Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GIOVANNI
“This doesn’t have to make anything weird between us,” Bianca says as she tugs on her bra.
“Hm.” I’m distracted, naturally, as I watch my fantastic view get tucked away.
She shoves my arm. “I said this doesn’t need to make anything weird.”
“Of course not,” I murmur. “People fuck in kitchens all the time. It’s an epidemic.”
A smile floats across her face, then disappears. “What are you going to do with the condom?”
I throw it in the trash can, then say, “I’m going to throw the trash away. Maybe the trash can too. We can tell everyone it got carried off by a bear.”
She’s smiling again as she tugs on her shirt. Then her underpants. It’s the reverse of her tearing off all her clothes, and I have a moment of nostalgia, even though I’m still deep in the afterglow of the best orgasm I’ve ever had.
“Aren’t you going to get dressed?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I’ve become pretty fond of being naked. You seem to like it too.”
“I do,” she says, checking me out with a satisfied smile on her face.
“Tell me you want to do this again,” I say.
Okay, I’m begging.
Because now that I’ve touched her, I can’t imagine going back to before, when I was only allowed to put my hands on her in public.
But if she says no, the answer is no, full stop. My nonna raised all of us kids to have a very clear understanding of the word no.
“Of course I do,” Bianca says.
Thank God.
But I need to be honest with her. She deserves that. “I don’t know what comes next, Bianca. I like you a lot, but my whole life is up in the air. Nothing has been resolved.”
“That’s obvious.”
I have to laugh. “Thank you for that.”
She slides her fingers across my chest in a way that’s certainly going to drive me insane. “We’ll have October. This will be our month to enjoy each other, and then we’ll go back to our regularly scheduled lives.”
I don’t like the sound of that, but I don’t have much of an argument to put up. I don’t live here, and my life is not fully in my own hands. While my grandmother made it clear that she doesn’t want to cut our visit short, it was only ever going to be a visit.
“You’ll give me October?”
“It’s yours,” she says, her stroking fingers driving me mad. They’re barely touching me, but it’s enough.
“I might never figure out what comes next. Maybe I can become Mr. November too.”
She grins and sadly pulls her hand away. “You could read the book Emily gave you. Maybe it’s exactly the thing that would crack all of this wide open for you.”
“Maybe so.” I grin. “But I have to say it’s not doing much for me from the table where it’s been sitting unopened. I was hoping osmosis would take over.”
“That’s only with water.”
“Now you tell me,” I say, rapping my knuckles against the counter.
“You can always count on me to be honest with you, even if we’re lying to other people.
” Her expression turns serious. “And since we’re being honest…
I know you’re going to leave. You know you’re going to leave.
Whether you decide to go to Maine or Los Angeles or wherever so you can become even more famous, I’m not going to trail after you like a lost dog.
I’m where I need to be. But there’s no reason we can’t be friends. ”
“Friends who fuck?” I ask with a smile.
She smiles back, her eyes glittering in the honeyed light pouring in through the kitchen windows. “Hopefully. But there’s no doubt we just broke the first rule of fake relationships. It was only supposed to be for show.”
“Are you saying you’d like to fuck in public? While I don’t object on principle, I think Mr. Mayor might have us arrested for public indecency.”
She presses her palm to my chest, laughing. “Be serious.”
“Yeah, all right,” I say, grabbing my sweatpants and tugging them on. I can feel her searching gaze on me as I pull on the T-shirt next. “Where to now, boss? Are we getting that chocolate? Maybe go for a hike? Your nonna gave me the day off.”
She hesitates, studying me. “The chocolate first. But after we get it, I think we should find someone to taste-test our s’mores.”
“I had visions of feeding them to you, fake girlfriend.”
She gives me a downright mischievous look, so I shouldn’t be at all surprised by what she says next. “How about feeding one to Luanne?”
“I’m less excited, but I’m listening.”
She grins at me, so carried away by her plan it’s hard not to get carried along with it too.
“The folks at The Rotten Apple don’t get much excitement. No one tries to make them feel like they’re part of the town, but what if we appoint them our official taste-testers?”
“You’re this eager to go to work on your day off?”
“It’s not just a job to me,” she says softly, seriously, and I feel a pang of loss.
Because I had a gig like that once, a job I loved, but I don’t know how to reclaim The Shirtless Chef. I’m probably stepping on my own toes, like my brother said, but I don’t know how to stop.
