Epilogue
Seven Years Later
“This mothertrucker’s about to eat grass,” Annie mutters to me.
“Honey—” I attempt.
“Gonna take his truckin’ face and use it as an excavator,” she continues with a glance down at our three-year-old.
“Digger!” Stella vehemently agrees.
“Honeys—”
“Ref!” Annie finally bursts out, her hands flying into the air, identical to and in tandem with our five-year-old daughter currently on the soccer field.
The beleaguered grandpa currently volunteering as a coach sighs down at my tiny angel of wrath.
“Excuse me, sir,” Cleo seethes through the deep breathing exercises we’ve attempted to teach her.
Her little chest doubles then halves in size as the exercise mimics hyperventilation instead of cleansing calm.
“Lucas pushed me with two hands three times in a row,” she fumes, really trying to keep her shit together.
“Did you see? Are your eyes broke? That’s a red card! That’s three red cards!”
“Honey—” he begins.
“I’m not your honey,” she sneers.
“You tell ‘em, Cleo!” my wife shouts, aggressively rubbing circles on her swollen belly.
“Dig his face!” Stella yells, starting her march onto the field to defend her older sister to the death.
I grab her and plop her writhing body onto my shoulders, losing one of her sneakers in the process. “For truck’s sake—all three of you, stand down,” I roar.
“My shoe,” Stella wails with a point to the fallen soldier.
“Cleo,” the coach tries again. “This isn’t a real game. This is just practice—”
“Tell Lucas that,” Annie and Cleo yell simultaneously.
The coach scrubs his face. “Lucas,” he tells his grandson, “can you please apologize?”
Lucas shrugs. “Sorry,” he mutters, with little to no apology in his voice.
“Gotta try harder than that, kid,” I inform him, at the same time Stella screams, “Sorry for what?” while tearing at my hair in her agitation.
Lucas kicks at some grass before looking at Cleo. “Sorry for pushing you three times with two hands.”
“Apology accepted,” Cleo sniffs after a moment. She stares at him, and then her gorgeous eyes light up in a familiar way. “I’m bored. Wanna get some ice cream?”
Lucas grins. He looks at his grandpa, who blows out a breath and looks at his watch.
“We still have ten minutes left,” he says.
Annie cups her hands in front of her face. “Who wants ice cream? We’re buying!”
Fifteen miniscule bodies display an athleticism not previously demonstrated in their thirty minutes of practice as they sprint towards the Mister Softee truck parked at the corner of the park. Stella flies off my body, lands on the ground like Spiderman, and runs after them.
“Stell, your shoe—” I try, waving it in the air half-heartedly for half a second before tucking it into my pocket.
The coach joins Annie and me as we follow behind them. “Any chance you guys want to take over coaching for the rest of the season?” he asks us.
“No thanks,” I answer cheerfully. “We don’t know anything about sports. We’re just here for Cleo.”
“And we’re about to be really busy for a while,” Annie adds on, rubbing her stomach.
“You’re doing great, though,” I assure him.
We haven’t stopped being busy, truthfully. Our lives have been a series of chaotic, impulsive, beautiful decisions since leaving that bookstore.
Annie moved in with me mere months after our cookbook came out. Thank god she was paying month to month. I proposed to her in our kitchen a few months after that.
Well, I half-proposed. The second I got down on one knee, Annie tackled me to the kitchen floor, screamed, “Yes, Chef,” and I barely managed to slip the ring onto her finger before her tongue was in my mouth—effectively cutting off my grand speech.
It’s okay, though. She let me finish the speech later, in bed, while she sobbed over the new diamond resting over the diamond tattoo on her ring finger.
Our book went viral. Television networks and social media influencers had the two of us on their shows—I’d do the cooking and the science and Annie would provide the hilarious commentary. We had great chemistry, everyone had said.
I only made one more NakedReactions video.
Annie wasn’t involved. The end of NakedReactions was our only regrettable decision, but it was because we were sad about the additional income we’d be losing.
It didn’t last very long, though, ‘cause not long after that, I started my own food consulting business.
The two of us got to travel to restaurants all around the world—Tokyo, Paris, London, Bangkok, Mexico City, Singapore, Rome, Lima, Lyon, Marrakech—helping chefs improve their menus of kitchens big and small.
We danced in all those cities.
Annie wrote poetry. She’s still publishing, and she’s raking it the fuck in. Turns out her style of poetry has a solid market in millennial women who scream-cried My Chemical Romance into their iPod Shuffles.
We were married in a small ceremony overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by the people who love us.
Even her parents were there—Annie and May’s compromise of staying no-contact except for big events and holidays.
A boundary that protects their peace while still honoring the cultural respect that shaped them.
Cleo was born nine months after that.
