Page 9 of A Winter in New York

“This is my first ever street pretzel,” Viv said, feeling all kinds of sophisticated as she drank in the sights and sounds of the street, still bustling in the early evening heat. Objectively, it wasn’t any more glamorous than London. If anything, it felt more dangerous, but there was something entirely addictive about the grime, the graffiti, the eclectic swell of noiseand endless visual drama. “She looks like she’s on a TV ad,” she said, watching a woman in a fur coat lean against a burnt-out car to light her cigarette.

“What would she be advertising?” Santo said, handing her some of his pretzel because she’d already finished her own.

“New York City, baby!” Viv laughed, spinning around, making his heart jump. “This place is crazy, I want to stay here forever!”

Her words reminded him of the thing she’d said to him earlier, in the movie theatre.I think I might love you.Had he misheard her? He knew these streets like the back of his hand but saw them afresh through her pretty blue eyes, noticing beauty in the street art sprawled across the frontages of the closed-up stores and buildings, feeling the restless energy like a heartbeat pulsing beneath the sidewalk. Did she really want to stay here forever? And what would that mean for him, if she did? They were questions he couldn’t believe he was asking himself, but she brought out something in him that he hadn’t known was there, and she made him feel more himself than he ever had before.

—

“Come inside, everyone’s gonehome,” he said, pulling the keys to the gelateria from the back pocket of his jeans.

“Cool door,” she said, running her fingertips over the painted glass as she followed him inside.

“Sit down.” He gestured to the oxblood leather seats lining the counter as he moved behind it. “Let me make you some coffee, serve you like my favorite customer.”

She grinned, smoothing her ruffled tartan miniskirt over her thighs as she perched. “And gelato too? Vanilla, of course,” she said.

He shook his head. “There’s none to be had—we make it fresh every day, and it’s all gone.”

“You don’t have tubs in the freezer?”

He laughed. “I told you. Secret recipe. Fresh every day.”

Her eyes shone with mischief as she leaned in, her elbows on the counter. “I love secrets. Do you know the recipe? Will you tell me?”

“Of course I know it, and no, I can’t tell you. There’s only ever two of us in the family who know it at a time, and the only reason two people know it is just in case something happens to one.”

“In case one of you falls off a cliff or something,” Viv said, laughing.

He shrugged. “Something like that. It’s me and Papa now.”

Viv noticed the pride in his voice, and her eyes scanned the framed photos on the wall behind him, many generations of Belotti men standing behind this same counter. How very different his life had been from her own foundling beginnings. She was a blank slate, the gold signet ring on her wedding finger her only link to the mother who had abandoned her.

“You’re lucky to have all of this, you know. A place, a family, a history.”

“I know,” he said.

“And they’re lucky to have you too,” she said. “Because otherwise they’d have to rely on Felipe.”

“True,” Santo said. “He hardly comes here. I sometimes wonder if he feels guilty.”

From what Vivien had seen of Felipe, there wasn’t much in the way of guilt going on, but she spared Santo that knowledge.

“You make an excellent cup of coffee,” she said, sipping from the small white cup and saucer Santo pushed across the glass counter.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he said.

She wrapped her hands around her drink. “Have you had a lot of practice with girls too?”

Santo’s easy expression faltered. “Not so much,” he said.

There was clearly more to that story, but Viv found she didn’t actually want to hear it, so she slid from the stool and walked slowly around the gelateria, trailing her fingers along the chair backs and wooden table edges.

“You have a piano,” she said, pleased. “Can I play it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Can you?”

She laughed softly, taking a seat on the piano stool near the window.

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