Manny had never gotten so many gifts herself before. Everyone had bought her something. She’d done the same for everyone else, but she’d gone online with Luca and had him point out what she should get for people.
She hadn’t told anybody what she wanted. She wouldn’t have been able to say if she’d been asked. She didn’t usually know about things she wanted until she saw them.
But as she unwrapped each gift, she found amazing things. A leather cuff with little silver studs around it. A first pressing of a Hüsker Dü LP. An awesomely weird ceramic frog. A box of six little disco balls. A skull ring with faux ruby eyes. A set of ten nail polishes, all in weird colors.
She hadn’t asked anyone for any of that. But it was all awesome. She felt grateful and guilty and loved and unworthy, all of it swirling crazily in her chest.
With an excuse that she needed the bathroom, she locked herself in there and counted backwards from five hundred. Then did it again.
These people knew her. When had that happened?
When she came back out, everyone was carrying on as if they hadn’t noticed her leaving. Everyone but Luca, who watched her carefully as she sat next to him again on the loveseat.
“Okay, little bit?”
“Yeah. Just needed a break. I’m good.”
He studied her eyes for another second and then, with a nod, went back to his pile. Manny ignored the last gifts in her stack and watched him instead. He hadn’t gotten to hers yet, but it looked to be next. She was nervous about it. The fight poster for his birthday had gone over well; he’d seemed honestly pleased. That success had emboldened her to try to guess again for Christmas.
Leaning awkwardly down over his braced leg, he picked up the smallish cube that was her gift to him. He read the tag, smiled broadly at her, and slid his finger under the tape on the underside. She watched, steeped in a brew of hope, curiosity, and nerves.
“Aw, wicked! Bit, that’s great! Thank you.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. She’d grown to love that touch from him, the way his beard scratched her skin softly.
As he opened the box and pulled the big watch out, she said, “It’s a Ducati. I thought it was hot.”
His grin seemed sincere. Though her detection skills were imperfect, she generally understood Luca—at least better than she did anyone else. So when he grinned and said, “I love it—and I love even more that you think it’s hot,” she believed him completely.
He put it on right away and showed it around. Everybody gushed. She’d done okay.
When she got to the end of her pile, which included a couple of funky sweaters and a beanie that Sabina had knitted with her actual hands, she realized that there had been no present for her from Luca.
She went through the tags of her gifts again. Nope.
Ouch.
As she stared at her stack of suddenly deficient booty, she felt Luca lean over her shoulder, and his deep voice filled her ear—low, so only she heard. “Sorry, bit. It’s hard for me to get around right now. I’ll make it up to you, though. I promise.”
“It’s okay.” That was a lie, and it tasted sour on her tongue, but it was the thing she was supposed to say right now, and in front of all of his family, she didn’t want to say the other things in her head.
That was progress, in a way. Holding her tongue.
“It’s not. I know. But I’ll make it worth the wait. I love you.”
She turned so that they were almost nose to nose. His nose was actually almost perfectly straight now; the last break seemed to have fixed the fault in it from previous breaks. But he did have a new scar across the bridge. And another under his left eyebrow. She liked them.
“I love you, too. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, little bit.”
oOo
Manny’s family arrived shortly after the men had cleaned up the living room and while the women were preparing brunch. Manny, with zero cooking skills unless a microwave was involved, had been assigned table-setting duty. Trey had wanted to help, so she let him help her. Trey’s settings were all a bit askew, but he was quite serious about his work. After the first couple, she went with it, too, and they’d made a crazy-quilt kind of table. It was fun. Who knew what anybody else would think of it.
When her family got there, things got odd, but not for the reason she would have expected. She’d thought her parents would feel awkward, and she’d been certain Dmitri would, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Instead, everybody dropped everything and went back to the living room. Manny stood in the hallway, having just greeted her parents and brother, while they and the Paganos streamed past her and found themselves seats around the tree.
Luca limped up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Come on, bit. Have a seat with the family.” She let him take her hand and lead her to sit in a midnight blue velvet armchair, which had once been his mother’s favorite chair.
Everybody was looking at her. She was trying to hold her tongue, but she didn’t have much left before she was going to need to ask what the FUCK was everybody’s damage. Luca limped over to Dottie, who handed him something. With his back to her, she couldn’t see what. But Dottie was grinning like she was high on something. And maybe crying. Jeez, was she crying?
“Luca, what the fuck?” Yep. The timer had run out on her tongue-holding. Oh, Trey was there. Fuck. Other than a few chuckles, though, nobody seemed to react to her salty language in front of the minor. And Trey was reading one of his new books, not paying attention to the sudden group psychosis around him.
Luca turned awkwardly, his braced leg swinging out a little. “Like I said, it’s not so easy to get around right now, so I needed some help. But you didn’t really think I’d skip a gift for you on our first Christmas, did you?”
That was what he’d told her, so she believed him. She didn’t like lies, and she didn’t like tricks. Feeling defensive and unhappy, surrounded by grinning idiots and not knowing why, Manny shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.”
“Bit. You underestimate me.” She saw now that he had a small box in his hand. He sat down in front of her, on the big steamer trunk that served as a cocktail table. They were almost knee to knee, his bad leg stretched out at the side. “Traditionally, I’m supposed to get down on one knee now, but I only have one that works, so…”
Manny’s heart did something strange. Filled with air, or something. “Wait—what?”
The box was black leather. He opened it and turned it to her. “Emmanuelle Timko, I love you. You’ve touched every part of my life and made it better. You’ve touched me and made me better. I want to spend my life with you. So, would you maybe marry me?”
