbor would feel like a cage. But I was wrong. I’m not usually grateful to be wrong, but I’m happy to make an exception.
It feels right to have her here, in my space, tucked in next to me in bed.
It also makes me realize how much I’ve held back—how little I’ve made this place mine.
Maybe it’s time to give up the apartment in New York and bring my things here.
It doesn’t have to be forever, even if a voice in my head whispers that it might be okay if it is.
That this life I’ve been running from for years might be better than the one I had in New York.
I drift off to sleep, my arm around Lucy, and rouse to find her wide awake, her eyes full of sadness and worry.
“Is everything okay?” I ask, immediately on full alert. “Did something happen to Eileen?”
Or my grandmother? But I can’t speak that fear to life.
“Oh, everything’s fine,” she says. “Sorry. I just… Did you call that guy in New York?”
“No.” I settle back into my pillows. “God, you gave me the fright of my life.”
“You should call him,” she says.
“Right now? He might not thank me for it.”
“Tomorrow.”
“I’ll call on Monday.”
“What if it’s important?”
“It can’t possibly be. If it’s my super and there’s a leak in my apartment, he can let himself in to fix it.”
Her lips try to form a smile but don’t quite make it. “What if all your fancy suits got wet?”
“What use do I have for them here, anyway?”
“You know it’s not your super. This is about your old job. They probably want you back.”
She’s clearly nervous about that possibility. I trace a finger over her lips, then say, “Usually you don’t get invited back after you call your boss names.”
“What’d you call him?” she asks, her mouth lifting at the corners.
“An asshole with poor vision.”
She shrugs. “You could have done better.”
“It wasn’t my best work. I meant he had poor vision metaphorically, but he thought I was making fun of his glasses.
” I caress the side of her face. “I won’t lie to you.
I think it probably is him. Calling on the weekend and demanding an immediate response is just like him, even though he knows me too well to think he’ll get what he wants.
The thing is, I don’t care if he wants to give me my old job back.
I don’t want it. I’m done doing things his way. ”
“Firing people.”
“Sometimes people deserve to be fired. But just as often it’s training that’s at fault, or a person who should be doing job A is hired for job B. You don’t always need to throw everything out to fix things.”
She bites her bottom lip, her expression serious and thoughtful. “What if it’s someone else who wants to hire you?”
“Then they can wait to make their pitch to me until after we’ve had our holiday fun.” She still looks worried, so I smooth a finger between her brows. “You think I’m going to leave.”
I understand that fear. I live with it in my bones. People who are supposed to love you can just leave. They can buy a plane ticket or a bus ticket or drive their car away.
But now that I’m older I realize some of the people who leave come back. Aria left, but she checks in nearly daily, and even though my father has always inhabited his own little world, he still calls one of us every week or so.
“I don’t want you to regret staying.”
“There are plenty of remote jobs I could get, or jobs with travel.”
“You’ve been thinking about that?”
I tuck her hair behind her ear. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. Everything is going well with the shop. Our new strategy seems like it’s going to be a success. I’ll need something to do.”
“God forbid Enzo Cafiero gets bored,” she says, but she’s barely teasing.
“It would be hard to get bored with you around. You like to keep me on my toes.”
I wrap my arm around her and pull her close, needing to feel her against me. To prove to both of us that we’re here now, and that’s what matters. I want to hold her. To soothe her.
“I’ve felt more alive this past month than I have in the past five years. I’d be a fool to walk away from you, and I’d like to believe I’m no fool.”
Her only answer is to snuggle closer, although I know she’s still thinking about it.
Truthfully, I’m grateful she cares. I’m definitely grateful she’s decided she wants me here.
I have a surprise planned for Christmas. I told my sister about it, and she thinks I’m crazy for even considering the idea, but the truth is, I am crazy.
“Good night, Enzo.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Good night, Lucia. Tomorrow we’ll help shape minds and inspire children at the library.”
“God help them,” she whispers.
