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“Hey, Carm. What can I get you?”
“Ah.” He looks at the menu and ponders for a minute as if we’re not here every week. Even Kate, who I think might have a thing for him, looks as if she wants to scream. Carm can be blind to the obvious sometimes, so he probably doesn’t even notice the lunch rush. “Salad. Chef. Just balsamic.”
“Got it.” She lightly touches his shoulder, moving on to the next table.
“It took you five minutes to order the same thing you do every week?” I grab my water.
He flashes me his toothy smile. “I almost changed it up. The mac and cheese looks awesome, given the shit day I’m having.”
“What’s going on?” I take a sip of my water and set it back on the table.
“That stupid chick who keeps advertising how to sell your house yourself rather than use a realtor? She’s won some big clients lately and it’s pissing me off.”
“Oh.” Dom points with his fork. “She’s hot as hell. I saw her billboard the other day.”
“If you can see past her evil self.” Carm rolls his eyes.
Dom pushes away his bowl and sets down his cutlery. “So Enzo fucked up the Blanca thing.”
“What?” Carm’s head swivels in my direction.
“She’s not buying it.” Dom leans back in his chair and crosses his arms.
“Did you honestly think she would?” Sometimes I think I’m the only Mancini brother with a functioning brain.
“I have a new idea anyway. I went over to our parents’ last night because I had to grab something from the basement.”
“What?” Carm asks.
Dom’s forehead creases. “What?”
“What did you need?”
Dom shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I know, but I wanna know.” Carm’s like a dog with a tug toy.
“Anyway”—Dom ignores Carm’s questions—“I overhead Ma talking to Dad. She kept saying she didn’t raise us properly. Going on and on about how she’ll never see grandkids. You know how she can get carried away.”
Carm and I nod. Whether it’s good or bad, Mama takes everything to the extreme.
“You’d think we were fifty or something,” Carm says.
“In Italian terms, we kind of are. And I think we’re all in agreement none of us are ready to settle down any time soon?” Dom looks around the table, making eye contact with each of us.
We nod like good younger brothers.
Dom claps his hands together and rubs his palms. “Lucky for us, Ma and Pa had the oops baby, Blanca.”
“Was she an oops?” Carm asks.
Dom shoots him a look that says shut the fuck up and listen. “We just need to find her a guy she can be serious with.”
“This sounds like a bad plan. Like something from a movie,” I say. Blanca is way smarter than he’s giving her credit for.
“It’s brilliant. If there’s not a movie, someone should make it into one. Blanca’s always watching all that romance shit. I mean, how many renditions of Romeo and Juliet have we seen because of her? Hell, she convinced Ma that we should go to the play as a family.”
“Technically, I’m not sure Romeo and Juliet is a romance,” Carm chimes in, and we both stare at him as if he’s sprouted another head. “What? It’s true. I think romance has to have a happy ending. Name another movie where a main character dies?”
