Secret Keeper
Page 13
Dylan wanted to bring me, but I decided to meet him instead. I needed some time to be by myself and think about what to do next. Part of me wonders what I’m doing with Dylan. I feel guilty. But that part of me is slowly dying along with the love I once had for Chandler. I really like Dylan, a lot, and I’m trying to let myself be with him without any negative feelings, but that still leaves me with what to do about this whole situation with my sister.
I’m still stuck on that part.
But, right now, the smell in my nose would drown out just about anything. There’s almost nothing a good lasagna won’t cure.
“Welcome!” It’s not Dylan who greets me at the door, it’s his nonna.
“Hi,” I say, but before I can reach out and shake her hand she gives me the biggest hug ever. She squeezes me really hard for such a little old Italian woman, and it feels amazing.
“It’s so nice to meet you. Dylan’s been talking you up.”
“Oh, has he now?” I joke.
He walks towards me looking dapper as all hell. For a second, I forget about Nonna, and the yummy baking lasagna, and just take him all in. He’s so tall—much taller than Chandler, and his clothes fit perfectly, framing his body in just the right way. He’s wearing tight jeans and a nice black button up shirt.
“Nonna, that was supposed to be our little secret. What happened?”
“Nonsense. You can’t keep secrets from a woman this beautiful. Just look at her. The second she gives you those eyes, you’ll be spilling your guts to her.”
I smile. I wish my eyes inspired the truth. I would have been a lot better off. “You’re too sweet, Nonna. And this place smells like heaven. Lasagna?”
“And garlic bread. And the most important thing.”
“What’s more important than homemade lasagna and garlic bread?” I ask.
Dylan reaches over and pulls two bottles off of the table. “These.”
“Il vino rosso,” Nonna says. “I hope you like.”
“I’ll never say no to a good glass of red. You’re too kind to me already.”
I step inside of the apartment as Nonna offers me a seat and goes back into the kitchen to finish cooking. I offer to help but she turns me down outright. I can tell she’s old school—I’m a guest in her house, which means my job is basically to sit, eat, and drink. That’s just fine with me.
As she walks away, I get the hug I really wanted. He wraps me up tightly, and his hug isn’t just comforting, it sends shockwaves through my body. He smells amazing—that manly musk that comes off of him that I wish they could bottle. I breathe deeply, and let the stubble of his face gently press into my neck. It’s only a few seconds, but it’s the comfort that I need.
“It’s really good to see you.”
“Even better to see you,” I tell him. It’s the truth. More and more, I find myself thinking of him—and not just of the sex—but of him. The first night was unbridled passion—something unplanned and necessary. But, since then, there’s been more between us. I think about him when I’m not with him. I think of being in his arms and being in his bed, but I also think about just being with him. I picture myself as his girlfriend, even though that title seems way off from where we are.
“You okay?”
“I’m just that. I’m okay.”
“It’s been a crazy time, I know. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now.”
I love his concern, and it makes me feel close to him, but right now I want a distraction from what’s going on, not a reminder. “I’m doing my best to get through it. Let’s focus on you tonight.”
“Me?” he asks.
“Yes, you. I feel like everything since we’ve met has been about me and my crazy drama. Maybe tonight I can get the skinny on what little Dylan was like from Nonna.”
“Not possible. She’s sworn to secrecy. She’ll never tell.”
“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”
Two glasses of wine and some family talk in the kitchen later, that incredible home-made Italian feast gets served. I help set the table as Dylan helps his grandmother plate everything. We sit and talk and everything I was thinking about on the way here fades to the recesses of my consciousness, and I decide to just let myself live in the moment without any guilt whatsoever.
“I was so happy when Dylan told me he was bringing you here for Sunday dinner, Penelope.”
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now, so thank you for all this.”
“You don’t ever have to thank me. Just hearing the joy in this one’s voice when he mentioned you is thanks enough.”
“Oh yeah?” I turn to him and give him a huge smile. He looks away and throws his hands up.
“I don’t know what this crazy old lady is talking about. She’s senile, clearly.” I crack up laughing, and Nonna looks like she’s going to crack Dylan across the face.
“I’m not too senile to slap you, you know. My hand can still find that face.”
Then it’s Dylan’s turn to laugh. “Fine,” he jokes. “She’s telling the truth—I was. . . a little happy that you said yes to family dinner.”
“A little happy?” I ask.
“Alright, fine, I was more than a little happy, and so was this one.” He points to his grandmother, and I love watching them interact with one another. Dylan lost his mother young, but seeing him be playful and reverent to his grandmother makes me see him like someone I could really be with. Nothing tells more about a man than how he treats the women in his family.
I’m trying not to think of things like this, but seeing Dylan with his grandmother reminds me of the first time I met my almost future mother-in-law. I had blinders on because I thought I was in love, but looking back now I see how cold Chandler was—how he barely hugged her, and how he introduced me like I was some accomplishment he could check off his mental list. I’m comparing that to right now—how warm this feels, how good I feel being here, and how nice it is to be around a family that isn’t too different from my own. I’ve missed this terribly.
