Page 11 of Rome with Dad's Best Friend

Something touches my shoulder, and I whirl to see it’s one of the friends, right behind me, his hand landing there. “Come with us,” he also urges. “Good time with us.”

“N-no, I…” I stammer, trying and failing to brush his hand away. “Please, don’t touch me.”

“Come on, bella,” the ringleader says, catching a strand of my hair in his fingers. “We just want to show you some fun. Come with us.”

I don’t know what to do. I look around, trying to see past them, but the other people in the restaurant seem to be ignoring us – and I can’t find Marco at all.

There’s no way out – they’re pressed close by me now, so close I can’t move without touching one of them. I don’t want to encourage them by doing that – so how am I going to get out of here and away from them?Chapter NineMarcoI come out of the bathroom casually enough, not expecting anything to be wrong. But when I look up at our table, I can’t see Hannah at all – but I can see a group of three men, boys really, clustered around the seat where she was sitting. Which seems suspicious in itself.

I should probably hold back and assess the situation first before reacting, but I can’t help myself. If those little scumbags have done something to Hannah, they will regret it. And if it turns out to be all innocent, then they will regret having dared to sit close to her.

“Hey!” I shout, my voice carrying across the restaurant as I stride over. The three guys look over at me, and as their bodies turn, I glimpse Hannah between them. She looks scared, stressed. I see red.

“Calm down, just talking,” one of them tries to say, giving me a dismissive wave. None of them move. I can see that they don’t realize who I am – what I could do to them.

“Get away from her,” I say, through gritted teeth. There must be something in my voice which at least tips off the two other boys, because they flinch a little and even take half-steps back, giving Hannah some room. The first, though – I see angrily has a piece of Hannah’s hair in his fingers – only doubles down, slipping his arm around the back of her chair and leaning towards her.

“M-Marco?” Hannah says, her voice rising in pitch, a sound of panic and fear. There’s no chance in hell that I will allow this punk to make her feel that way.

I don’t think. I only act. I grab him by the shoulder and pull him bodily away from her, and his two friends step back even further. I realize that my other hand has formed into a fist as I approached him, and I hold it tense by my side, ready to use. “You owe the lady an apology,” I tell him, using English for Hannah’s benefit.

The guy scoffs in my face. “Whatever, old man. She’s not even pretty anyway. Fat puttana.”

I can’t hold back the rage. I draw back my fist and drive it into his face, still holding him in front of me so that he will take the full impact. Only when I feel the satisfying crunch of his nose do I let him go, allowing him to slip to the floor. His friends are gone, one of them out of the door, the other watching on with a white face as he clings to the bar.

“Come on,” I say, extending a hand to Hannah. She scrambles up from her chair and takes it, and as I draw her closer to me I realize that she’s shaking. I slip my arm around her shoulders as I escort her out, away from the jerks who tried to intimidate her, grabbing our pizza box as we go.

I didn’t even think about what I was doing, but as the cool evening air hits us, I realize what I’ve done. My knuckles ache, and my arm is around her shoulders in the way I would maybe cradle a girlfriend – not the daughter of an old friend. I expect her to tense up and push away from me, but she doesn’t.

Whether it was the horrible experience making her need comfort, or whether she’s already warming to me, the result is the same. She relaxes into my touch, cuddling herself against my side, even slipping her hand up to grasp the side of my jacket as if to keep me close. For a moment I’m speechless, then I think about what this means.

It means that, despite my initial wondering, I might be able to actually make this happen.

Not that I really doubted myself. But if Hannah wants it too, even now, then it won’t be so hard to convince her as I was expecting.

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