Chapter Twenty-Six #3
Like we were every single evening before dinner every day since Christmas.
It was my favorite time of day.
Well, maybe it was tied with bedtime when Venezio would slide an arm under me and curl me into him. Every night. Even when he caught the flu and was miserable.
I joked that I was like his security blanket.
His response to that?
“Something like that.”
The man would never be a poet. But, by God, did he make it clear how much he loved me at every opportunity. I would take his nonverbal affirmations and genuine devotion over any of the love words never followed up by actions I’d known in my past.
“The Bow, really?” I asked a few minutes later, getting sweaty slowly but surely. I endured summer. I thrived in the winter. Give me thick layers and fluffy socks over boob sweat and frizzy hair any day of the week.
“Noel needs the exercise,” he said.
Our dog looked up at me and I swear there was a ‘You hearing this?’ look on her face.
I figured maybe he was using Noel as an excuse because he needed the exercise to be able to think through whatever conflicting feelings he had about becoming a Made member of the Costa Family.
Something he had been working toward for years.
Something I believed he deserved more than most of the other guys in the Family.
I mean, I’d come to know and love the Costas.
But I doubted their wives and girlfriends were awakened by their men leaving their beds as often as I was.
Venezio had been an ‘earner’ for a long time.
He deserved a break.
We were in the middle of the Bow Bridge when Venezio suddenly turned toward me, face tight, jaw ticking.
My stomach tightened, worried he was about to give me some sort of bad news.
Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a jewelry box, and flipped it open.
Inside sat the most gorgeous ring I’d ever seen, with red, white, and green gemstones cut in such a way to make it look like a poinsettia.
“What—” I started, not letting myself believe what my heart was hoping.
This was a man who took six months to say he loved me when I’d been saying it for three already.
I mean, I’d known he loved me all along. So there were no hurt feelings on my side. But that was how long it took him to get comfortable with the words.
But, I guess, these weren’t words.
This was another of his perfect actions.
“Don’t got the words for you,” he said, making my lips curve up even as tears flooded my eyes. “But I’ve got the love. Kind of hoping that’d be enough.”
“It’s not enough,” I said, sniffling. “It’s everything.”
I barely got the ring on my finger and a kiss on my lips before Andy, Sammy, Meatball, and Potroast were running across the bridge to celebrate.
“We got all the pictures,” Andy assured Venezio. And, again, I was charmed by his close relationship with my best friends. He was constantly conspiring with them behind my back to make surprise plans for me. It was amazing.
I wasn’t sure Venezio really knew just how alone (and lonely) he’d been in the past. Not because he didn’t have people who wanted to be in his life, but because he didn’t know how to let them in.
I liked to think that through me, and my friends, he’d slowly but surely learned to accept everyone else’s love.
I was a little horrified to learn at our first meal at his boss’s house that he’d never been at anyone’s table before, despite being invited many times.
“Isn’t the ring amazing?” Andy gushed, grabbing my hand to look at it. “He drafted it all up himself. And he apparently knows a jewelry-maker, if you can believe that. She did a phenomenal job.”
“She really did,” I agreed. “I couldn’t have come up with anything so perfect.”
But Venezio did.
Because he not only loved me, but he saw me, he knew me. That was just the most precious gift I’d ever been given.
Now, I got to have that forever.
Venezio - 2 Years
“You’re not freaking out?” Zeno asked, straightening his tie for the fiftieth time. The computer hacker was more accustomed to wearing weird shit like swim shorts and a winter hoodie than he was formalwear.
“Freaking out?” I asked, running a hand down my suit.
“Yeah. About the vows and the contractualness of it all.”
“Nah, man.”
“When it’s right, it’s right,” Miko said, shrugging. “Until it’s right, it won’t make any sense.”
Yeah.
That about covered it.
I’d never understood the whole romance and love and forever-after shit.
Then there was Stephanie.
With her huge heart (and copious amount of holiday garland).
And it all just… clicked.
I guess some part of me had worried that a relationship would be the hardest work of my life. But it was the opposite. Everything with Steph was easy.
I mean, that’s not to say that life didn’t have its ups and downs. That said, though, there’d never been a moment when I didn’t want to go through the hard times with than Stephanie.
“What’s that look for?” Gavin, Zeno’s brother, asked.
