Page 48 of A Winter in New York

“Do you need me to tell you how good you were tonight?”

I consider his question as we make our way out onto the street. Objectively, I know we did well. I felt it, that same lit-from-within freedom as busking in the park.

“I guess I’d rather know what you thought,” I say.

We’re far enough from school to be clear of prying eyes, so he puts his arm around my shoulders as we walk.

“I thought a lot of things,” he says. “I watched Bells up there tonight and it got me right here.” He touches his heart. “Pen would have been so damn proud.”

I’ve learned since losing my mother that there is always a missing piece at any festivity or celebration. Other things and other people do not fill in that space, the river simply flows around it.

“And then I looked down the line at my family’s faces, and they were all so caught up in the moment, not worrying about Papa or all the other stuff, so that was a gift for them as much as for me.”

Gio told me this morning that preparations are being put in place for Santo to come home in time for Christmas, and they have all been buoyed by this news. Maria has gone into overdrive making adaptations at home; he isn’t fully recovered by any means, and it’s going to be a physical challenge as much as a mental one. He hasn’t recovered his missing memories yet either, but it’s going to mean so much to them all to have him in his rightful place at the head of the dinner table at Christmas.

“And then there was you up there onstage too,” he says. “I saw how you made room for Bella. Your voice…you could so easily steal the show, but you didn’t. I noticed all the moments where you held back to let her shine. I went to watch my daughter, but I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

I don’t think I’ve ever felt as seen, and it moves me beyond words as we walk the quiet streets back through Little Italy. Belotti’s striped awnings beckon us, and when we reach the doorway he tugs me in and presses me against the wall with his body weight, the glass door in shadow beside us.

His kiss says thank you for tonight, and then the inevitable fire between us takes hold and his kiss tells me he doesn’t know how to handle this heat. I don’t either. My kiss tells him that I can’t control how much I want him, that it’s always like this when he touches me. He drops Bella’s school bag and pushes his hands into my hair, tipping my head back to slide his mouth down my neck. I don’t feel trapped. I feel desired, and outrageously turned on.

“If I was twenty years younger I’d unfasten your jeans right here,” he whispers, breath hot against my ear.

“What would the neighbors say,” I reply, half laughing, half gasping when his cold hand slips inside my sweater.

He stops just long enough to open the door and tug me out of the way of prying eyes, and then we throw our coats off, he tips me back over the nearest table and, as promised, unfastens my jeans.

We clutch each other afterward, breathless and spent, and I know I’ll never walk through that door again without looking at this table and remembering tonight.

“Bella asked me if I’ll stop coming here once we find the recipe,” I say.

He strokes my hair and sighs.

“Am I a selfish man,amore? I’ve allowed her to love you a little, because I do, and now I risk her marshmallow heart.”

There is so much to unpack in that sentence that I have to pause to drink it all in. He called meamore,and it fell from his lips so naturally that it almost went unnoticed. He said his daughter loves me a little, and that he does too. A little is not nothing. It’s a conversation we’ll have another day, because right now his concerns are for Bella.

“Marshmallow heart?”

He shifts me into the crook of his arm, his palm resting on my hair.

“You know how it is at that age,” he says. “So tender. My heart is nearly forty years old, and it’s not a pretty sight. It’s been through catastrophe and magic, chunks missing and given away, a mangled thing held together by gelato and tradition andfamiglia.But Bella…her heart is still soft,unprotected, no shell. I know it can’t stay that way forever, that there will be”—he pauses, grimaces as if he just sipped acid—“boys.” He fills the word with such darkness that I fear for those future boys. “But I don’t want to be the one who puts the first crack there, and I’m afraid that the closer she gets to you—thatIget to you—the more possibility there is that she will be hurt.”

I appreciate his honesty. I think he’s asking me what the future holds, and is standing guard for Bella and himself because they’ve been through something catastrophic. He’s right to be wary. I don’t have a crystal ball, but if I did, I think I’d see us walking blindly toward oncoming traffic, the secrets I’m holding on to flashing their lights at us to get out of the way before it’s too late. He asked me just now if he’s a selfish man. He isn’t. I’m the selfish one. I stepped through that glass door and tumbled into the Belotti universe, a place so seductive and all-encompassing that I’m finding it almost impossible to walk back out of the door for good.

—

We walk hand inhand to the noodle house, quiet, caught up in our own thoughts. He lingers outside my front door, pulling me into his arms.

“Thank you for tonight,cucchiaino,” he says, his voice rough in his throat. “You sing like a fuckin’ angel.”

“Stop already with the sexy swearing, you know what it does to me,” I whisper, and he laughs under his breath before he kisses me, slow and searching. I press my fingers against the imprint of his lips on mine as he walks away, and I watch him until he’s swallowed by the darkness.

—

I think about Gio’smarshmallow heart analogy as I go through the motions to prepare for bed, of his heart glued together by family and gelato. He’s been both terribly unlucky and terribly fortunate, the Belotti safety net always stretched out beneath him to ensure he doesn’t injure himself irreparably. My life has been more precarious. My mother was my only safety net, and without her I fell so far and so hard that I almost lost myself completely. That I didn’t is on me. I remembered whose daughter I was just in the nick of time, and found the strength from somewhere to claw myself up out of the well and run away. The real miracles in my story are that I kept running as far as Chrystie Street and that I found Bobby, who picked my trampled self-worth up from that damp sidewalk and held it when I couldn’t. So, yeah. My heart isn’t marshmallow either. We share that much in common, at least.

20.

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