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I’m thrilled to see Tris’s restaurant thriving. I half expected to see Lusanne here tonight, but if she’s coming, she hasn’t shown up yet. She’s been splitting her time between the pizza shop and the restaurant, apparently. Enzo told me last night she was even considering a venture of her own but doesn’t want to abandon Tris so soon after the opening.
I get it.
Lisa’s been pressing me on what’s next for me. She thinks my mother is the only reason I came back to Bridgewater. Apparently my mother thinks that too. But I like my job. I really do. And it’s too soon for me to think about making any plans revolving around Enzo.
“Eat your bunny food,” Devon says, referring to my salad. Unlike my brother, I actually enjoy a good salad, so I pick at it, waiting for the ball to drop.
It doesn’t, and my brother doesn’t appear to be in any hurry, so I say, “Spill it, Devon. Whatever you brought me here to say.”
Taking a swig of beer, he sits back and looks at me with adon’t kill meexpression that I know all too well.
“Dad called me yesterday.”
My fork freezes halfway to my mouth. Did he seriously just say . . .
“Dad? As in your father?”
Devon makes a face. “No, as in our father.”
Suddenly, I’m not hungry.
“Hear me out before you say anything.”
Although the restaurant’s busy, it’s definitely slower than it would be on a weekend. There’s no one sitting next to us, but enough people are in our vicinity that I ask Devon to lower his voice. Small towns and gossip, and all that.
“It’s not like he’s some sort of axe murderer,” he mumbles. “Just listen.”
Part of me wants to make a smart comment, but there’s such a strange sensation in my chest, and my throat, and my everything, that I couldn’t talk if I wanted to anyway.
“He knows he has been a total shit. And he figured if he called you . . .”
Devon trails off, acting as if the reason is so obvious he doesn’t need to supply it. And really, he’s right.
“What?” I finish. “That I might not be super receptive? That I would probably ask some tough questions like, ‘Is there a reason you failed to pay child support? Or send a single birthday card? Or maybe pop your head in at major events in either of our lives, like, I don’t know, our high school graduations? Or college graduations? Or—”
“I knew you’d flip.”
Devon was lucky we weren’t home. “Which is exactly why we’re sitting in the middle of my boyfriend’s brother’s restaurant. To ensure my freak-out is contained.”
My brother can be so annoying.
“Your boyfriend. My best friend,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Enzo has a whole bunch of titles these days.”
“Oh no you don’t.” I give him my bestdon’t you dareface, hoping for his sake as well as mine that it’s enough to dissuade him from shifting the conversation to me. Because this isn’t about me. It’s about our father. And Dev knows that man is the last person in the world I want to talk about.
“Anyway,” he says, which is code forI know you’re right, “he said there was a story about you in his local paper a while back.”
That’s not what I expected to hear, and I only manage a very eloquent, “Huh?”
“Yeah, I looked it up online. I’m surprised theBridgewater Timeshasn’t picked it up, but there’s a picture of you coming out of the airport with Enzo. It talks about a ‘local woman,’ aka you, connected to our very own Enzo DeLuca.”
“But that was weeks ago. And I didn’t see anything in the press about it.” I know it’ll happen at some point, of course, and part of me dreads the attention. Another part is eager for the world to know that Enzo is mine.
“Neither did I. But it’s bound to come out sooner rather than later.”
I simply nod, because the sentiment echoes my thoughts.
Hungry in spite of myself, I pick my fork back up just as the waitress comes by to check on us. She asks if we need anything, which we don’t. Except maybe a new topic of conversation.
