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There’s another crash, and I listen as my brother sweeps up his baby girl and starts whispering sweet nothings in her ear. I have to give it to him; I would be a wreck if I had to comfort a screaming infant, and my brother was on the other end of the line giving me shit. “I told you I have covered,” he says after a few silent moments. “Every now and then, just tell her you’re meeting up with someone. I’ll send my guy by her place or make sure he sees her at the grocery store. I can probably have him drop an anonymous note in her grocery cart or something.” He noodles the idea like he was just hit with inspiration.
“No,” I hiss into the speaker. “She’s fucking terrified, Mat. She cried for, like, fifteen minutes today. You can’t keep harassing her.”
Mateo snorts into the other end of the phone. “Yeah, okay,” he says in disbelief. “Because I’m going to letyoutell me what to do with my life.”
Frustration balloons in my chest and makes me want to reach across the phone and pop Mateo in the mouth. “It’s Kessa’s life and mine. You aren’t just pulling a joke on her; you’re terrorizing her.”
There’s more noise on his end of the phone, and I hear him string together a swear of curse words before passing Marceila off. Bambi makes a few cooing noises, and I hear Mateo kiss her cheek. “Sorry,” he whispers to his wife, “let me handle this real quick.”
Mateo and Bambi remind me of Kessa and me. If we ever have children, I hope that we’re as put together as the two of them.
“Alright, listen here, fucker.” A door shuts behind Mateo as he locks himself in a room away from his wife and child. “It wasn’tmewho had Francesca’s husband poisoned; it was you. It wasn’tmewho chased off an interested coworker; again, that was you. It wasn’tmewho threatened men in alleyways that if they didn’t break up with Francesca, you would break their leg into a dozen pieces. No, see, I would have just broken the fucking leg.Yousaid that if they didn’t learn from their mistakes, you’d cut off their fingers and make a scavenger hunt out of finding them. Because you’re a fucked up guy, Cesare. If you thinkI’mterrorizing Francesca, you better look in the God damn mirror.”
Mateo hasn’t sugar-coated a thing in his entire life, and he doesn’t start now. My fingers ache from gripping the phone in anger. My stomach twists in disgust with myself as I realize that my brother, the guy who’s known me since I was a baby, is right. It always hurts more when your family realizes that you’re an ass.
I haven’t always agreed with Mateo’s choices. When Bambi sent him to prison, I thought—like all the Valenti men—that he needed to give up on her and start over. But he wanted until he got out of prison and gave her time to get comfortable with his presence before he won her back. Mateo didn’t care that he was facing the inevitable; he worked his ass off to win his girl back.
The difference is that I’m not working to get Kessa back. We’ve been best friends for almost two decades. I know her inside and out. I know her fears and her aspirations. I know that she wants to work her way up to Superintendent one day because she wants to make actual change. I know she’s afraid of never finding love again now that Peter has passed. I know she likes her schedule and her rules. I know if you mess with her, you’ll face the wrath of that redheaded firecracker I met at fourteen.
I have spent all my adult life trying to date Francesca again to prove that what happened in high school was a fluke. Or at least that’s what I convinced myself. The only thing I never tried was telling her how I felt.
“You’re a good guy, Mat. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.” I hang up the phone as I hear him start to ask what I mean by that. I don’t have time to explain.
It’s been a journey to get to this moment. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I hired men to shoot up a grocery store so that the two of us would wind up together, and all I got for my troubles was a nicked nerve in my arm and a roommate. Maybe it’s time I did the thing that I’ve been scared to do since we were kids.
I convinced myself a decade ago that I could never ask Kessa out again; I needed to wait for her to come to me. But I’ve been scared of her rejecting me, and I’m terrified of losing the love of my life.
“Kes,” I call her name as I walk down the stairs. My feet pick up speed without waiting for me to tell them to, and before I know it, I’m standing in the kitchen watching the most beautiful girl in the world cook dinner. She sings along to Brad Paisley, music from the early 2000s blaring from her phone. She wears the apron that my mom made me when I turned eighteen that saysKiss me; I’m Italian!Her red locks bounce with every step she takes. And when she needs to reach for something off the top shelf of my cabinets, she pulls out the step stool and stretches as high as she can on the tips of her toes until her fingers brush against the bag of flour.
“Kessa, we should—” My sudden appearance startles her. I never finish my sentence before she twists on the step stool in fear and drops the flour. Like a bomb going off, the dry ingredient explodes when it hits the ground and sends shrapnel everywhere.
Francesca grabs onto the counter, but it isn’t enough. She still goes crashing down into the messy puff of white flour. I am by her side in no time, inhaling the product and feeling my lungs start to itch. Kessa and I sneeze together as we try to get the flour out of our nostrils.
But we sit together on the floor, covered in the mess of our own making, when our eyes meet. Her green eyes glow through the haze around us, and there’s a little half smile on her lips. “You need to wear a bell,” she insists, “you’re too quiet.”
I have nothing left to say. I’ve spent years being the perfect shoulder to cry on and the best friend she needed after her husband’s death. I’ve run out of words. So I do what I’ve wanted to do since the first day I met her: I press my lips to hers.
And the world suddenly tilts on its axis.
12
FRANCESCA
The kiss is dry and dusty from the flour in the air, but it unlocks something inside me. It’s been six months since I last kissed a man. He was nothing special, just someone that I’d been seeing off and on for a few weeks. He was a nice guy with lips shaped like Cupid’s bow and hair so curly that I wanted to run my fingers through it. We had chemistry from the second we met, but it fizzled when we kissed. Then he disappeared, ghosting me. I never heard from him again, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to after that bad make-out session we had.
Cesare’s lips take me back almost twenty years. I’m fourteen years old again, and he’s my first kiss. We’re standing behind the cafeteria as the spring sun beats down on us. On the other side of the building, also hiding from the lunch monitors, are the smokers. The scent of cigarettes curls around us as Cesare lifts my chin and asks me if it’s okay. My heart feels like it drops into my stomach, and my chest aches from the adrenaline coursing through my veins. Without a word, I tell him yes with my eyes. And the next thing I know, his mouth is pressed against mine.
This kiss isn’t wrapped in cigarette smoke, but I am engulfed in memories. Every good moment we shared together flashes across the canvas of my brain. I see Cesare changing over the years, but somehow always by my side. My chest hurts again, but this time it’s because my heart yearns for him.
His hand startles me when I feel it on my cheek. His touch cuts through the gritty texture of the flour and caresses my skin. And for a moment, when Cesare pulls away, I want to grab his shirt and pull him back in. “I’m sorry,” he chuckles, “you just looked too beautiful, and I wasn’t sure what else to do.”
“Don’t apologize. I liked it.” Truth be told, it was the sweetest kiss I’ve had in years.
Silence follows my admission as we smile at each other stupidly. If I had any money, I’d bet that the world has stopped moving. The earth could shake, and a tornado could rip through the house, but I don’t think either could tear us apart.
“We, uh, we should get up.” Cesare clears his throat and looks around at the flour mess around us. “Jeez,” he shakes his head after a moment, “what a mess. Sorry I scared you.”
I’m not sorry. Maybe it’s the fear of my secrets coming out or how my heart feels after spending the last three weeks living with my best friend. Maybe it’s just the fact that since Peter died, I haven’t felt as close to anyone as I have to Cesare. The men I’ve been with have come and gone, some without so much as a goodbye. But never Cesare. My best friend has never left me behind; he’s always been here for me. “We should shower.”