“What look?” Zeno asked, feigning ignorance. Poorly.
“You look like a man contemplating forever,” Miko piled on.
“Me? No.”
“Him?” Gavin asked at the same time. “He’d have to look up from his computer for long enough to notice a woman for that to be the case.”
“The only way you’d even see a woman at this point is if she broke into your sad-ass apartment,” Zeno shot back.
“We really arguing on someone else’s wedding day?” Cesare, one of their older brothers, asked as he came into the room.
“How’s it looking out there?” I asked.
“Like Christmas,” he said, giving me a knowing smile.
“Good.”
“I was told by a redhead holding a French Bulldog in a suit that you need to get your ass out there.”
It was time.
To sign up for a lifetime of Christmases. And Central Park walks. And late-night pizza. And, fuck, everything else life had to offer us.
We’d ended up renting out the same ballroom where we’d attended the lawyer holiday party two years back.
Hell, we even rented the same band.
Though we went ahead and chose a different caterer. No fancy-ass, too-small portions of weird, barely edible foods for us.
We’d opted to go full Italian for our reception.
It just seemed fitting.
Cesare hadn’t been kidding.
If possible, the ballroom looked even more Christmasy than it had the last time we’d been here.
The walls were lined in Christmas trees.
The tables were draped in red and gold.
Everything had twinkle lights.
It looked warm and bright and so much like Steph, my damn heart hurt.
The whole event was unconventional. With flower girls walking with Noel between them and ring bearers taking Meatball and Potroast down the aisle.
Then there was Stephanie.
In a dress that shimmered like snow.
Walking toward me to give me her forever.
We’d just sealed the whole thing with a kiss when she leaned into my ear to whisper. “Meet me in the bathroom.”
I guess it made perfect sense to consummate our marriage in the same place we’d first gotten together.
Luckily this time, no one chased us through the city afterward.
Though we both became pretty sure in the weeks that followed that it was there that we’d expanded our little family.
Stephanie - 4 Years
“Listen, little man, we gotta let Mom get some sleep, you know? She’s tired as fuck.”
I winced at that.
We were steadily passing the point of ‘he’s too little for it to matter’ and approaching ‘he’s going to repeat that eventually’ territory.
“I get it. You don’t like sleeping. But Mom? Mom does. So you gotta stop screaming your head off at three in the morning, or she’s gonna wake up and come running.”
We hadn’t been as lucky as some of our friends and family in getting a baby who slept through the night after the first three months.
Our son was restless.
And to be fair, those first few months, as tired as I was at times, I soaked up all those late nights with our little baby in my arms, touching his tiny fingers, stroking his chubby cheek, listening to his coos, seeing so much of his father in him already.
But, yeah, at some point, the lack of solid sleep had started to weigh on me.
That said, I always woke up in a panic if it was in the middle of the night and our baby hadn’t woken me up.
There was no reason to worry, though.
He was always with his father.
Did Venezio have a habit of speaking to his baby like an adult? Sure. But, God, he was a great father.
The same care that he’d always shown to me, he offered the baby.
I knew he’d been worried that because he had such a bad upbringing, because his own father hadn’t had a paternal bone in his body, he would fail at the task.
I’d never had a moment of doubt that he would be the best father possible.
Every day just proved me more and more right.
I made my way over to the couch, sliding in at his other side.
“Kinda defeats the purpose of taking care of him so you can sleep if you get up too.”
“I just want to sit and watch the lights twinkle with my boys,” I said, stroking my son’s cheek as I rested my face on Venezio’s chest and stared at the tree.
“He’s too young to really care,” I said, “but I’m so excited for his first Christmas.”
“Gonna be fun to play Santa,” Venezio agreed.
More traditions to create.
I couldn’t wait.
Venezio - 16 Years
“Go ahead. Ask your father,” Steph invited as soon as I walked through the door.
Uh oh.
What was I being roped into now?
“Ask me what?” I asked, glancing around the apartment.
Over the years, Christmas had only spread across our home. More stockings. Years’ worth of new decor.
Except now, we lived in a duplex with Andy, Sammy, and their family on the other side instead of that same small apartment.
“Mom still says that Santa is real,” our youngest, and our only girl, said. “I know he’s not. But she won’t say it.”
I glanced over at our sons, all of whom looked like fucking carbon copies of me, same smirks and all.
