Page 63 of Worth of Waste

He could easily say he had been there the day before, and wouldn’t be bothered further on it.

The busyness of the season, and the very fact he had been trying to play catch up every single day since his release with business and his responsibilities as a Capo to the Outfit, meant he hadn’t gotten very much free time to shop as he had wanted to for presents for his son.

He took a couple of extra hours he had on Christmas Eve to join the last minute shoppers in the mall and small boutiques, and found it wasn’t a fun place to be. Claustrophobic and suffocating, yes, but certainly not fun.

But with the presents safely stored in the backseat of his car, and wrapped up beautifully, thanks to the gift-wrapping centers in the store, Dino was satisfied he had done his job.

So when Christmas morning rolled around, the anxiety he had been feeling leading up to the day seemed to drift away. He got up earlier than he normally would; he wanted to be at Karen’s place before Junior woke up, and sometimes the kid cracked his eyes open at the first sight of the sun rising in his bedroom windows.

The sky was still dark when Dino pulled into Karen’s place. He parked in a lot directly across from her building, one that was meant for another apartment complex, and gathered up the presents in a large sack he had brought along, and entered through the back of the building.

Even though the officials had yet to approach him, Dino couldn’t be too careful.

He didn’t want Karen to be connected to him on a personal level. The professional connection was more than enough to get her in trouble if the wrong thing was found, or if someone happened to say the wrong thing.

Yeah, careful.

Thankfully, the apartment was still dark and quiet when Dino let himself in. Karen had decorated the place with all the trimmings of Christmas, and the sight made him smile. He’d seen it before now, but with the rooms dark except for the brightly twinkling Christmas lights and the sparkling ornaments, he saw it with new eyes.

It was such a stark contrast to his own house.

One he hadn’t bothered to decorate. A place he had only started to fill the rooms with furniture because his uncle felt the need to point out how empty it was and how uninviting it seemed to be.

Dino lived there, sure.

But he didn’t want to be there.

And therein was the difference.

He didn’t even have a Christmas tree at his own house, not wanting to be bothered with the time he would need to take to get one, set it up, buy decorations, and then trim the tree.

It all seemed like a waste, really.

He didn’t have anyone to bring over to share it with.

Someday, he wanted to fill that big house with the sounds of little feet. He wanted handprints on the windows, and to stuff the halls with all sorts of decorations during the holidays. He wanted shouts to echo, for toys to be strewn, and for a warmth to spread throughout the rooms that couldn’t quite be duplicated with manmade heat.

It didn’t seem to matter how high he turned the heat on.

The place the always fucking cold.

Dino knew a lot of that was a figment of his own unhappiness when he was there. His loneliness manifested itself in the strangest of ways, making him feel even more swallowed by the white walls and wood floors of the large house.

That, in a nutshell, was the problem.

The house was just a house.

He had yet to make it a home.

Someday, he told himself, soon.

Dino quickly dropped the sack of presents in front of the Christmas tree, making sure to carefully set all the gifts in with the ones Karen had already wrapped. He thought he heard the creak of a floorboard coming from the back bedrooms, but he continued his work, adding a few chocolates to J’s Christmas sock hanging from the windowsill.

It was only after he had finished, and when he went toward the kitchen to make a coffee, did he hear the shower turn on down the hall. Apparently, he hadn’t been imagining things.

Karen had woken up, she just hadn’t heard him.

Dino filled up the electric kettle, turned it on, and then went in search of his lover. She had left the bathroom door cracked open a couple of inches—she liked to be able to hear Junior if he woke up before she had finished with her morning routine.