Extended Epilogue Lorenzo
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
Lorenzo
SEVERAL YEARS LATER
“ W ake up! Wake up!” Ana Lucia, also affectionally known as Lulu or Lucy or Luce by her three older brothers, bounces onto our bed. Daisy, who was sleeping near Lily’s feet, scrambles off right before her first jump.
“Let’s go!” Lucia’s dark hair flies with her jumps. She nearly lands on my ankle, but I pull my leg out from under her in the nick of time.
I glance at the time on my phone and groan. “ Principessa . It’s six in the morning.”
She pauses, her chest heaving. “So? You were already up and watching Mommy!”
“Lucia,” I say in that parental tone I mastered with our first, Enzo.
“What? It’s so weird .”
“It’s called love, and one day you’ll understand.” I pause before adding, “Many, many, many years from now, okay? Like when you’re fifty or, if I’m really lucky, sixty.”
My youngest child’s entire face contorts from disgust. “Non preoccuparti, Papà. Boys are gross.”
“ Sì, hai ragione. They are disgusting. Every single one of them.”
Lily tries to shield her smile with a pillow and fails.
Lucia nods before she remembers the reason she barged into our bedroom. “Now that you’re awake, can we get up?”
Lily fakes a snore.
“?Mami!” Lucia resumes her bouncing. “?Levántate!”
The bed frame creaks with each jump. In the middle of one, I snatch Lucia from the air and trap her between me and Lily, who is still pretending to be asleep.
After four kids and almost three terms with me being mayor, my wife has become an early riser with me. We always take advantage of the slow mornings together before the world wakes up, and I’ve come to enjoy those quiet moments without any interruptions.
Turns out that in a house with four kids and two dogs, those are few and far between.
“No, Papà !” Lucia wiggles and squirms, doing her best to break free from my hold. “Let me go!”
“Shh. Mommy’s still sleeping,” I whisper. Lily snores again, and Lucia giggles. The sound is so innocent and carefree, and it always manages to draw a smile from me, regardless of whatever mood I might be in.
“No, she’s not!”
“Busted.” Lily pushes her eye mask up her face, takes a peek at us, and smiles.
“See!” Lucia shouts.
“All right.” I let go of our daughter, who accidentally elbows me in the chest in her attempt to escape the bed.
“You have five minutes to get ready,” Lucia announces before shutting our bedroom door. The sound of her feet slapping grows fainter before it disappears with the slam of her bedroom door down the hall.
A pro of living in the small house of Lily’s dreams is that our kids are always nearby.
A con—they are always nearby.
It is hard to get time to ourselves, but I wouldn’t trade our life for anything.
Except for maybe a little quiet time, at least for a few hours on the weekends.
Lily closes the gap between us and hits me with one of her lazy smiles as she whispers, “Five minutes, huh?”
“What will we do with so much free time?”
She drags a single, suggestive finger down my chest. “I have an idea, but you have to be quiet.”
By the time she reaches for the waistband of my shorts, I’m already half-hard, and all it takes is a few passes of her tongue for my cock to be aching for her mouth.
I’m as obsessed with Lily now as I was when we got together, and no amount of therapy will cure me of my addiction. That choice was intentional, because if loving Lily to the point of obsession is wrong, then I never want to be right.
“I got it!” Lucia runs out of the house with our family recipe book cradled against her chest. The screen door bangs shut behind her, and I nearly have a heart attack when she ignores the stairs meant to keep her ankles safe and jumps off the top step.
After three boys, I should be used to reckless behavior, but Lucia gives them a run for their money with how often she makes me break out the first aid kit.
Enzo, our eldest, who was sitting on the porch reading a comic book Nico bought for him, lunges when Lucia trips over her laces and catches her before she lands face-first in the grass.
“All good!” she yells as Enzo ties her shoes, doubling the knot.
Lucia, who inherited her mother’s sense of style, loves using satin ribbons for laces, but she has still not mastered the art of tying her shoes properly.
Or styling her hair, which makes Lily and me happy since we enjoy that part of the morning routine with our youngest.
“Here, Papà .” Lucia hands me the recipe book Lily made me for my birthday several years ago.
I could make sauce in my sleep, but I grab it from her regardless, and together we open up to the very first page so she can read the instructions aloud.
Lucia loves the photos Lily and I have added over the years.
Little by little, the recipe book went from including pictures of Lily and me cooking to ones of our kids, like Enzo with a bowl of espagueti verde on top of his head or Lazaro staring at my branzino with wide eyes that resemble the fish in front of him.
Once Lucia finds the right page, I stand up and call the boys over from their spots on the porch. I don’t blame them for wanting to hang out in the shade, but we have way too many tomatoes and not enough time in the day before the Munoz and Lopez families come over for dinner.
“Who wants to help me wash the tomatoes?” I ask.
Enzo makes a face and Lazaro, our youngest boy, backs away slowly, while Aurelio—our second-born easygoing son—steps up.
“I got it.”
“That’s my sweet boy.” Lily walks over with the last bucket of tomatoes and passes it to him. He scurries away when Lily kisses the top of his head, and she makes a face.
Similar to Enzo, Aurelio is getting to that age where he gets embarrassed by us, and I can already tell it’s going to hit Lily hard since he was always the biggest hugger of the four.
“You two are still helping,” I tell Enzo and Lazaro.
“Why ask us, then?” Enzo groans while Lazaro says, “Dad!”
“I gave you a choice, but you picked wrong.” I grin, and the two of them tackle me to the ground.
Enzo must’ve picked up a few new skills from his uncles, Julian and Rafa, because he pulls me into a new kind of headlock that is difficult to pull out of. Lazaro, who is still too small to cause much damage, has found out some classified information about me.
“You betrayed me.” I twitch when Lazaro hits that ticklish spot beneath my armpit, which no one knows about except for my wife.
“You double-crossed me first.” Lily nudges me with her ticklish toes.
Lazaro calls for reinforcements, and Lucia throws herself on top of her brothers and goes for my other ticklish spot.
“Hey! I thought you were my sweet girl.”
“Scusa, Papà,” she says in that adorable Italian accent of hers that always makes me melt.
Aurelio, who has clearly been spending way too much time with his moody, broody uncles, stands by Lily.
Our gazes connect, and I can read her thoughts without her speaking a single word because they mirror my own.
Nothing in the world compares to this feeling, and I know that nothing ever will.
Happiness , for our kids and the joy they bring us every single day.
Love , both for each other and the life we built together.
And hope , because wherever life takes us, we will always have the family we created, and no one can take that away from us.