I laugh into her hair, feeling at peace, but then tug her closer. “You know, maybe I’m not so tired after all.”
I answer my landline phone in the living room while Lucy showers in the bathroom. It’s Aria.
“You’re honestly reading to kids this morning?” my sister asks. “I already like your new girlfriend. Rachelle would never read to kids.”
“We don’t need to talk about Rachelle,” I say, feeling a strong inclination to never again hear her name and Lucy’s in the same sentence. Even though I might never have talked to Lucy if not for my ex.
“Wow, you really do have it bad,” Aria says, then murmurs something to someone on the other end of the phone. “I want to meet her. I want to buy her an insanely big bouquet of flowers. Or maybe chocolates. Does she like chocolate? Oh, what am I talking about, every sane person likes chocolate.”
“I don’t.”
“My point stands.” She pauses. “Giovanni tells me someone from New York is trying to get in touch with you, but you don’t want to call them back. What game are you playing?”
I head into the kitchen and start the espresso machine. “No game. I think it’s my ex-boss, and I don’t mind making him sweat for a few days. I won’t go back.”
“You shouldn’t. He sounds like an asshole. He’s sounded like an asshole for years.”
“He’s probably been one for most of his life,” I mutter. Switching gears, I ask, “So, what can I say to persuade you to come home for Christmas?”
She huffs into the phone. “Nothing. You’re not nearly the dealmaker you think you are. Greece at this time of year is amazing. It’s like thirty degrees warmer than at home, and there aren’t many tourists. I’m basically on a paid vacation.”
I pause, thinking of the honesty Lucy and I have been exchanging, first in letters, now in person. Then I admit: “I miss you. We all miss you. It won’t seem like Christmas without you, and this year it really feels like Christmas, Aria.”
I tell her a little bit about the taffy pulling and singing carols in the square last night. About how funny it was to watch Nico’s expression when he saw his ice sculpture.
“You’d still be able to see it,” I say, wheedling. “Resa seemed to think it would last a while.”
“I love you, but no means no,” she says.
“I love you too,” I say, deflated, then try one more tactic. “I also really want you to meet Lucy.”
“Soon,” she promises. “I’m happy for you, Enzo. It’s about time you got your head out of your ass.”
Sisters.
She hangs up, and I finish making our cappuccinos—in to-go cups, because we need to head to the library.
“You made me a Frenemy,” Lucy says when she sees it, her eyes lighting up.
“To prove my cappuccino supremacy,” I joke. “Shall we?”
She studies me for a moment, looking for something, and then takes her cappuccino from me. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I want to do it with you.”
She gives me a doubtful look. “It occurred to me… I know you did a lot for your brothers and sister at Christmas when you were a kid. This won’t bring back any hard memories?”
“No, Lucia. Reading a children’s story isn’t going to send me into hysterics.”
Her skeptical look doesn’t waver. “We don’t have to go.”
But we do. It’s part of the plan I cooked up, and I’m enjoying the plan. Last night, laughing with my brothers, seeing my grandmother smile—several times, in fact—experiencing it all with my arm around Lucy, I found myself thinking, I want more of this.
“We’re going,” I say.
We walk to the library together, talking easily, and when we get there we ditch the coffee cups and enter.
There’s a crush of people, probably because the actor, Brody King, is doing the last reading.
He’s already there, surrounded by a large crowd, including Piper Locke and probably two dozen mothers in clothing more revealing than the weather calls for.
The book Lucy signed up to read is called Stick Man. She chose it because she found the name funny. What it has to do with Christmas is a mystery to me.
“Oh, Brody is really hot,” Lucy says, but she’s grinning at me, and it’s obvious she’s only giving me shit.
“Be careful. I’ve been known to attack circuit breakers in fits of jealousy.”
She kisses me on the cheek, then whispers in my ear, “No one’s as hot as the Italian Stallion.”
One of the moms gives us a dirty look, as if cheek kissing is the gateway drug to pornography, but I just grin at her.
