She crosses her arms over her chest. “I don’t like sending bad juju out into the world, okay? I treat people how I want to be treated. I know that might be a foreign concept to you.”
“Ouch.”
A beat passes. “Sorry, that was rude.”
“I’m seriously regretting driving you.”
“I can get out at the next light.” She reaches for her seat belt, like she’s really going to do it.
“Relax, I was kidding. It would take a lot more than that to make me regret bringing a woman home.”
She clicks her tongue. “Do you have to say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re— Ugh, forget it.”
I laugh. “Get your head out of the gutter, Sunshine.”
Her fists clench in her lap. “Don’t call me that.”
I ignore her protest because the nickname is growing on me, and she’d better just get used to it.
“Okay, so the ex cheated on you, you don’t want the other waitress gone, and you’re still there because of the same lack of job prospects?”
She blows out an irritated breath. “I thought you said you didn’t care about other people’s lives?”
I shrug. “I don’t. But we’ve got a long drive ahead of us, so we might as well pass the time. This is more melodramatic than those telenovelas my nonna loved to watch.”
“Nonna? Is that Italian?”
“Born and raised in Sicily.”
“I never had a grandma,” she muses. “What was she like?”
“Strict. She swore a lot. And she made the best fucking chicken cacciatore you can imagine.”
“Oh yeah?”
A grin pulls on my lips at the memory. “When I was a kid, about nine or ten, she’d have me, my mom, and my stepdad over for dinner every Saturday. There were usually just four of us, but she’d make enough food to feed an army. There was nothing that woman was more afraid of than running out of food for her guests.”
The memory is bittersweet because they’re all gone now. Nonna died in her sleep ten years ago at the ripe old age of eighty-five, and my mom and stepdad went the way most do in my old world.
A territory war. Drive-by shooting. They were having lunch at their favorite restaurant in Jersey.
“So it’s just you?” Blake asks as we get on a ramp to the highway. “No siblings?”
“I’m an only child.”
“I could have guessed. You have that kind of energy.”
“I’m going to pretend that’s a compliment. What about you?”
“I’ve got a brother. He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“Where did he go?”
“California. LA. He’s a chef at some fancy restaurant. I haven’t seen him since he left home at eighteen.”
