“I’ll put these in my car and take them into the house,” I told him as we followed him and Sophia, who most definitely needed a nap no matter how much she insisted she was too old for them, to his car. “Oh, and I suppose I’ll need a key to get in. Unless you’d rather I meet you when you get done with work. I’m sure I can find something to do until then.”
Maria elbowed me in the ribs. “You’re rambling. He knows you only do that when you’re nervous.”
That might be true, but how in the hell did she know that? Did she really remember that much about me from before I left home?
Freddie chuckled as he helped Sophia into her booster seat. I tossed Maria the keys to my car, giving us a few seconds of semi-privacy. “She’s right, you know. But don’t worry, I sort of like that you’re nervous. At least I’m not the only one.”
He took a key off his ring and handed it to me. “If I had an issue with you being at the house when I’m not there, I wouldn’t have invited you to stay. Go. Make yourself at home.”
“Is there anything you’d like me to do while you’re at work?” I asked, a playful lilt to my tone that he picked up on.
Freddie narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “You’re going to fucking kill me.”
“Only in the best ways possible,” I promised. Freddie leaned in as if he was about to kiss me, then jerked away when he remembered we were out in public, he wasn’t out, and his kid was in the back seat watching us. Or at least I assumed those were his thoughts given the way his gaze darted around like he was looking for anyone he knew in the vicinity and the flush of his cheeks when he spotted Sophia watching us, giggling.
“I’ve… gotta go.” He opened the door of his car and paused. “If you need anything else, let me know.”
“Just for tonight to hurry the hell up.” One of us had to be the stronger man and walk away, otherwise he wouldn’t get to Marino’s until the middle of the dinner rush. I spun around and walked to my car, waving as he backed out of his stall.
“I hate to tell you, big brother, but you’re screwed.” Maria cackled hysterically as she got into the passenger seat of the car. And I sighed because she was so fucking right. A few times on the drive home, she tried bringing up my attraction to Freddie, and every time I shut her down, not ready to analyze what we were doing or how it could go wrong. When I dropped her off at Papa’s house, she didn’t bother inviting me inside, knowing I’d refuse. I couldn’t deal with him today.
After battling rush hour traffic, I parked in one of the visitor stalls behind Freddie’s townhouse. My nerves were shot because it’d been a long ass time since I’d dealt with that sort of chaos. Back home, I relied on mass transit or walked anywhere I needed to go. As tempting as it was to leave the bags in the trunk and get them later, I knew that’d lead to Freddie and I wasting valuable alone time toting them inside later. Plus, this was a chance for me to prove to him that I was willing to help out around the house to earn my keep.
It took three trips up the stairs and back to get everything into the house. While I’d like to say he was the one who bought far too much for his daughter, I was the one who went overboard. I couldn’t help it; between cute shit I found for Sophia, the essentials for myself, and a few surprises when I split off from the group for a while, there was a lot of shit to carry in.
After putting all the bags in the appropriate bedrooms, I turned on a dance music playlist and got to work, putting all of Sophia’s new clothes on hangers, pausing to debate whether everything needed to be washed before she wore it. I knew parents did that with baby clothes, but decided Freddie couldn’t get mad at me for trying to do something nice and kept going.
Sophia’s room seemed to be the only part of the house that showed any sort of personality. The walls in every other room were a light beige with beige carpets and white trim, but her room reminded me of a fairy garden. Spring green walls with a forest mural on one wall and a canopy bed draped in tulle with fairy lights, it was everything you’d expect for a little girl who insisted on being called Tinkerbell.
By the time I was finished, I almost hated to leave. Her room was filled with life and love, and you could almost hear the laughter even though she was at her Nonna’s for the night. Depending on how long I hung around, I might have to see if I could coerce Freddie into at least some pops of color so it looked more like a home than a model unit.
I flopped onto the couch and scrolled through the TV listings, but nothing sounded good. I rummaged through the fridge, but for a cook, Freddie had surprisingly little to eat, so I wound up ordering out and hoping my choices wouldn’t offend his culinary sensibilities. I considered rounding up the dirty laundry throughout the house, but that seemed an invasion of Freddie’s privacy even though I just wanted something to do. And still, it was only eight o’clock.
I hated being alone. If I was back in New York, I’d have pulled on my tightest jeans and fuck-me heels and gone to a club. But I wasn’t, and no way was I braving traffic again just to have a drink.
I laughed when I found myself on hands and knees a while later, scrubbing the floors. I could’ve used the mop, but there was so little tile in the kitchen it seemed a waste to drag out the bucket. Scrubbing floors like I was Cinderella and happier than I’d been in a long fucking time. It was a strange new reality, one I could easily get used to.
7
Freddie
Sweat rolleddown the center of my back as I wrestled with the backup prep cooler. Of course our main line cooler broke down tonight when I had somewhere to be besides Mama’s house to pick up Sophia.
“Mother fucker,” I cursed as the corner of the cooler jammed into my hip.
“Everything cool back there?” Tony hollered. He’d given me a wide berth since he overheard one of the cooks telling me we had a massive issue.
“Just fucking peachy,” I yelled back. I was hot, smelly, and I couldn’t wait to get home and see what the kaleidoscope of bruising looked like. “This would go a lot faster if I wasn’t trying to move this damn thing on my own.”
Tony untied his apron and rolled his sleeves as he pushed past the busboy who was finishing his side work for the night. He took the other end of the cooler, steering as we rolled it down the line. “When are you going to tell Frankie to get you a new cooler instead of making service calls every damn month?”
“When he quits freaking the fuck out that we’re going to go broke if we spend any money,” I shot back. “I’m supposed to be the tight ass of the family, not him.”
“Then grow a set and tell him you need the damn money. One of these times, you’re going to throw out your back trying to move this cooler around while we’re waiting for parts to come in.”
“I’ll talk to him tomorrow,” I promised. Tony was right; it was time to update some of the equipment.
“You’re not heading out with us?” he asked, hopping onto the stainless steel table. “Mama said she wasn’t coming in tonight because she had Sophia, so you can’t use the kid as an excuse.”
