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We drink, even though I actually never left. Cole and Evie went away for school and only recently returned. Zara and her family left years earlier, when she was in middle school.
But not me.
I stayed, worked at my dad’s pizza shop, and never got a college degree.
“I’m tapped,” Evie says, after we all take sips of our drinks. She looks into her glass as if it will provide answers. I know what she’s thinking.
If she doesn’t switch to Angel, she’ll need a ride home. And there’s zero chance she’ll be getting it from Zara and Cole. We both know it, even as she darts her eyes toward me.
I want to say,Make another.
Instead, I wait, the two of us the only ones in the room who understand her hesitation.
She finally looks away two seconds before I could pull her across the bar and cover her mouth with mine, Zara and Cole be damned. My heart races as she grabs the bottle of vermouth.
I’m driving her home.
“What is this, anyway?” Zara asks.
“Negroni. One of our specialties. I’m surprised you never had it.”
Zara and Cole, with their shared office just down the street, are regulars at Leoni’s. And DeLuca’s too.
“It’s strong,” she says.
“So how did we end up with this impromptu happy hour today?”
Listening to the banter between my friend and his wife, with Evie across the bar, I could almost imagine this as a regular thing. The four of us having a drink. Or going out to dinner. Evie laughs along with Zara as they tease Cole about his hair, a long-running joke now that he’s grown it out since coming home.
My family would love her.
The thought comes, unbidden. Unwelcome.
But it’s true. Something that binds all of us, even when we argue, and aside from the fact that we’re related, is an equal love of work and play. Whether it’s the pizza shop, or Enzo or Gian building their own empires, or Lusanne above all of us bopping from job to job, supporting each family member, as if she doesn’t have her own life . . . doesn’t matter.
Work hard. Play hard.
It is my parents’ motto, and one we’ve all adopted.
As Evie kicks back with us, it’s clear she can do both in equal measure. I saw her in work mode this weekend. Yesterday, after we hadn’t talked all day, I ventured over to her tent to say hello. But she’d been slammed. So instead, I hung back and watched her a bit.
Admittedly, like a creepy stalker.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off of her as she seamlessly moved from behind the food preparation to the counter, back and forth as if pleasing people with the offer of good food and smiles was something she’d done her whole life.
“Tris?”
Have I been staring at her too long? I turn my head to Cole. “What’s up?”
“Never mind, space cadet. So what are we doing here? Should I have another one?”
“Hell yeah,” Evie says, as the question is toward her. We did, after all, invade her restaurant.
“You know what, it’s almost six o’clock. Anyone hungry?”
When she looks at me, I answer. But not in words.
Evie looks away quickly, and I think she has a pretty good idea about what I’m hungry for.