“What?” I asked, screwing up my face. “What do you mean Santa isn’t real?”
Admittedly, she was officially too old for Santa.
But that didn’t matter.
In our house, we never admitted Santa wasn’t real.
Steph still asked our boys, who were in their teens, what they wanted Santa to bring them for Christmas. She’d probably still be doing it when they were full-grown adults.
“You better not let him hear you say that or you’re gonna get coal in your stocking.”
She shook her head at that, but sighed, accepting her fate. She lived in a Christmas house. There was no use fighting it.
“What kind are you making?” I asked Steph, walking up behind her to wrap my arms around her waist as she mixed dough in a bowl.
“Oatmeal. But the chocolate chip is almost gone.”
“Almost gone?” I asked. “There were three full plastic bags of them.”
“Talk to your sons and those hollow legs they apparently need to keep filling up. They actually helped make more, though, so I can’t be too mad. That’s all already in the freezer. How did it go?” she asked.
I’d worried a lot when I first got Made that I wouldn’t know what to do with myself with too much free time.
When the kids were small, it was easy to fill my time with them.
As they started getting older, though, and wanted to be with their friends more than us, the days started to stretch long.
Until Stephanie approached me with an idea.
Start my own charity.
Not for Christmas presents for kids in shelters. That was still, and would always be, Steph’s thing.
But to help kids like the ones I used to be. To go back to my old neighborhood and set up some resources for at-risk kids and teens.
Eventually, that idea became a youth center. A place for kids to hang out for free to get away from their shitty households that didn’t involve being on the streets where they would be prey for all the local crews.
They could just chill, decompress, watch TV, play video games, listen to music. But they could also get some food, wash clothes, work with tutors, pick up hobbies, or learn skills that they could eventually use to get into trades or even college.
It was a place to break cycles.
It was somewhere I really could have used at that age.
Even if my life did turn out pretty fucking great, I was able to see—looking back—how easily it could have gone badly, how close I’d been too many times to dying young.
The chances of any of these other kids catching the eye of organizations that would love and support them were slim. They were much more likely to end up in prison or in a coffin.
But maybe not, if the youth center gave them the support they so desperately needed.
And if nothing else, even if they were still headed down that road, at least they would have clean clothes and full bellies—some dignity—along the way.
“Place was packed today,” I told her.
It had been slow the first few weeks. Neighborhood kids didn’t want to be seen going into a youth center.
“Free pizza and homemade cookies will do that,” Steph agreed.
“Heard some of them saying they were excited to decorate ornaments and put ‘em on the tree.”
“Love that. You’re doing such great things there.”
“All thanks to you,” I said, turning her around and kissing her long and hard.
“Gross,” our second son grumbled as he went to the fridge to grab a drink.
“Someday, you’ll get it,” I assured him.
“When you know, you know,” our eldest agreed.
Easy for him to say.
He’d been in love with Andy and Sammy’s adopted daughter since they first met when he was a year old.
It must have been interesting to know your future was with someone who also shared your entire past.
“Are we going for a walk?” our daughter asked as Steph wrapped the dough in aluminum foil and stuck it in the freezer with a dozen other batches.
“Yep,” Steph agreed, pulling off her apron and going to grab her coat, hat, scarf, gloves, and boots.
We still walked Central Park every afternoon or evening before sunset.
Only now, we were a whole group.
Just one of our many traditions I’d grown to love so much.
We’d just stepped into the park when the fat, lazy snowflakes started to drift down around us.
Steph beamed up at the sky.
“Do you think we will get a white Christmas this year?”
“Think if anyone can will it into existence, it’s you.”
She leaned into me, offering her lips for a kiss.
“Look at that,” she said, nodding over toward where the kids were all looking up at the snow as it danced around a streetlight. “We did that.”
“Yeah, we did.”
“I guess it’s a good thing you didn’t let me freeze to death in this park all those years ago.”
“I have my moments,” I agreed.
“And I’m really, really glad I get to have all of them for the rest of our lives.”
We were just about to kiss again when the kids broke out into a truly horrendous rendition of a classic Christmas carol.
“They all kind of look like you,” Steph said. “But that… that is all me.”
Yeah, it was.
And I loved the fuck out of that.
And them.
And her.
And, of course, Christmas.
XX