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I feather my fingers over the front of the jeans I’m wearing. “I’m not pregnant.”
“You never say no to red wine.”
She’s right about that, but I’m still feeling the effects of the hangover that hitched a ride back to New York with me.
“I’m not in the mood for wine,” I say because I can’t tell her I had way too much to drink this weekend. “I’ll have sparkling water.”
Her hand jumps out, landing on my forehead. “Do you have a fever? Are you sick, my Gina?”
My heart tightens with those words.
My grandma has more grandchildren than she has fingers, but she’s always done her best to make each of us feel special.
I reach for her hand and hold it tightly. “I’m not sick. I feel like drinking water tonight.”
“I’ll get the water and the food.” Her gaze drifts over my shoulder. “It can’t be. Gina, look! He’s here in New York! I can’t believe he came to see me!”
I don’t need to glance over my shoulder to know who just walked into Calvetti’s. The expression on Marti’s face says it all.
“Daniel!” she calls out to my husband. “Come. You can sit with Gina and eat risotto.”
“Grandma,” I say her name with exasperation, lacing my tone. “I was going to spend the evening alone.”
“Nonsense.” She rubs her palms on the apron tied around her waist. “Daniel is family, and you have room at your table. You’ll enjoy your dinner with him.”
It’s doubtful, but since the restaurant is packed on this Sunday night, I don’t have a choice.
“If it isn’t my two favorite Calvetti women,” Daniel says as he approaches me from behind. “I must be the luckiest man in New York.”
* * *
Daniel staresat me from across the table.
He hasn’t said a word since Marti brought us each a glass of sparkling water, a bowl of mushroom risotto, and a large basket of bread to share.
We ate our first meal as a married couple in silence, each checking our phones whenever one of them made a sound.
I finally break the silence. “Is there something you wanted to say, Lawton?”
“Maybe, Lawton.”
I shake my head. “I’m a Calvetti.”
He smiles. “That you are. I thought you weren’t coming here tonight.”
I glance to where my grandma is standing next to a table at least twenty feet away. She’s so engrossed in conversation with the party of six she’s serving that I know she doesn’t have an ear trained to the two of us.
“I believe I said we wouldn’t see my grandma tonight.” I point at Daniel before directing my finger back at myself. “As in we, so I came alone, as in me.”
“We. Me,” he repeats. “Either way, we somehow still ended up breaking bread together.”
He punctuates that point by breaking a crispy breadstick in half. He offers part of it to me, but I refuse with a shake of my head.
“When can we go back to Vegas?” I ask. “I know you have a meeting tomorrow, but it won’t last all day, will it?”
“It might.” He takes a bite of the breadstick.
Just as I’m about to plead with him to postpone the meeting so we can catch the red-eye flight tonight, my grandma appears next to our table.
