Page 47 of Let the Light Shine Through

“I hope I didn’t wake you, sir.” My truck is throaty as hell. I made sure of it. One after-market upgrade later and my Chevy chuffs like a lion prowling the savanna.

“Sir,” Gia mocks.

“I only wanted to ensure Gia made it home safely, but since she thought you were sleeping, I stayed in the driveway until she got inside okay.”

Gia goes quiet next to me, but I don’t dare break eye contact with her dad. With them in the same room together, I notice the resemblance easy enough, but if I didn’t know this was her dad, I’m not sure I would have. Where Gia’s skin is fair, his has more of a warm tone to it, like he just came inside from an afternoon of gardening in the sun. Their hair is the same color, but while his is straight, his daughter’s is wavy like the sea. He’s also shorter than Gia, but their eyes have the same sense of humor lining them, especially when he tries and fails to hold back laughter of his own.

“I haven’t slept past five a.m. since I graduated college and took up the restaurant life.” The father-daughter duo share a laugh. At my expense.

Haha.

“And please, call me Al.”

Under the overhang of the granite countertop, I wipe the sweat from my palm on to my shorts, then extend it to Al for a handshake, introducing myself. We look each other in the eye and all I see is humor. No worry or suspicion or anger—nothing cruel at all—just a welcoming energy.

Noticing the cuts on my knuckles, he gives his daughter a frown, scolding, “Gia.”

“What? It wasn’t me,” she chuckles.

“Uh-huh,” Al says, looking pointedly down at her shirt that’s still stained with my blood, before telling me, “My daughter has a certain…influence.”

My gaze seeks hers out.

“Yeah, she does,” I say.

Unless I’m reading this all wrong, her dad isn’t strict like I assumed.

“Are you hungry, Roz?” Al asks with a low chuckle, turning back to his skillet of fried potatoes.

“I could eat.”

Gia snickers, but I try to keep a straight face, remembering my earlier words about eating—her, specifically.

Someone else comes through the front door—sans knocking—and not a moment later, Rowdy appears, greeting, “Good morning.” Surprise colors his face, but he tries to hide it by giving me a jerky head nod. I wait until he straightens from kissing Gia’s cheek to return it, then watch as he goes around the counter to wrap Al in a hug.

The whole scene is very…cozy. It’s cozy as hell actually. Cozier than anything I grew up with. My parents’ house, when I bothered going back to it, never felt cozy.

Cold. That’s the word that comes to mind when I imagine my childhood home. Once I started traveling full-time, I didn’t even look forward to coming back to it. I’ve never been homesick a day in my life.

There’s not an ounce of cold in Gia’s though. I’m still seated inside it and I’m already craving this feeling. How is that? How can you yearn for something you’ve never even known?

“You guys heading out or just getting in?” Rowdy asks, taking the stool on my other side.

“Getting in,” I say, pulling my beanie off to drop in my lap.

Rowdy nods, rubbing his eyes. His mohawk’s ruffled like he just rolled out of bed, and he’s wearing what must be his old high school sweats. It’s funny because it’s the same school I would’ve gone to had I actually attended in-person school. By the time I was fourteen, I was already doing online classes and had a tutor while I traveled. Salvy’s mom wasn’t in the same position as my parents, so he ended up attending high school here during the week and saved boarding for the weekends. Racking up wins earned me my own money, so I started flying him out to wherever I was, and as soon as he graduated, it was on—we tore up every competition we could find together.

During all my time away from this town, I forgot how small it actually is. Rowdy’s gotta be around Gia’s age, and I’m only a couple years older than she is, so it’s possible Rowdy and Salvy went to school together. They could’ve known each other, easy. Gia could’ve known Salvy even. My roommates knew who Gia was; Salvy might’ve, too.

If I hadn’t gone pro so early, maybe I would’ve met Gia sooner.

A melancholic haze clouds my eyes as I half-listen to the voices around me talk about the strange orders the pizzeria gets.

New Yorkers through and through, my parents have always rejected the idea of leaving their hometown permanently, a choice I’m actually grateful for now because despite never being homesick, this was the only place I considered retreating to when I retired myself.

A glass vase with a large chunk off the lip penetrates my haze. It’s next to the stove, which seems like a strange place for a vase, especially an empty one. At the skate park, Gia told me a story about her parents’ first date. Apparently Al is a real romantic and showed up at Gia’s mom’s door with an actual glass vase overflowing with orange-red poppies, a flower popular in Italy but not really given as gifts here. He saw the poppies growing randomly on the side of the road, reminding him of a family trip to Val d’Orcia in Tuscany, so he pulled over to pick some for his date. He wanted to buy a container big enough to fit the wildflowers but went a little too big because when Gia’s mom went to take the vase from him, her arms gave out from the weight, causing the top to bang into the doorjamb and chip the lip.

I replayed the story several times in my head because while I’ve never thought to bring any girl flowers, I know if I did, they wouldn’t be from the side of the road. Or in a gigantic vase. But seeing the vase still sitting in the middle of their kitchen all these years later has me rethinking that.