Chapter 34
James
“James, my sweet boy!” Nonna opened the front door, her apron wrapped around her waist and wooden spoon in hand.
“That article your girlfriend wrote was magnificent. I asked your grandfather if we could go to The Social Eatery—once the crowd dies down, of course. That place has been packed every night.”
I opened my mouth to correct my grandmother and tell her that Hallie wasn’t technically my girlfriend. Not officially, anyway. But the words didn’t come.
Because the truth was … she sort of was .
I had told my family we were dating because somewhere along the way, the lines blurred. We weren’t just pretending anymore. We’d spent nearly every weekend together, texted constantly, shared meals, laughter, late-night talks. We’d fallen into something real without ever saying the words.
So I let Nonna call her my girlfriend.
Because if I was being honest with myself … I wanted her to be.
“Hi, Nonna,” I greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. “I can see if I can get the two of you reservations. I think Sebastian knows the owner.”
Hallie’s review for The Social Eatery had gone out on Sunday morning and was making its rounds. A few smaller media publications had picked up her article, drawing more attention to it than just Sophisticate ’s audience.
“Where is Sebastian?” Nonna asked. “I thought he was coming tonight.”
“He’s on his way. He texted me on my way over here that he was a little behind leaving the office.”
Nonna waved her wooden spoon in my direction. I kept my distance from her. I still remembered getting whacked on the backside with one as a kid. “You boys are wasting your lives away in those steel prisons.”
“We’re working, Nonna,” I defended as I followed her into the house, where the same scene was always laid out for every family dinner.
My uncle, father, cousin, and grandfather were playing poker.
While my mother and aunt were in the kitchen.
“We are doing exactly what you and Nonno did with the restaurant.”
“But you are selling your souls to companies that do not care about you. They would toss you to the wolves given the chance.” Nonna waved a dismissive hand in my direction before she returned to the kitchen to finish dinner.
I had to admit that she had a point. There were few companies out there that would sacrifice profits or padding their investors’ pockets if it meant giving their employees a better experience.
Berkley Williams was no better. They had perpetuated the idea that their employees couldn’t have much of a life outside of work, or else they’d miss an opportunity for the investment portfolios that they oversaw.
The CEO of Berkley Williams had gotten a large raise year after year, while the board continued to profit off the company’s stocks.
What else would you expect from a board for an investment company?
But there was one company that was making waves in recent weeks as it strayed from the status quo—Rooster.
When I had told Hallie that I hadn’t thought about Theo’s offer that much since our conversation on Friday, I’d lied, and I had no idea why.
Perhaps discussing my goals made me realize I was delaying my dream.
Working for Rooster’s new venture capital firm was nearly all I thought about during work hours.
With things working out in my personal life, maybe it was time to focus on other parts of my life.
I’d even received a surprising email from Theo this morning asking if I’d thought anymore about our conversation at The Nest on Friday.
I hadn’t responded yet, but I knew a guy like Theo wouldn’t wait around for very long.
“Hi, honey.” My mother walked over to give me a hug and I leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek. The minute she pulled away, I knew I’d somehow messed up. “Why didn’t you bring Hallie tonight?”
Now I understood the look of disapproval she’d given me when I’d first walked through the door alone.
My mother and Hallie had gotten on like two peas in a pod at dinner on Friday night.
By the end of the night, my mother had nearly extracted Hallie’s entire life story from her.
She asked about her parents, her sister, her soon-to-be niece.
I couldn’t even remember if she’d ever bothered to ask Cassidy what her parents’ names were.
Yet there she was asking Hallie when her parents were next coming to the city because she’d like to meet them.
“She was busy tonight.”
Which might not have been a lie necessarily. Hallie could have been busy. I hadn’t wanted to ask her to come tonight after forcing her through a family dinner only a few days ago. Although I wanted to spend every evening with her, I worried I was moving too fast.
I had no one to blame but myself. I’d chickened out of making things official with her.
When Saturday morning rolled around, I told myself I’d tell her at lunch the minute she kissed me awake.
Then, when lunch came and went, and we remained preoccupied, I promised myself I’d tell her during dinner.
But she left before I ever found the courage.
Which meant I was showing up to family dinner without a girlfriend, despite my family’s differing opinion.
“She better be here next week.” My mother raised her own wooden spoon at me threateningly.
Most people saw that kitchen utensil for what it was.
But in an Italian family, it had more than one purpose, and my mother had picked up that gesture over the years she’d been married to my dad.
I raised my hands in mock surrender to avoid being on the receiving end of one of those purposes.
My phone sounded with the web alert I had for Hallie’s articles.
What better time to read this than with my family?
They were going to benefit from this article.
Even if most of the viewers flocking to it were there to read the next installment of Mr. Old Fashioned, like my mother and grandmother, they would read about the family restaurant that was the site for Hallie’s fourth date.
I tapped into the alert just as Brandon called my name. “Are you coming? Nonno is about to beat Dad, so we can deal you in.”
“Hey! Do you have no faith in me?” Uncle Tony glared over at his son. “You don’t know what’s in either of our hands.”
“I know that Nonno has either a Royal Flush or a Full House. And I think you have maybe a three of a kind.” Brandon gave a pointed look at his father. “So let’s wrap this up.”
“I just want to read this really quick. It may be the next round that you can deal me in.”
“Is it Hallie’s article?” My mother asked from the kitchen.
