Page 5 of Trina Gabrini: Bring Him Back Home to Me

“Just beat it,” Reno said to the terrified young man. “And stop trying to pick-up every good looking broad that comes in this place. Show some respect next time.”

“Yes sir. I truly apologize, sir.”

“Get out of here,” Reno said dismissively of his nothing apology, and that waiter took off so fast that he didn’t even bother to take Reno’s drink order.

“Watch his ass get somebody else to wait this table,” Reno said with a snide smirk on his face. “These young white boys think they rule the world. Fucking prick,” he added as he went over to Trina, placed his arm across the back of her chair, and leaned his tanned face down to her deep-toned brown face. They stared into each other’s eyes.

For Reno, that sense of lacking overtook him again as he stared at Trina. As if he knew she deserved far better than a man like him. As if he knew he wasn’t doing right by her in any way, shape, or form but whenever he tried to reverse course he always reverted right back to his old ways. Then he’d get angry for being forced to change at all and lash out with some version of Fuck it, got-dammit! I am who I am. Take me or leave me! Then he’d beg her not to leave him.

But for Trina, it was a toxic pattern years in the making that was making her out to be the very woman she’d sworn up and down she would never be. She and her girlfriends used to criticize without fail every single solicitous woman who dimmed her own light in order to please and keep her man. They weren’t going out like that, they’d declare. And Trina was the ringleader declaring it.

But as she looked deep into Reno’s stark, sky-blue eyes, who was she kidding? She left and went back to this joker so many times, year after year after year, that even she had to come to grips with the reality that she wasn’t going anywhere. Reno was complicated. Reno was difficult. And Reno was right: You had to take him or leave him. Love him or hate him. There were no two ways about it.

But Trina loved him too much to take him as he was: He could be better and they both knew it. But she also loved him too much to leave him. Which she knew was a contradiction in and of itself. Which she knew made her a hypocrite.

But she wasn’t the only hypocrite. Reno was so protective of her and so easily jealous that everybody was astounded considering his track record. Let the rumors have it, he was out there doing everything he was big enough to do, but as soon as a man, any man, showed interest in his wife he was all up in arms as if he was the aggrieved spouse. It baffled even Tommy Gabrini, Reno’s cousin and closest confidant. It flabbergasted his children.

But as he leaned down to Trina, she knew he was about to allow that glaring contradiction in his personality to rear its ugly head once more. “I’m not telling your ass again,” he said to her. “Leave those boy-toys alone. Your cougar days are over. You feel me?”

Trina was offended. “What cougar?” She was nobody’s cougar and Reno knew it. But then she caught herself because Reno was smiling.

“Boy bye!” she said with a smile of her own as she took her hand and pushed his face away from her face.

But he wouldn’t leave. Because he adored her and seeing her happy always warmed him inside.

But it also reminded him of his own shortcomings. So much so that his smile turned into a look of regret. He wanted to tell her so much. He wanted to put it all on the line and let the chips fall where they may. But he could never go that far. She’d leave him and never look back if he told all the shit he was involved with. There was no way.

He kissed her on her tender lips instead, lingering in his kiss because she tasted so good, and then he forced himself away from her and plopped down in the chair next to her. “What else your ass been getting yourself into when I’m not around?”

Trina, again, was taken aback. “What have I been getting into? I can ask you that same question.”

“Ah come on, Tree, what are you talking? I’m working over here! I’m a hard-working man.”

“Too hard working to attend your own child’s birthday party?”

Reno frowned this time with his hands outstretched and with his palms up. “Why you harping on that again? I gave him a hundred-dollar bill. What are you still blabbing about? What more you want from me?”

“Your presence, Reno. He doesn’t care about your money. None of your children do. They want you.”

“I had to work! I told you I had to work. Now if you didn’t explain that to Carmine then that’s on you. But you knew I couldn’t get away on a Friday night. That’s the biggest night at the casino, especially lately. What child has a birthday party on a Friday night anyway?”

“We were right upstairs in the penthouse, Reno. That casino is downstairs. And you mean to tell me you couldn’t break away for thirty minutes and come upstairs and say happy birthday to your own son? Don’t even try that shit on me!”

Reno leaned back and folded his arms. Trina could see in his eyes that he was tired of her. And exhausted. But he was always tired of her and exhausted. That wasn’t going to stop her. “It’s a lie, Reno, when they say time is money. That’s a lie. Time is far more valuable than money. Time is everything. Now you can run around neglecting me. I’ll deal with your ass on that. But what you aren’t going to do is neglect our children. That you will not do.”

But Reno remained silent in that brooding way he was known for. He had that look in his eyes that made her know he was sizing her up without saying a word. It was that same look he had whenever he was sitting on his perch inside his massive casino sizing up who the grifters were, and which gambler was going to try to turn the tables on the house and get over on him. He was assessing her in that same way. And it unnerved her. “What?” she finally asked him when his staring wouldn’t quit.

“Why are you like that?”

Trina could just hear nothing short of disgust and disappointment dripping from that question. And it scared her. “Why am I like what?”

“Your ass expect perfection from me, Trina. Always has. You expect perfection when any other woman wouldn’t expect a damn thing from me. Just to be my woman would be enough for them. But that’s never been the case for you.”

“And it’ll never be the case for me,” Trina shot back defiantly. “What I look like settling for nothing because you put a ring on it? Man, you better get out of my face with that bullshit!”

“Why am I putting up with your bullshit is the question,” Reno said. “Why?” He asked it as if he was agonizing over it. “I can get any woman I want, and every single one of them will be at my beck and call day and night. But your ass don’t let me get away with shit. Your ass keep my ass up nights! Why am I putting up with this when I don’t have to? What the fuck am I doing?”

Trina knew exactly what Reno meant. He had ladies lining up to be his woman. All he had to do was dump her. Because then his life would be a piece of cake. He could cheat on his woman. He could beat her ass. He could do anything he was big enough to do to her and she’d stay right by his side. And she’d do it because she would be Reno Gabrini’s girl. She’d be the shit. But he had to dump Trina first. That was what he meant. And that was the part that hurt her to her core.