“True,” he agreed. “You ready to take a walk?” he asked, patting his pocket for, I guess, his phone.
“Sure. Just let me put Noel’s shoes on. We can’t have you burning your toesies, now, can we?” I cooed at her, making her tail twirl around.
Then we were off.
Like we were every single evening before dinner every day since Christmas.
It was my favorite time of day.
Well, maybe it was tied with bedtime when Venezio would slide an arm under me and curl me into him. Every night. Even when he caught the flu and was miserable.
I joked that I was like his security blanket.
His response to that?
“Something like that.”
The man would never be a poet. But, by God, did he make it clear how much he loved me at every opportunity. I would take his nonverbal affirmations and genuine devotion over any of the love words never followed up by actions I’d known in my past.
“The Bow, really?” I asked a few minutes later, getting sweaty slowly but surely. I endured summer. I thrived in the winter. Give me thick layers and fluffy socks over boob sweat and frizzy hair any day of the week.
“Noel needs the exercise,” he said.
Our dog looked up at me and I swear there was a ‘You hearing this?’ look on her face.
I figured maybe he was using Noel as an excuse because he needed the exercise to be able to think through whatever conflicting feelings he had about becoming a Made member of the Costa Family. Something he had been working toward for years. Something I believed he deserved more than most of the other guys in the Family. I mean, I’d come to know and love theCostas. But I doubted their wives and girlfriends were awakened by their men leaving their beds as often as I was.
Venezio had been an ‘earner’ for a long time.
He deserved a break.
We were in the middle of the Bow Bridge when Venezio suddenly turned toward me, face tight, jaw ticking.
My stomach tightened, worried he was about to give me some sort of bad news.
Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a jewelry box, and flipped it open.
Inside sat the most gorgeous ring I’d ever seen, with red, white, and green gemstones cut in such a way to make it look like a poinsettia.
“What—” I started, not letting myself believe what my heart was hoping.
This was a man who took six months to say he loved me when I’d been saying it for three already.
I mean, I’d known he loved me all along. So there were no hurt feelings on my side. But that was how long it took him to get comfortable with the words.
But, I guess, these weren’t words.
This was another of his perfect actions.
“Don’t got the words for you,” he said, making my lips curve up even as tears flooded my eyes. “But I’ve got the love. Kind of hoping that’d be enough.”
“It’s not enough,” I said, sniffling. “It’s everything.”
I barely got the ring on my finger and a kiss on my lips before Andy, Sammy, Meatball, and Potroast were running across the bridge to celebrate.
“We got all the pictures,” Andy assured Venezio. And, again, I was charmed by his close relationship with my best friends. He was constantly conspiring with them behind my back to make surprise plans for me. It was amazing.
I wasn’t sure Venezio really knew just how alone (and lonely) he’d been in the past. Not because he didn’t have people who wanted to be in his life, but because he didn’t know how to let them in. I liked to think that through me, and my friends, he’d slowly but surely learned to accept everyone else’s love.
