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“I think that sounds amazing.” She settles into the crook of my body, hiding her face from me. But right before she moved away, I caught a glimpse of … something in her expression. Something tense. Maybe Nina is still adjusting to married life. It was a lot of big changes for her in one go. I just hold her closer to me and focus on the positive; things between Nina and me are looking up.
* * *
I takeNina to my favorite restaurant to celebrate our relationship strengthening. It’s a smaller, more intimate place near where I live. It’s a little shabby, but it has great food.
“The best pizza in all of New York,” I tell her as we walk inside the small space decorated in red with checkered tabled clothes on the tables. It’s a little kitschy, but it’s like home for me at this point.
“Don’t most restaurants make that claim?” she says, taking her seat.
“Yes, but this one is true. The best pizza, trust me.”
She opens her menu. “Which one are you going to get?”
“Typical. Meat eaters galore.”
“I’ll just get the veggie one.” She sets her menu aside and smiles at me. “I haven’t had meat in years.”
“How come?” I take a sip of my water. The waitress approaches us; she’s a young woman with a kind smile.
Nina finishes talking after the waitress leaves with our orders. “It was always in some defiance to my father,” she admits.
“Wanted to stick it to the man, huh?”
“I guess you could say that.” She looks withdrawn for a moment before cheering up. “But I don’t really want to talk about him. I’d rather talk about you. Did you ever come here with your family?”
I laugh. “God no. My mom would never be seen in a place like this. Only the best five start restaurants for my parents. But mostly, we ate at home, and Mom would cook for us. She’s a great cook.” I smile sadly at the memory of her.
Nina grabs my hand, squeezing it. “You miss her a lot?”
I clear my throat, pushing the memories of my mom away. “I do. She was always great. Don’t tell my other siblings, but she always favored me.”
Nina laughs as she pulls her hand away and takes a sip of her wine. “Maybe that’s why she was always great.”
“Probably. If you asked some of my other siblings, I’m sure they’d tell you the issues they had with her, but when it came to my mom and me … I was her baby boy. She tended to let me get away with things when she probably shouldn’t have.”
“What about your sisters?”
“Oh god,” I say, dropping my head back. “They never let me get away with anything. They made sure I got what I deserved. Which was good. They helped me learn to respect women. Especially my two oldest sisters, Emilia and Gemma. Emilia was like a second mom to us for most of our lives, so she made sure to teach me kindness. As for Gemma, well … she’d smack me upside the head if I ever said anything stupid about girls. I learned real quick how to be nice to girls after that.”
Nina smiles, looking into her wine glass. “It’s sweet how you had those relationships with your sisters. With Anna … she just treats me like an inconvenience. She’s thirteen and thinks only of herself.”
“Pretty typical at that age. But you said Ihadthose relationships. I still have them. I’ll see my family again one day.”
“Oh, Antonio,” she says, her eyes widening. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. I’m just saying. I’ll return to my family one day. You’ll get to meet my all my siblings.”
“How many do you have exactly?”
“Seven, now.”
Nina’s eyes almost bug out of her head. “Seven?”
“Yep. I already mentioned Emilia and Gemma. The third oldest is Francesca. She’s the shyest of all of us, but she helped me out a lot when I was eighteen. That was when Franco tried to kill me, and Francesca found me and took me to the hospital after I’d been shot. It made us closer, but then I had to go into hiding, so we never really got to develop that. Then it’s me. And then Cecilia.” I smile at the memory of my favorite sister. “We’ve always been the closest. She just gets me in a way the others don’t.”
“How so?” She takes a sip of wine.
“Cecilia never treated me differently because I was the only boy in the family for so long. We just meshed.”
