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Enzo’s from a big Italian family in a small town in Pennsylvania. His dad is a pizza shop owner, his mother is a mama bear, and he has two brothers and a sister. They’re every bit as close as you’d imagine. After spending my third Thanksgiving with them, I started calling his mother Mama DeLuca. And Angel, Inc. was barely a blip on our radar back then.
And then there’s me. Rich kid from Connecticut whose parents can’t be bothered to spend any of the holidays with their only son. I used to tell myself it had nothing to do with me, that they just really like to travel.
But I’ve gotten old enough to be honest with myself.
“The next RPM makes me really nervous,” I admit.
Enzo makes a sound. “No shit? I couldn’t tell in the meeting when you basically told her how to do her job. I swear, if I live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand you.”
I take a swig of lager. “What do you mean?”
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that you catch more bees with honey than vinegar?”
“Pfft. The only things my mother taught me were how to tip properly and what not to do when you have kids.”
Another conversation we’d had many times. Enzo was as aware as anyone of my complicated relationship with the two people who should love me most in the world.
Like his parents love him.
“OK, Nanny Mary, then?”
My nanny. My de facto mother. The only reason I’m only ninety-five percent asshole rather than a full one hundred.
“She might have mentioned it. I don’t remember.”
“Well, allow me to enlighten you. Pressing Doctor Flemming against a wall isn’t going to shorten the thirty days.”
The last thing I need to think about right now is the image of the good doctor pressed up against a wall.
“Lucky for both of us, she’ll be dealing with you and not me. Oh, and don’t hit on her,” I advise. “I’m not sure she cared for that.”
Enzo’s deep chuckle draws a few gazes his way. Another thing I’m accustomed to. I’ve never had trouble with the ladies, but I’m comfortable enough in my manhood to admit my friend is an especially good-looking guy. The two of us have made quite the wingman duo over the years.
But I’m not in the mood tonight for anything but a few beers with a friend.
“Gee, that’s shocking. Because it should be so easy for a woman, especially one who looks like that, to be taken seriously and not looked at as a sex object.”
I ignore the sarcasm dripping from his tone.
“Obviously I didn’t know who she was.”
A commotion at the back of the bar draws our attention. Please don’t let it be a fight. I have a thing for getting in the middle of them. For taking the underdog’s side. Even now Enzo gives me adon’t you dare think about itlook.
I stand up. “Just getting a closer look.”
“Closer look, my ass,” he mutters from behind me.
Enzo pegged the reason for my penchant for fighting years ago. Quite simply, it pisses off my father, and so I continue to do it. Every other call from my boarding school in Switzerland back to the States had to do with some scrape or another.
Curiosity has me edging in closer than the rest of the spectators coming in for a better look.
Not a fight.
“A stripper,” Enzo says, joining me.
“Looks like a bachelorette party.”
When I get a look at the woman seated in front of said stripper, Enzo’s words are confirmed. We clearly missed the beginning of the show, as the “policeman” is down to his hat and a thong. Pushing back the bride-to-be’s veil, he mounts her lap to an increasingly high-pitched shrill of screams and laughter.
