Darling, Dove Preview #3
There, SJ sat with Fiume, both engrossed in something on his phone.
Just ahead of them, Nico and Frankie’s eldest daughter Nicole, fourteen and a half, laughed where she sat with Contessa on her one side, and a dainty blonde girl at her other.
The instrument cases sitting beside them in the aisle, one being his daughter’s cello, and the other, a violin, confirmed what he did know regarding the newcomer to the friend group.
“It’s Parker, right?” he asked his wife of the girl.
“Parker Reed.”
“So, she’s another scholarship student?”
“Were you not listening when I explained two days ago?” Frankie teased lightly. “Yes, she sings, quite beautifully by the way, and plays the violin.”
“Not at the same time I’m assuming.”
“You’d be wrong, then.”
Nico rolled his eyes. “And she’s fourteen like Nickie, or...?”
“Turns fifteen at the end of October, the thirtieth, I guess. She started coming around with Nickie last month after the orchestra started meeting twice a week to get acquainted before school started.”
Right, she had told him that, too. Nico didn’t have a problem with his daughter’s new friend, per say.
“Uh-huh.”
“Nico.”
“Hmm?”
“Babe.”
“Yeah?”
“Nico.”
Frankie lost the playfulness with that one, so he finally looked away from the group.
Except his attention simply zoned in on the other problem in the equation of the newcomer.
The fact that Damiano watched the girl from the sidelines while he bounced a ball between his knees only confirmed Nico’s need to be suspicious. And concerned.
“She’s too young,” he said.
“They’re not a thing.”
“Did you ask him that?” Nico questioned.
“Do I need to ask my seventeen-year-old, who has never had a girlfriend, if he has a girlfriend, Nico, really?”
“For one thing—she’s too young for him,” Nico said, wanting that to be clear between them, “but for another thing, if it was just a fleeting thing to get out of his system, I bet that it would already be done by now. Except maybe not, because he definitely knows that she’s too young for him.
Why’s he watching her every chance he gets?
No other time on the field is his attention anywhere but on the ball, Frankie.
You’re purposefully not noticing at this point.
And you didn’t tell me just how much, huh? ”
His wife quieted. Nico mulled over his thoughts, too.
“Has she been at every tryout with Nicole this week?” he asked after a minute.
“Three of five.”
“And the other two?”
“They practiced at the house.”
“So, she was there when he got home,” Nico filled in what Frankie didn’t say.
“What do you want me to say, Nico? I’m not concerned, and I don’t think you should be, either. She’s sweet, Nickie loves her, and they’re never alone. I’ve seen them together when they don’t know I’m watching. It’s nothing.”
Nope. It wasn’t nothing.
His son kept staring, after all.
“I’ll speak with him,” Nico said, the final word on the matter.
Frankie sighed. “Well, hey, at least he managed to do something this year that he hasn’t since like, grade nine.”
Nico chuckled, already knowing what she meant. “Ah, yes, the first week curse. Not a single incident, huh?”
“Have they grown themselves out of it, do you think? A little late, given it’s their senior year,” she tacked on with a shake of her head. “The only reason I have this damn job and this stadium exists is because of their little curse.”
“Nothing incited the need for it, probably. What did it last year?”
“A guy told SJ his last name meant cock in Italian, and then SJ smacked the kid so hard he fell backwards over a desk into a girl that got pissed.”
He thought SJ had told the kid who started it something about knocking the cock out of his mouth so he could speak clearly the next time he wanted to disrespect somebody, too. But that wasn’t important.
“And then Fiume jumped in,” Nico added, remembering. “Which dragged in Damiano. At lunch, right?”
“Mmhmm,” his wife agreed. “The only one that didn’t get suspended was Tessa.”
Poor girl. “Contessa just isn’t a fighter, I think,” he said of Big Mike’s fifth child.
A wordsmith, though? The girl could cut with words.
“Hey,” came an annoyed voice right behind Nico’s shoulder.
He turned to arch an eyebrow at Christopher who had moved seats to come sit behind his parents while Nico was distracted with his other problem. “What’d I tell you, huh?”
“Yeah, yeah, sit and shut up until you say otherwise, but listen...”
“Are you doing that?”
“I’m bored, Dad.”
Nico’s gaze narrowed on his son. “Count seats.”
“What?”
Frankie snickered but put her attention back on the field.
“Just what I said,” Nico muttered at Christopher. “If you’re bored, there’s something to do. Count the seats. I hear there’s ten thousand in this stadium. Prove me right.”
