I lowered my cup before taking a drink. More surprises from Nick. “I’m impressed. I lived with my Uncle Michael in Milan, Italy for a few years when I was a kid. He and my dad were working on something, and we stayed with his family.”
“That’s really cool.” Nick smiled. “Now I get the Maserati.”
How had he figured out I got the car to impress him? “What do you mean?”
“It’s not a common choice. Most people who spend big money buy a Mercedes or a BMW. You don’t see a lot of Maserati’s on the road.”
I needed to work on my guilty conscience. Leaning back, I smiled. “You certainly know your luxury cars.”
Nick couldn’t have reacted worse if I’d come out and called him poor. “I grew up on Long Island, in Smithtown. There’s a lot of money on the North Shore, just not in our part of town. We never had anything other than beaters, but I could dream. I’d see these nice cars, and I’d draw them all the time. Then I’d go look them up and pull all the details; engine size, top speed, zero to sixty, that kind of stuff.”
I needed to tread carefully. This was a passion and a sore spot for him. “How did you get into collecting die-cast cars?”
Nick raised an eyebrow and smiled. “You remember that?”
How shitty had Uriel made Nick’s life that such a little thing thrilled him. “I mean, you told me yesterday. Did you think I’d forget that soon?”
“Well, not everyone listens to me when I prattle on about nerd stuff. My Grandpa’s friend Alex gave me my first car for my fifth birthday. Believe it or not it was a 1965 Maserati Quattroporte Series 1.”
Maybe my conscience was right to be guilty. “How many cars do you have?”
“Had. My brother destroyed them for shits and giggles when I was fourteen.”
I alternated between wanting to wrap my arms around him and finding his family and exterminating them. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”
“You didn’t. In fact, you get major points for listening and remembering.”
Nick’s smile was forced, and I could feel him willing the negative away. How much negativity did he carry around that even his passion for cars came with shitty memories. “Living in Milan is part of the reason I bought the car. My family was an early investor in Maserati. My uncle’s home is only about a hundred and eighty kilometers from the Maserati factory. He has a collection of old Maseratis going back almost a hundred years.”
“Holy shit. That sounds amazing.”
The excitement in Nick’s voice erased the memory of his destroyed cars. It also rekindled my self-loathing. My plan worked, because it got me an in with Nick, but now I felt dirty. “Maybe someday I can show them to you.”
“I don’t travel much, so I doubt that’ll happen.”
Our impromptu coffee date wasn’t imploding before my eyes because technically, this was still work. Only one of us was trying to get to know someone they’d just met. I was pretending I hadn’t spent hours planning how to get in with Nick. Despite my work, I only knew superficial details. Every time I dug deeper, I dredged up shitty memories. I’d need to spend more time with my ‘cousin’ to go beneath the surface. “You and Trevor have been friends since college?”
“Yeah. We met at Fordham our freshmen year. Where’d you go to school?”
At least the information about Nick and Grant had been accurate. “University of Pennsylvania. Did you like Fordham?”
“Mostly.” Looking up, Nick shrugged “A catholic college isn’t exactly the best place to be gay, but I met Trev. So, overall, I have good memories.”
The information Grant put in his reports said Nick’s family found out his senior year and they didn’t take it well. I knew not to get on that topic. “You’re probably closer to Trevor than I am, but he’s a good friend to have.”
“The best.” Nick smiled fondly. “When my shitshow of a family didn’t scare him away, I knew he was a keeper.”
I took a drink to buy a few seconds. Things didn’t add up. Once Uriel realized Nick was an angel, why didn’t he bring him into the fold? Clearly he and Grant were close. One word from the archangel Uriel and the Grant family would’ve adopted Nick into their family.
A hand covered mine and I noticed Nick staring at me. “Sorry, I….”
“I get it,” Nick said. “You’re searching for a safe topic.”
Nick’s eyes carried the weariness of loss. He might not like his family, but it hurt they’d rejected him. “I feel like I keep asking all the wrong questions.”
“No, you’re not.” He squeezed my hand, but didn’t move his. “Best to get this out of the way now, so you won’t tiptoe around me every time we talk.”
The resignation in his voice suggested he’d done this before and it didn’t go well. What he didn’t know is all those relationships never got off the ground because Uncle Uriel made sure to scare his suitors away. “We don’t need to talk about this.”
