AllFreeNovel
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She got us. Everything we do is to the Nth degree of fanciness. What can I say?
“Hold on,” Owen says, jumping to his feet. He runs off to the big refrigerator walk-in.
“Where’s he going?” Livvy asks.
Enzo shakes his head. “He keeps a stash of his own crap hidden away. Let’s see what he brings back.”
“Here we go,” Owen says, reaching into a grocery bag with ‘sweetbreads’ written across the front of it.
“Sweetbreads?” Livvy gags. “That’s not really what I was thinking when I brought up ‘normal food.’”
“Ha. That’s just my decoy. Keeps nosy people out of my snacks.”
He reaches in and pulls out two cans of Pringles chips.
Good work, buddy. I fucking love Pringles.
“Give me those,” Livvy says, lunging at Owen.
But he holds them out of her reach.
She raises her hands in surrender. “Fine. Whatever, I can go buy my own damn chips. In fact, I think I’ll go do that right now.”
She starts down from her stool, but Enzo swings an arm around her waist to catch her. He deftly pulls her onto his lap and in spite of her wriggling, won’t let her get away. Her champagne sloshes all over the two of them, and she’s laughing her ass off.
“I want chips, dammit,” she hollers.
This is what I like to see. A woman who can laugh at herself—hell, who can laugh at all the crazy things going on around her. Who doesn’t take herself too seriously. Who understands that life at its best is usually an absurd shitshow, and who doesn’t let it get her down.
After she settles, Enzo helps himself to the soft skin on the side of her neck. Her eyes flutter closed and he brushes his lips over her, and Owen takes her champagne glass before it smashes to the floor.
The weighty question of ‘what are we?’ hangs in the air as if we’re all wondering it but not sure we should say it out loud. But it’s obvious as fuck, and even though I haven’t discussed it with the guys, I decide to speak for all of us.
“Baby,” I say, and her eyes slowly open. She focuses on me, and the guys turn my way as well.
They know what’s coming. So does she.
“What do you think about... you know… dating us?”
She tilts her head. “Like all three of you?”
I nod, and Enzo pipes in. “It’s complicated, darlin’. But we’d like to give it a go.”
“Wow. Geez,” she says.
Shit. Is she stalling for time? Trying to think of a nice way to let us down?
“It’s sure not traditional,” she muses. “But then not much about me is,” she laughs, pulling Owen to her for a kiss.
A wild, reckless hope plows over me and for a moment I think everything will be fine. Fine with the restaurant, the pet shop next door, and with Livvy. The Earth will keep rotating, the sun will keep coming up every morning, and I’ll keep serving fancy food to people on the Upper East Side of New York.
That’s all I want, really.
31
LIVVY
I arriveat Krista and Carter’s house—Kritterdom, I call it, since they are the Kritters—but before I go inside, I consider the grandeur of the life my sister managed to marry into when she sunk her hooks into my now-brother-in-law.