“You too, Nonna?” I ask.
“Of course. You know how long it’s been since my Dylan has brought a girl home?”
She just sparked my curiosity. “I don’t,” I say coyly, turning to Dylan. “But I’d sure love to know.”
“Nonna, please.”
“Eh, eh,” she says, waving his protest off. “What are you embarrassed about? You’ve always done so well with the ladies—better than most men.”
“Nonna!”
“No, go on Nonna. Tell me just how good with the ladies this one is.”
Dylan looks like he’s about to turn beet red. I love it. “Let me put it like this so I don’t make him uncomfortable.”
“Too late, Nonna.”
“Hush,” she says, putting her hand up again. “What I was going to say was that he’s never had a problem with the girls coming up to him. I mean, look at him, my handsome boy.”
Nonna isn’t kidding. Dylan is seriously the best-looking guy I’ve ever seen. No other man—Chandler most certainly included—does what Dylan does to me when he looks at me with those baby blues. I can’t resist him, so I can’t imagine other women have been able to either.
“He is, I’ll give him that. But I don’t want to make his head too big.”
“I think it’s too late for that already.”
I think I may love his grandmother even more than I love her cooking. “Fair enough. But you didn’t tell me why you were excited that I was coming.”
“Because he’s had his share of girls.”
“Oh Jesus,” he says next to me.
“Let me finish. He’s had his share, like all good-looking men, but the fact is he’s never brought a single one home to meet me. I always hear about this woman or that woman, but never a face to a name. He must really like you if he invited you here.”
I’m shocked by her words. I know that most women would hear that story and only hear the part where the guy they were in
to had been with a whole bunch of women. Most of my friends would get jealous hearing that, but I’ve never been that person. I don’t care who he was with in the past—the only part of the story that matters to me is that I mean more to him than any of those other nameless, faceless girls who are just part of his past now.
But I’m here, in his present. I’m the one sitting across from the woman who raised him, sharing a Sunday meal. That means everything to me.
“Wow,” I say, my heart swelling. “That’s something very special.”
We eat and talk and drink for so long I lose track of time. Before I know it it’s past eight, and I didn’t even notice that it was getting dark outside. Part of me expects Nonna to roll out a huge feast of Italian pastries, but to my surprise she doesn’t offer anything for dessert. Instead, Dylan leans into my ear and asks me if I’d like to get some ice cream.
“Ice cream?” I ask. “I wasn’t expecting that one.”
“It’s a nice night out, and my favorite place when I was a kid is right around the corner. I’d like to take you there. If you feel like it, that is.”
“I’d love to.”
We step out to grab some ice cream before we head back to the city. Before we left, I gave Nonna another huge hug and thanked her again for her hospitality. I didn’t realize how much I needed something like tonight. As she was holding me, she said one last thing to me. “I meant what I said,” she told me. “You must be special to him. I hope you feel the same way about him. My boy is something special.”
Still in her embrace, I hugged her in closer and whispered, “He sure is. You did an amazing job. And don’t tell him, but I feel the same way towards him.”
Dylan didn’t hear our girl talk, but after we left I felt like I didn’t just feel like I had a dinner with a guy I was seeing, it felt like I was a part of something—something I didn’t even realize that I needed. We walk for two blocks until I see the place he’s talking about.
“Here we are.”
I read the sign. “Al’s. That’s it?”
“That’s it?” he asks. He almost sounds disgusted, but when I look at him I can tell he’s joking.
“How dare you! Al’s just happens to be the best ice cream place in the five boroughs, hands down.”
“If I had a nickel for every time somebody said their ice cream place, or pizza place, or where ever, was the ‘best in the five boroughs’, I wouldn’t have had to marry into money—I would have been rich all on my own.”
“That’s an interesting thing you just said.”
“What? You mean insulting your childhood ice cream place?”
“Not that,” he tells me. “The part about Chandler.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
He looks at me sideways. “You said that you had to marry into money. What did you mean by that? That’s a strange way to describe it.”
I didn’t even realize I’d said that in that way, but he’s right. I said that I had to marry into money. “I. . . that was a slip of the tongue. I was just joking around.”
“Are you sure?”
I don’t answer right away. It seems like no matter how much I try to avoid the topic of my ex it seems to come back up. But I realize it’s wishful thinking to expect otherwise. He’s the elephant in the room, and I just let him in to dance.
“What’s the best flavor here? I’m a pistachio girl.”
He doesn’t mind my immediate change of topic—especially when it means we get to order what he’s built up to be the best cone this side of New York. “Well, you’re in luck then, the pistachio is incredible. I’m a mint chocolate chip guy myself, but it really doesn’t matter. That’s the beauty of Al’s—no matter what flavor you like, it’s the best.”
“You sound like you have stock in this place the way you’re gassing it up.”
He smiles. “With all the money I’ve spent here, I should have bought stock. I don’t even want to think about how much of my grandparents’ hard-earned money went directly into Al’s bank account. But it was so worth it—just wait until you taste it.”
