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15
Valentina
Iwalk into my parents’ store still in my heels and pantsuit, and I blink to make sure I’m seeing things correctly.
“Valentina!” Ma coos, rushing toward me with a huge smile.
My dad is refilling the shelves, and my eyes catch on Dom in the corner of the store, his dress shirt rolled up to his forearms and his tie gone. His hair isn’t gelled back like it usually is, but instead, it’s messy like after we’ve had sex all day. He glances at me then back at the man he’s speaking with.
“It looks good,” I say, watching a man on a ladder mudding and taping the new ceiling.
“Dominic, he took charge.”
“I thought it wasn’t anything big?” I don’t look at Ma because I’m too busy scouring what has happened in such a short amount of time. My meeting went well and since I was last up, I accepted when they asked me to lunch because I thought Dom would be long gone and everything would already be resolved.
“I told you. The whole ceiling fell through.” She gestures to the man on the ladder as if that explains everything.
“But Dom said it would only be…” I huff, a smile pulling at my lips.
Who would’ve guessed? Dominic Mancini lied to me for my own gain.
“That’s the insurance guy,” she says. “Dominic’s negotiating what we’re going to get because he paid out of his pocket to get this all fixed, so we didn’t have to wait.”
A customer comes in and ma rushes to them to see if they need help, then she rounds the counter to check them out. I walk around the aisles toward the refrigerator cases. I see a garbage can full of dented cans with ripped and drenched labels at the end of the aisle. There are a few more bins of ruined food by the back door of the storage room.
“You married a good one,” my dad says when I approach. The shelves he’s stocking aren’t chipped or aged like the ones that have been present since I was a child. They’re brand new.
“It was bad, huh?”
My dad stands up, holding his back, which tells me he’s been working hard all day. “They say it was a plumbing issue from upstairs, but Dom’s guy said we’re good now. He replaced some of the plumbing and said it won’t happen again.” My dad swings an arm around my shoulder. “Dominic took care of everything. The clean-up crew, the plumber, the construction crew. He bought new shelves and helped us get new food in. We have no choice but to wait on some items but…”
As my dad brags on about all Dominic has done in such a short amount of time, my vision veers to him. He’s pointing at a contract and handing receipts to the insurance representative. They’re disagreeing about something and Dom doesn’t look like he’s about to back down.
But why would Dom do this? A man who can’t leave work early for dinner took an entire day off to help my parents?
I desperately want to believe he did it because he’s lying to himself and his feelings for me haven’t diminished but are alive and kicking under his hard exterior. But it could all be because we’re acting like we’re married, and in any Italian family, the son-in-law would help his wife’s parents no matter the cost. Or maybe it’s just because in our culture, you help someone when they’re in need.
I chew on my cheek, and he glances up as though he can sense my gaze on him. A small grin pulls on his lips and ignites that fluttery feeling in my stomach.
Bending, I help my dad stock the rest of the shelf, wishing Dom didn’t do nice things like this. It makes me believe I might be enough to change him. That one day he’d pick me over his work. But I have to remember that times like this are the exception, not the rule.
* * *
Days later,right after I get home—or not home, but Dom’s—there’s a knock on the door.
I head over to the door, nervous about who it could be. I still fear that one day, I’ll open the door to Nell wearing a trench coat and nothing else, asking for Dom. Rising on my tiptoes, I look out the peephole and fall back down to my heels before opening the door.
“Ma?”
She walks in, her arms filled with bags of food.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
I move to shut the door, but Anna Mancini comes in right after. Which explains how they got past the doorman.
“We’re going to teach you how to cook Dom’s favorite meal.” Ma unpacks her groceries on the large island.
Anna drops her own bags before hugging me. “He loves my gnocchi. He tries to act like a meat-and-potatoes guy, but he loves the pasta.” She beams at me and helps Ma locate all the cookware they’ll need.