“The Mr. Old Fashioned article?” My grandmother exclaimed. “It’s posted? I’ve got to message the group chat.”
“What group chat, Nonna?” I asked.
My aunt poked her head out of the kitchen. “She’s got some group chat with all the ladies from her book club. They open their meetings every week to talk about the newest article before they shift to their latest book.”
The article had loaded onto my phone, and I had to do a double-take to make sure I was reading the headline correctly.
What Should You Do When They Run Out of Money? RUN!
By: Hallie Woods
When Mr. Old Fashioned brought me to his family’s restaurant, I thought he’d made a mistake.
I’d expected an upscale bistro, perhaps his parents had purchased it in the early noughties, and it had become a staple of the Upper East Side.
So, when we crossed the river, I thought maybe he’d gotten the address wrong.
Very, very wrong. Or maybe the restaurant he told me he was taking me to was a cool, avant-garde place in a basement in Dumbo, I could handle that at least …
But an old pizzeria with red tablecloths to boot? Surely this wasn’t it?
Well, it turns out that Mr. Old Fashioned wasn’t exactly what he seemed.
Because from the outside, he looked like the full package—wealthy, successful, and, almost most important of all, someone that had good taste.
But apparently, the fourth date was now the new “meet-the-family” milestone, because how else could you explain him bringing me to a dingy pizzeria in Brooklyn and calling it a date?
He obviously wasn’t as well off as he had made himself out to be during our earlier dates. His pocketbook had to have run dry, so he settled on a dive, trying to pass it off as sentimental by introducing me to his family far earlier than one should.
During most family dinners, the house could barely contain the noise.
With my grandmother’s record player incessantly playing Sinatra and my uncle’s boisterous reactions, I was shocked that they’d received no complaints from neighbors.
I suppose my grandmother had paid them off for years with her famous handmade ravioli.
But I couldn’t hear any of that as the deafening roar of blood pulsated in my ears, echoing like a thunderous drumbeat that grew in intensity. The world around me seemed to come to a standstill, frozen in time, as I anxiously reread the title and the first two paragraphs repeatedly.
This can’t be right.
There had to be a mistake.
Sound finally came back to me. First, it was a ringing sound, high-pitched and whining. Then it was the muffled sound of voices. The voices were garbled, as if someone had plunged my head under water and was shouting at me from above.
The room was spinning as my eyes slowly peeled away from my phone screen to look around the room.
The first person I noticed was my mother.
Her mouth was moving, but I still couldn’t hear what she was saying.
She crossed over to me from the kitchen in record time.
Her hands cupped my face, her eyes wide with worry.
“What’s wrong, James?” The world snapped back into place as I stared into my mother’s eyes. My hands were shaking enough that the phone clattered out of my hand and onto the floor. “James, what’s wrong?” The sound fell away, but this time I knew it was because the room had gone silent.
My mother bent down to retrieve my phone and after she took one look at my screen, she pulled me up from the chair I’d fallen into and ushered me out of the room.
I was moving through the world completely frozen.
The second I tried to even question what I had just read, the words never formed.
I couldn’t bring myself to consider that Hallie had written that.
“Speak, James.” My mother’s voice was insistent. Her gaze was intense as she forced me to look at her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“You read it,” I rasped. “I think you have a pretty good idea of what is going on.”
She was still holding my phone, and she took another glance at it when Hallie’s name flashed across the screen. My mother held it out to me, a question in her eyes.
“No.” I shook my head. “Decline it.”
“What if she’s calling you about the article? Maybe you should hear her out.” Of course, my mother’s suggestion was logical. But nothing about this situation felt logical.
Why would Hallie write that article? She knew what this meant for my family. Hell, I thought she knew what this meant for me .
The only thing I knew right now was how grateful I was that I hadn’t yet asked her to be my girlfriend. I at least had the foresight to save myself the heartbreak.
“She’s no different from Cassidy,” I whispered. “I thought she was different. I really did. But here I am, disappointed again.”
For one of the first times in my life, my mother was at a loss for words.
“How did you find Dad? How did you do it?”
She sighed as she squeezed my hand between both of hers. “He came into my life when I least expected it, but when I needed him the most.”
“How did you know he was the one?”
My mother smiled as she thought about my father. “I knew he was the one the minute he told my father to fuck off.”
Hearing my mother swear took me completely by surprise. “I’m sorry?”
“My father attempted to bribe your father when we first started dating. He knew your father would not walk away from me easily. So, he tried to bribe him with money to break up with me. Your father told him to fuck off. That was the start of their unlikely friendship, I think.”
There were few people in life that had gotten away with saying something like that to my mother’s father. The man had climbed the ranks of Wall Street and died one of the most powerful men in finance.
My phone buzzed again, Hallie’s name popping up.
“Your father and I had to fight through many differences and obstacles to make our relationship work. But it was all worth it in the end.”
“I’m sorry this didn’t work out for the restaurant,” I told her.
She shrugged. “She didn’t name the pizzeria. No harm done.”
When my phone went off for the third time, my mother gave me a sad smile. “I think you need to pick up and hear her out, James.”
“Not right now,” I told her. “I need some time.”
My mother gave my hand a pat. “Let’s go eat and celebrate having each other. We will figure something else out for the restaurant.”
Grief filled my chest, wrapping around my ribcage, as I mourned losing the Hallie Woods I thought I knew.