We get our cones and walk a little bit. It’s getting darker, but there’s still enough light to feel like the end of the day instead of the beginning of the night, so we walk as I slowly come to the realization that he wasn’t kidding about this being the best ice cream around.
“Oh my God, you weren’t joking, were you?”
“I know my ice cream. This is the shit.”
“You have an amazing grandmother, you know that?”
“I know. I feel bad for her nowadays. I can’t get over here nearly as much as she’d like me to—mostly because of my job, and she’s got no one else in her life since Pop died. It sucks.”
“You’re a good grandson,” I tell him. “You make time for her as best you can. She loves you more than anything in the world, that was clear as day.”
“Well, the feeling is mutual. I help her stay in her own place so that she doesn’t have to move into one of those retirement places—I’ve heard horror stories about them, and no way my nonna was ever going to end up there.”
“Help her?” I ask. “Like, financially?”
“Yeah. Pop was a working-class guy. He had a small pension from his job and a life insurance policy large enough to bury him without Nonna going into debt, but that was about it. She couldn’t afford the apartment on her own, so whatever she can’t cover I make up for, every single month.” I stop walking and turn to him. I go up on my toes and kiss him gently. I can tell he doesn’t expect it because he doesn’t move. “What was that for?” he asks.
“For being a good guy, Dylan. A legit good guy—not a fake one. You work your ass off to make what’s got to be good money, and you use it to help the ones you love. That’s incredible. You’re an amazing person.”
“I’m just happy that I’m in a position to be able to help her. My uncle Pete used to be Graham’s driver. When he stepped down, he put in a good word for me and that’s how I hooked up with Graham and Soraya. I became their driver.”
“I had no idea. It’s funny how life works out sometimes, isn’t it?”
“How do you mean?”
“Just in general. So many coincidences—little moments that take your life in a whole different direction than you ever anticipated. It’s crazy.”
“That’s kind of been the story of my entire life since I was a kid. My parents dying, being raised by my grandparents. My time in the military, and now my jobs at the co-op. It’s all been a bunch of unexpected moments. And this most of all.”
“What?’’
“Here,” he says. “Being here with you. I didn’t see that one coming, at all. I don’t know what we are, or if we are anything that gets its own title, but I really like you. I liked you the second I laid eyes on you, and I never thought I’d ever have a chance to be here with you. That’s the craziest part of all.”
This man is so incredible that I find myself doubting it from time to time. That’s a messed-up thing to say, and I know that it’s all my own baggage. I’m just not used to being around a man who’s as real as Dylan. He’s everything I’ve ever wanted, physically, and the more I get to know him the more I see that he’s everything I want in general—hard working, loyal to his family, and one of the most considerate men I’ve ever met. But those feelings scare the hell out of me. It’s one thing to have an unexpected hookup with a hot guy who’s being nice to you—it’s another to be falling for the guy.
“I’m happy to be here with you, too. And I envy you.”
“Me?” He sounds genuinely surprised. “Why me? I’m a mess.”
“We’re all a mess—but at least you have a way to look after the ones you love. I’d do anything for that right now.”
I didn’t want to spoil the moment before when he told me about paying for Nonna’s rent, but the first thing I thought—well, the second thing, right after thinking what an amazing man Dylan is—was about my sister, and how I’d do anything to be able to hel
p her now that she’s getting cut off from her aid.
He stops walking, and I do the same. I’m not sure why we stopped, but Dylan has the most intense look I’ve ever seen on his face. He reaches down with his free hand and grips mine. “Listen to me. I’m never going to let anything bad happen to your family. I don’t know how, but you have my word that everything is going to be okay. Do you believe me?”
The words that come out of my mouth next shock me, because I know the forces that we’re up against, but I mean every syllable of it. “I do, Dylan. I really, really do.”
23
Penelope
This is how we got here.
Our walk lasted another block or so, and then the inevitable question of “what now” crossed between us. After what he said to me—his pledge to protect me and help keep my family safe—there was only one answer.
Come back to my hotel with me, I told him.
Now, here we are.
Back at my hotel. Back on my bed. Our clothes a distant and silly memory.
His tattoos are such a turn on. As he takes his shirt off, his double sleeves are a thing of beauty for me to look at. They’re colorful and run from his hands all the way to his pecs.
Underneath his buttoned-up exterior, he’s a true alpha male, dripping with the kind of masculinity that practically has its own smell. After his shirt is gone his pants come next, and within a few seconds he’s standing in front of me in his boxer briefs, giving my eyes an overwhelming amount to try and focus on. I don’t know where to start—his chiseled body, his amazing artwork, his gorgeous blue eyes, or the cock that’s hiding inside the final piece of clothing he has on, waiting to be let loose.
His chest tells the story of countless hours spent at the gym, and his arms tell the story of hours spent under the needle. But he has something that most guys with a six pack and some tattoos don’t—he has the confidence to make those things even sexier than they already are.
His self-assurance in life, and in the bedroom, easily makes him the hottest guy I’ve ever been with. A lot of guys acted the part—they played the role of a confident man in public, but they were just actors. Real men—men like Dylan—don’t need to pretend or put on a front.