Think of the children, I remind myself, before replaying the night Cleo was conceived. But hot damn.
We finally get to the overwhelmed ice cream man, where our youngest is leading a rhythmic “swirl with sprinkles” war chant.
Annie moves to her side and uses her charm to begin negotiations for a deal on twenty ice cream cones.
I step to her back and dig my thumbs into the base of her spine, right where I know she’s sore, and she melts in my arms.
In three months, our Fort Greene brownstone we bought a year ago will be filled with four girls. My girls. Four majestic, terrifying, wondrous angels of wrath.
Life is stretched-out hair elastics, floor bananas (entirely peeled with only one bite taken out), big feelings, and little to no sleep.
We’ve never been happier.
“Daddy,” Cleo asks me, as we step to the side. “How do they make ice cream in the truck? Is there a freezer in there?”
“Yep, there’s a freezer in there, but the real trick isn’t just keeping it cold—it’s how you freeze it.
” I bend to sneak a bite of her cone. “You gotta keep it movin’.
They mix cream, sugar, and flavors, then spin it while chilling it so that it freezes smooth instead of turning into one big ice cube.
That’s how you get soft, creamy ice cream instead of a block of frozen milk. ”
“It’s like we did at home, Cleo, remember?” Annie looks at me when she says this, though, eyes sparkling, licking her cone slowly, in a way that’s reminiscent of last night. In our bed, after the girls went down. While I straddled her face.
Think of the children, I mouth at her, pinching her ass.
“Oh yeah,” Stella chimes in, now somehow missing the other shoe. And sock. “Daddy shook the plastic bag when we made ice cream.”
“Our ice cream tasted better,” Cleo says.
“That’s ‘cause it was made with love,” I let her know immediately.
Three pairs of eyes roll in simultaneous choreography. Well, two pairs. Stella still hasn’t figured out how to do it, so she just looks up at the sky instead.
“Hey!” I feign offense, but really, this is a reaction I’m used to. “I just love you all so much. Food tastes better when we make it together.”
Annie, who has had my back for the last seven or eight years, depending on whether you count the Chef year or not, takes her place once more. “Daddy’s right,” she tells our daughters. “Think of the chicken parm we all made last night. It was the best chicken parm I ever had.”
I think of the disaster of flour and egg caked into the crevices of our kitchen drawers and all of our hair, our identical grins. “Mommy’s always right.”
“Neither mommy nor daddy is always right,” Annie reminds them. “But it’s okay to be wrong sometimes.”
Stella scrambles back up to my shoulders while holding her cone, soaking my shorts, shirt, and neck in chocolate-vanilla swirl. “Can we make more ice cream in bags when we get home?” she asks. “Mine is all gone.”
I wipe a glop of it off my arm. “Sure.”
There is suddenly a moment of buzzing silence, tense with energy.
Annie and Cleo look at one another, a shared understanding passing between them. I watch as their bodies start to fill with a familiar freneticism.
Oh, fuck.
Annie nods at our daughter with a grin, and I brace myself for— “After-party at our house,” she announces to the team. “We live just around the corner.”
“We’re makin’ the best ice cream of your truckin’ life,” shouts Cleo.
Now it’s Stella’s and my turn. We stare at one another, wide-eyed.
“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?” I ask her.
“Yep,” she replies with a frantic nod.
“Bags,” I start to fire off, counting off on my fingers, as Stella keeps nodding.
“Ice. We should stop at the bodega for ice. Heavy cream, sugar—although I think we have enough sugar. Paper towels for mess. Maybe some snacks, maybe get some juice. Cups. Do we have enough cups? We should get some more. Well, it’s almost noon.
We should just do a whole lunch, right? I’ll call Russo’s and see if they can whip up a bunch of heroes.
What else? What were you gonna say?” I look down at her.
“Oh,” she says. “I was gonna say I lost my shoe.”
“Shoes,” I confirm. “We need shoes.” I pick her up and plop her back on my shoulders. Wait, when’d she get back down to the ground? “I got you for now. We gotta go. Babe? Honey?” I call backwards as I walk towards the other end of the park. “We’re gonna run ahead. Meet you back at the house.”
“Yes, chef!” Annie has to yell back, because she’s currently swarmed by fifteen cheering five-year-olds and their hungover parents (Sunday morning practice can be a struggle). “I got you. Thanks, honeys. Love you.”
“Can you find my shoes?” Stella wails.
“Already have them,” Annie shouts back.
“I have your sock, Stell!” Cleo adds.
As I leave the park, Stella entirely barefoot and scream-singing a song about excavators on my shoulders, some adjectives pop unbidden into my head.
Pleased Nico Giannuzzi. Content, satisfied Nico Giannuzzi. So, so fucking happy. Loved.