There’s a magical feeling in the air, as if all of the season’s miracles exist simply because the children surrounding us believe in them.
I’m reminded of when I was a kid, trying to make this time of year special for my brothers and sister.
At the time, I’d felt so alone, but I remember being here at this library.
I remember adults reading to us. I remember how my teacher gave me a bag of presents for all of us Cafieros, telling me that Santa had come to the wrong house, but they were meant for us.
They’d tried to help.
I hadn’t been as alone as I’d felt.
Portia squeezes her way to us through the crowd and reaches out her hand for a fist bump. “There’s my Peppermint Man.”
Someone gives her a dramatic hush, so she adds in an undertone, “Amanda’s reading too. I’m here for moral support.”
I nod to Lucy. “We’re reading together.”
Amanda slips through the crowd to join us, plenty of people watching her.
“It’s Defiantly Herself,” she says, surprising me by giving Lucy a hug. There’s a story there, obviously, and I’d like to hear it. But I’m not surprised she managed to befriend a famous actress. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d charmed a dictator, won over a warlord, got offered a crown.
“We’re up next,” Amanda continues, “but good luck, you guys. We’re going to stick around for a while to listen.”
I’m feeling a little choked up by the time Lucy and I read our story, each doing a page at a time.
It’s a little existential book about a man who looks like a stick and almost gets burned alive, but I like it.
It has a dark edge most Christmas books lack.
An acknowledgement of the other side of life—the dark that makes the light glow brighter.
I’m in a strange mood by the time we step out into the sunlight, ready for the woolen sock race. And it’s flurrying. Just a few flakes coming down, but the clouds look like they’ll bring a white afternoon for us.
“It’s beautiful,” Lucy breathes out, stretching her hand to catch a snowflake.
“Can you catch one on your tongue?” I ask. Mostly because I want to see her with her head tipped back, tongue extended.
“You want me to look like an idiot,” she accuses, but not hotly.
“You could never. Except maybe for that time you got caught in that Porta Potty.”
I get the playful arm shove I was hoping for, and I wrap my arm around her. We’ve only taken a couple of steps toward the Locke Reserve, where the woolen sock race is being held, when I feel my cell phone vibrate in my pocket.
Thinking it might be my sister again, I slide it out.
There’s a voice message, which is apparently only coming through now after having been left yesterday.
“There’s a message,” I say.
A dark look crosses her face, but she juts out her lower lip stubbornly. “Check it, Enzo.”
So I do…
“Enzo, this is Martin Murphy. You’re a hard man to reach.
We got your brief the other day, and holy shit, man, it blew me away.
Tom’s gone. We don’t need that kind of unilateral thinking in our company.
We need innovation. We need you. I want to interview you for his job.
Now, look, I know Christmas is coming up, but as you know, we’re slammed, so we need you on board, like, yesterday.
When can you be in New York for the interview? ”
My heart rate picks up. My palms sweat.
Fuck. My boss’s job. This is…
This is huge. Everything I thought I wanted, the life I’ve been working for since I left home.
“Enzo?” Lucy says, her voice fainter than usual. Full of trepidation. “Who was it?”
I can tell from the look on her face that she already knows.
“It was my ex-boss’s boss,” I say carefully. “They let him go. They want to interview me for his position.”
“Of course they do,” she says with a gratifying lack of surprise. “And you’ll go.”
“We can talk about that later. I believe we’re supposed to do the woolen sock race.
There’s no way I’m missing that. What the fuck is a woolen sock race, anyway?
Are we seriously going to be running in our socks in the snow?
We may want to be bystanders for this one, Lucy. We can cheer on everyone else.”
“We’re racing,” she says. “Because I also want to find out what the fuck a woolen sock race is, and I intend to win it.”
I smile at her, but I feel an unfamiliar, uncomfortable tension between us that I’m not sure how to navigate. “You’re not going to throw this one, Lucy?”
“No,” she says. “I’ve already lost the element of surprise.” She takes a brief pause, then says, “You have to take the interview, Enzo. You have to.”