“You’re such a fucking dick—”
“Christopher Nicolas,” his mother hissed.
Nico just pointed to a seat one over from his own, uttering, “Move.”
The kid did. Instantly.
“Okay, give me that,” Frankie said heavily, eyeing Christopher settling into the seat two over from Nico’s while gesturing at the clipboard she asked her husband to hold onto earlier.
Nico grabbed the item she wanted in the seat beside him, and passed it along, never once taking his gaze away from his problem child. “Thanks.”
Frankie headed further down the right side of the sideline seats, staying on the cement walkway so her heels wouldn’t sink into the turf.
Once practices came, she would trade out the form-fitting dress for something more comfortable, but game days and tryouts were a whole different ballgame. Her feet barely touched the field.
“What is your problem?” he asked his son the first chance he could.
The hood of his hoodie thrown high, and his black hair sticking out wildly in all directions under the material, Christopher chewed on a white gold chain hanging around his neck.
None of that kid’s jewelry could be saved from the brutality of his teeth.
At least, they could all tell the quality of the gold just by surveying the damage.
Eyes straight ahead, his son refused to speak.
“Chris,” Nico murmured, trying soft then.
A lot of times, this kid needed both. It was hard to tell which in the moment.
His son’s shoulder dipped lower. “What?”
“Are you pissed that Mom took your dirt bike away last week, or...?”
“I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
“Yeah, you did. You drove to the river with Charlee on the back of it,” he said of the most recent incident with the thirteen-year-old next door. “I guess her father started tracking her phone, huh? Real fun for you.”
“Don’t be an ass about it.”
Nico blew out a gust of irritated wind. “What were you doing down there, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
“Mmhmm. I don’t believe that.”
“Well, believe it. It’s fucking September, Dad, it’s not like we went swimming.”
“No, you just did that all summer, right? How many times did her father catch you on the property since you showed up at her birthday at the end of May, anyway?”
“Could you just stop?”
“Could you respect the adults in your life when they make reasonable requests of you?” Nico returned just as fast.
Christopher scowled around the chain that had slightly mumbled his words while speaking to his father. “You’re impossible.”
“No, I just don’t let you get way with anything, and you hate it.”
“Damiano runs around with a different girl every other week, and you and Mom don’t say shit. I don’t get why—”
“You are twelve and a half. Barely.”
His son’s brow dipped, like he didn’t understand why that mattered. “I mean...so?”
“So?” Nico leaned slightly closer to his son, asking again, “So? Are you serious?”
“Well.”
“You ask me so and you barely even have fucking hair on your nuts,” Nico said, his tone sharpening on every word, “as if that makes any goddamn sense, son. The rule is no dating before you turn thirteen, and it’s a year of chaperoned dating before you’re good to go on your own, which you know.
Because we have gone over those rules, and why they’re in place.
Dami’s little incident with the girl in the pool house is why we have those rules, so go ahead and try something different than your brother about why the rules shouldn’t apply to you. He’s the fucking example, Chris.”
Christopher snorted. “I know better than to get caught with my dick out, so.”
Nico sucked his tongue against his teeth. “Unbelievable. You say that to me, knowing good and well that you lied and told me that girl’s your friend when I came home last month, and then you get caught climbing out of her bedroom window again. Go ahead, lie to me again, do it.”
“Okay, so she’s not a friend.”
“And you are twelve.”
“Almost thirteen.”
“Do you hear yourself? You barely even raced in the circuit this summer because you were too busy chasing the neighbor girl all around hell’s creation.”
Christopher loved motocross. His grandfather bought his first dirtbike—to Frankie’s disgusted disbelief—at just five.
Bigger, faster bikes came every year from his father, and Salvatore, because how could someone not feed into the passion that lit up Christopher’s face when he turned over an engine and shoved his helmet down?
The kid had a whole wall of trophies, medals, and plaques that he’d earned since he started racing.
Last fall, he had a bad accident shortly after starting grade six, which broke his leg, two ribs, and kept him out of the sport for more than half the year. He barely got back into it when this whole...new mess started.
“Nah, not hell’s creation, just Rose Ridge,” Christopher replied of their gated community.
Impossible. This whole conversation? In the fucking trash.
“You keep this up, and that girl’s father is going to send her to live with her mother in California,” Nico warned, “and us? Your mother and I are gonna lock you down in the meantime. Keep it up, son.”
“So, I can still do whatever I usually do, just not with her? Is that what you’re saying?” Christopher questioned.