“So what you’re saying is that hanging out at the nursing home is also your hobby,” I tease.
“Probably my only hobby.”
“You need to get out more, fake girlfriend.”
“You don’t get why my work is important to me, do you?” She picks up her cappuccino, which has to be fucking cold again, takes an exploratory sip, and scrunches her nose.
“No, I can’t say I do,” I say as she lowers the mug. “It seems like an exercise in misery. You were raised by your grandparents, more or less, same as my brothers and sister. I hated watching my grandparents get old.”
Both of us were kids left for another generation to raise.
I know she must have suffered the way I did, watching the people you look up to age and lose themselves little by little. Each year seemed to shave new bits of my grandparents away.
Why would anyone want to be hit over the head with that reality every single day?
“That’s why I wanted to work with older people,” she says, catching me off guard.
“And people who are dying. When someone gets old, the people who are closest to them hang back sometimes. They don’t engage as much, because they don’t like knowing what’s around the corner.
But everyone deserves to be cared for at every stage of their lives—not for who they were, but for who they are now. ”
A shiver runs down my spine. If I were a more superstitious man, I’d think this woman set some kind of spell on me.
God, she’s too good for this broken world, too good for me, and definitely too good for Mr. Fucking Mayor.
“You’ve seen a lot of people die.”
It’s a statement, not a question. I know it’s true.
She nods, her gaze holding mine, and I feel a glimmer of understanding pass between us.
“Who did you see die?” she asks after a moment.
I don’t answer right away, but my fingers lift to the pendant around my neck.
It turns out I don’t need to say anything, because she gasps. “Your grandfather.”
“I was there when he had his heart attack, yes.” I hesitate, then tell her something else I haven’t shared with anyone but Nico.
“With his last breaths, he asked me to take care of my grandmother, Bianca. He wanted me to be there until the end. He said he trusted me to take care of her, and oh God, I’ve really been trying.
I was going to move away from my hometown—that was always the plan—but I couldn’t break my word to him. ”
“Oh, Giovanni,” she says, her eyes brimming with understanding.
God, she’s beautiful.
“That must have been awful for you.”
“It’s not in my top ten list of memories, no, but…” I swallow a surge of grief. “I was…I was so desperate to save him, but I couldn’t do anything. He slipped away in front of my eyes. I was completely powerless..”
My eyes are dry but hot, my chest tight with the memory.
She leans in, wrapping her arms around me and holding me close. “It was his time,” she murmurs softly, her words and embrace a soft balm. “We all have our time. It was a gift for him to have someone he loved with him at the end. You were a gift to him.”
I hold her closer, my voice ragged as I speak into her hair. “He trusted me to take care of her, not my brother Enzo, who’s better at everything. Not even Nico or Aria. Me. That means something, and I’d never let him down. Never. I’d be worse than a coward if I did. I’d be a man without honor.”
“Of course you wouldn’t do that.” She snuggles in closer, giving her comfort to me, and I can tell she’s trying to soak up some of my grief. “He’d be so proud of the man you’ve become.”
I’m still not sure I believe that, but her words fill my heart.
She pulls back and kisses me softly, sweetly, and my heart fucking aches.
I meant what I said: I can’t promise anyone anything right now.
My decisions are not fully mine to make, and they haven’t been for years.
I made a promise to a dying man—a man I loved with all my soul—and I will keep it.
I’m my grandmother’s caretaker, and that means I need to go where she goes.
But God help me, I will do something good for Bianca while I’m here. I’ll do everything I can.
“All right,” I say, trying to cast the memory away. “You’ve made me feel like a real chump about being afraid of the retirement home, so I’m going to go with you.”
I can tell Bianca’s struggling with whether or not she should try to continue our conversation, but she puts on a big smile for me. “You’re really coming?”
“I tell you what. I’ll even talk to a lady about an apple pie.”
And what do you know…
My fake girlfriend kisses me again.
Bianca pauses at the front door of The Rotten Apple—a big, sprawling red brick building with worn spots on the paint, as if it really is a misshapen, rotten fruit.
It’s a bit blustery today, the limbs of the trees dancing, showing off their changing colors.
Bianca says we’re a week off from the peak of what they call the “big show.” The leaves are dabbled with red and gold and orange, but right now, there’s still green mixed in.
She’s not staring off at the leaves, though. She’s studying me with a worried expression. “You should know something…”
“Now she tells me.”