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He was just a nice guy who felt guilty about me getting shot.
“Good morning, my sweet angel child,” she said, making me let out a little snort as I sat down in the chair beside her, taking a greedy sip of my coffee.
I know I’d promised Nino I would rest. And while I had kept my butt in bed, I hadn’t exactly been sleeping. I’d busied myself with my little projects and some light reading to try to quiet my mind. But when I kept screwing up my stitches and sketches and having to re-read the same page fifteen times, and still not absorbing any of it, I gave up, slid down in the bed, and tried to sleep.
I failed miserably at that, too consumed with thoughts of a man who didn’t seem to want anything serious with me, until eventually, my pain medicine kicked in, and I passed out.
“You really shouldn’t have weeded. This is too much. You’re going to burn out,” I insisted.
“Oh, I didn’t do all of it,” she said. “Nino did the front bed,” she added. Light. Breezy. Like she hadn’t just dropped that little bomb.
“Wait… what? Nino?”
“Yes, darling. When I got here this morning, he had already finished the front bed. He did a good job too. I don’t think he accidentally pulled a single flower of yours.”
“His mom used to make him weed her garden,” I told her.
“So, you’ve talked about his mother, have you?” she asked, and I didn’t quite understand the tone she was using. That was weird, since I’d lived and worked with her my entire life. I thought I knew all of her tones.
“Yeah. He talks about his family a lot. They’re all very close.”
“That’s nice,” she said in that same odd tone. A little tight, tense around the edges. And my mother was never tense.
Maybe it was all the work starting to get to her.
She was doing too much.
I needed to find a way to do a little more without hurting myself any further.
“Have you met his mother yet?” she asked.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“She must be the only one in his family not to have visited the restaurant then,” she said, rocking away again.
“Wait. You think she’s been in?”
“I’m almost sure of it,” she said. “If someone had saved you from bullets, darling, I would absolutely go and see them.”
“But… but why wouldn’t she say something if she had?”
“I’m assuming perhaps Nino didn’t want his family to be strange about things, to make you feel uncomfortable. Did you see the meal they must have left for you?” she asked.
My mind flashed back to Nino stooping down to grab the tin off the step as we made our way inside, but I’d practically forgotten all about it until then. Which made guilt promptly spread through my body. They were using money and taking time out of their days to cook for me. The least I could do was see what it was.
“They’ve done it every day since I got home,” I reminded her. Since I’d been bringing them into work for us to eat for lunch. Though I already had a freezer full of leftovers. His family, when they cooked, they went big about it. At this rate, I was going to have an entire year’s worth of food stocked away.
“They seem like nice people,” she said. “They bring you food. They come to the restaurant to show us support.”
“Yeah. The whole family sounds amazing,” I agreed.
“And I have never met a man who comes over in the middle of the night to weed a woman’s garden,” she added.
“Mom, don’t.” I meant for it to come out demanding, so she would let it drop. There was no mistaking the desperate edge to my tone as I spoke, though.
“Stop what? Gently prodding my very stubborn daughter into following her heart?” she asked, sounding innocent, but that was a mischievous glint in her eye.
“I’m not in love with him,” I insisted.
