Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
Becca whispers to me as we walk through the foyer that the scent alone may make her stay forever.
She walks into the kitchen and immediately starts complimenting everything with the enthusiasm of someone raised by a mother who baked everything from scratch and takes cooking very personally.
Carmela is won over within sixty seconds.
I clock this and laugh, shaking my head at how Becca fits seamlessly in the penthouse with me and Cal, but also fits in here, too.
Nico arrives late. Which surprises no one.
He comes through the back door with snow on his jacket that he is trying, and failing, to wipe off. He immediately stands up straighter when he notices a new person standing at the kitchen island helping Sophia separate egg whites with the confidence of someone who’s done it a hundred times.
He stops when he does a double take of Becca.
I watch him look at her. It’s a brief thing, barely a second. Then his face rearranges into something easy, unbothered, and he keeps moving. And I probably imagined it.
He says something to Becca to introduce himself—easy, casual, the Nico Renzetti charm that he turns on with automatic precision—and she turns to look at him.
She looks him up and down, makes eye contact with me, and I see the gears turning in her mind. She says something back that I can’t hear, and his easy smile goes a little uncertain, which is the least Nico thing I have ever witnessed.
Cal appears at my shoulder.
“What are you looking at?” he whispers it into my ear, his breath tickling the skin there.
“Nothing,” I whisper back, which is exactly what he says to me in identical circumstances, and I watch his face as he follows my eyeline and sees what I was looking at and stands as straight as Nico did moments ago.
“Absolutely not,” he states it like it’s final.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“No.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s fine, she’s only here a week.”
“You haven’t seen the damage Nico can do in a week.”
“He gave her one look, it’s fine.”
“Nico’s looks are a whole situation.” He gently steers me away from the kitchen by the elbow.
He takes me to the table and we find our seats. He tells me about Christmas as a kid and how his mom would make a literal feast. He says she’s pared it back considerably, which surprises me because based on what she is doing tonight, I can only imagine what we are in for tomorrow.
At dinner, Nico and Becca argue about whether the pasta water was salty enough, a subject on which Becca has extremely strong opinions that she is willing to defend at length.
Nico argues back with equal commitment. Becca insists it tastes perfect, while Nico plays with fire criticizing his own mother’s cooking.
But neither backs down from their opposite sides of the table.
Becca catches my gaze when Nico looks away and she winks. That’s when I know for sure that she’s arguing just for the sake of getting Nico fired up.
Sophia watches them with her chin in her hand and a smile she’s trying to hide, and Carmela says something in Italian that makes Maggie laugh and Nico go silent.
I peek at Cal.
Cal looks at his plate.
Becca finds me in the family room later, when dinner is winding down.
Everyone is drifting between the kitchen and the living room, and Gio has finally, mercifully, accepted a plate of food from Carmela.
He refused to eat at the table and started walking back to sit in the car when Carmela yelled something in Italian and he immediately did an about-face to sit down at the table.
Becca sits on the enormous green sectional and doesn’t say anything for a moment.
“He’s it for you,” she tells me.
I don’t ask who she means.
“Yeah,” I offer back. “I think so, too.”
“No, I mean—” She looks at me carefully. “I’ve watched you fall in love before—from afar, but it counts—with Patrick, and it always looked like something you were managing. Like love was a project you were running, and trying to make work.” She pauses. “This doesn’t look like that.”
I know she’s right.
“This looks like—” she searches for the word. “Easy. Like breathing. Like you forgot to be anxious about it because you were too busy just being in love and happy.”
I think about the kitchen this morning, making his coffee.
I think about the café; the way he sits across from me and argues about cases he’s still working from afar and means every word he says.
The reading chair in the corner of his living room with the good lamp.
The pamphlets on my desk. So many years of a story I kept thinking was finished.
Becca leans her head on my shoulder.
We sit there for a minute in the quiet, Christmas lights twinkling around us.
“Also,” she lifts her head to continue, “your future brother-in-law is extremely attractive. And extremely annoying and I’m not entirely sure what to do with that information, but I think we might fu—”
“No,” I counter immediately. “You do nothing with that information.”
“Obviously,” she tosses back, standing up and smoothing her skirt. “Obviously I know that. I’m just—noting it. For the record, telling you what could happen if I didn’t know better.” She heads for the door. “But yeah, the mafia thing probably doesn’t translate well over a long distance.”
She flips her hair and squares her shoulders, probably preparing to go pick another fight with Nico as she leaves.
I sit for another moment alone in the room.
Then I go find Cal.
He’s in the hallway, leaning against the wall outside the kitchen with his hands in his pockets, watching the remains of his family through the doorway—Carmela and Sophia at the little table engrossed in playing cards, Maggie asleep in the big chair with a throw blanket over her, Nico at the window talking animatedly into his phone while he eyes Becca, who is making herself an espresso.
I stand next to him. He doesn’t look at me, but he moves slightly, making space, the way he always does, the way that says he knew I would be right next to him. I lean against the wall beside him and our shoulders touch.
“Good night?” he says.
“One of my favorites,” I admit.
And I mean it. Being around him and this family fills me with so much bright, beautiful happiness.
I’ve never been close with my family, parents split up. Dad passed away shortly after that and my mom was busy going from one guy to the next. So, I jumped between grandparents and aunts until I graduated and… well, and then Patrick became family. And we all know how that turned out.
Cal looks at me then. In the low light of the hallway, his eyes are the dark version of golden-green, the color they go when the light is warm.
His expression is the open one, the one underneath all the control, the one I spent countless hours with years ago, and the one I can’t wait to spend countless hours with tonight.
“Come on,” he replies, like he’s reading my mind. “Let’s go home.”
And I follow him.
And it is. It is home.
Becca tells us Gio can bring her home, because she is now engaged in an overly competitive game of chess with Nico.
I look around the penthouse when we get back, the reading chair Cal got me in the corner and the coffee station in the kitchen, and the low lights from the city glowing through the balcony doors.
And I realize something for sure; the same way I know other things I’ve stopped fighting—the way I know I’m going to finish law school, the way I know Bart has already decided Cal is his second person, the way I know that a blue and gold pen sitting on my nightstand has been pointing at this moment for seven years.
Yeah, I think, pulling the door closed behind me. This is home.