The room around them was completely silent, except for some masculine sniveling that was coming from her father, of all people. Manny stared down at the diamond ring. A small solitaire, set in white gold or platinum. Or silver—she didn’t know from metals. On either side of the solitaire, set in tiny, sparkling stones, was a delicate butterfly.
Butterflies. She’d never told him about butterflies. She’d expected him to think it too unmanly.
“Butterflies?” She looked up at him. The ring was still nested in the box, and the box was still held out in Luca’s hand.
He smiled—and blushed a little. Leaning in even closer, his voice barely a murmur, he said, “Sometimes, since that night with the E—the good night—when we’re…you know…close, you whisper ‘butterflies.’ I always thought it was kinda hot. Strange, but hot. And then I thought maybe I figured out what it meant. It’s like not-spiders, right?”
She nodded. “You’re butterflies. Everybody else is spiders.”
“Jesus, Manny. You have no idea how much I love that.”
He knew everything about her. He understood her. Like no one in her life ever had. Not even Dottie and her dad. Not her brother. Nobody.
And then, with a flash, she understood that the big stack of perfect presents from everybody around her—that had been Luca’s doing. She knew, without being told,
that he’d done for them what he’d done for her. He’d told them all what she would love to have. Because he knew.
The Ducati watch he was now wearing seemed pretty silly in comparison. But it was the best she’d ever done. And she knew he knew that, too.
“Hey, you two. Is there an answer or what? Nobody’s breathing over here!” That was Carlo. Luca turned from her and grinned at his older brother. The grin stayed as he brought his gorgeous, glittering, moss-green eyes back to hers.
“What d’ya say, bit?”
Her throat had closed completely, and her head felt weirdly stuffed. She couldn’t make words. So she nodded. She nodded and nodded, and Luca, the ring still in the box clutched in his hand, pulled her into his arms. Their family cheered around them. She could hear Dottie bawling.
She held on to Luca, feeling butterflies everywhere.
Epilogue
“You want some help?”
At Luca’s question, Manny turned around. “Nope. I’m good,” she gritted around the nails she had in her teeth.
“Sugar, you’re asking for trouble. Get those things out of your mouth before you swallow ‘em. Where’s your belt?” He’d gotten her a little tool belt. She looked wicked hot with that thing strapped over her hips. He had some ideas for that.
She spat out the nails into her hand. “It hangs on my hips funny. It’s too big.”
He stepped over the threshold.
“Hey! You didn’t ask!”
“Sorry, sorry. May I please enter, milady?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes. The belt’s over there, on the ladder.”
He went to the ladder, set up in the middle of the room, and picked up the little belt. “I’ve got an awl in the other room. I’ll poke some holes for the buckle.”
“An owl?” Her brow furrowed in a perfect picture of confusion.
He snickered. “Damn, you’re cute. No. Awl. With an ‘A.’ It’s a tool. For making holes.”
“Okay, Toolman. Whatevs. Shoo. I’m creating over here.”
“Hey—you’re not nailing through the wires, right?”
The offended glare she aimed at him could cut glass. “No.”
“Sorry. Had to ask.”
She was nailing strands of party lights around the room, and not in any pattern or order Luca could discern. What she’d hung so far—strands of chili pepper lights, little hot-air balloons, butterflies, stars, and, currently, goldfish—were nailed up randomly, like spaghetti thrown at the wall. Holy shit, he could already tell that this room, when she was finished, would be more chaotic than her apartment bedroom.
This room. Manny’s room. Where no one could enter uninvited. Where she could put all of her crazy stuff. Or most of it, anyway—she had a lot of crazy stuff, more than he could live with. But she had a room for it, now. Here, in their house. That they owned together. Him and his wife.
Carlo missed no opportunity to crow about how Luca, who’d sworn he’d never have a girlfriend, was a married man before Carlo and Sabina had had their first anniversary. Luca thus missed no opportunity to remind him what a blazing shit he’d been to Manny at first, and how wrong he’d been.
They’d married in late February, not for any reason other than they’d wanted to be married and it had been the first possible weekend at Christ the King. It had been a small Mass with only family, and then dinner at the house, also only family. Manny was not capable of dealing with the stress of a big production, and Luca had no interest, either.
Uncle Ben and Aunt Angie, Uncle Lorrie and Aunt Betty, and Nick had all come, as well. Luca had taken Nick’s advice and gone on about his life. By the wedding, they no longer had people keeping watch over them. Knowing that his days of being even slightly in the know were over, Luca assumed that the lack of guards meant that they were safe. There had not been much being reported in the news anymore that caught his attention, either. Maybe the war was over. If so, it looked like the Uncles had again prevailed.
The Uncles had given him and Manny $50,000 as a wedding gift. They’d immediately added it to the funds they’d pooled (okay, compared to Manny, Luca was loaded, so it had been mostly his pool, but now it was theirs), and now they owned a house across the street from the beach, right at the edge of town. It was tucked into woods at the back and had perfect views of the water from the second floor loft, which was their bedroom. A wide, raised deck around two sides of the house completed the perfection.
The perfection it was becoming. What they’d bought, with the perfect location and great bones, was a fixer. But Luca had been pleased about that, too. Now that he ran Pagano & Sons, his days of swinging tools at work were almost completely behind him. He’d enjoyed leaving work and heading over to the house, putting a couple of hours in before Manny was home. They’d spent every weekend working on it, too. All the family had helped. Even Joey had put in some time with a paintbrush.
Joey was doing better. Getting him finally to go back to work seemed to have helped him find his life again. It would never be the same. He would never be the same. But he was not helpless, and he was realizing that again.
Luca and Manny had stayed in her apartment until the house was livable—a new kitchen and bathroom, refinished floors, new drywall, fresh paint. They’d finally moved in a couple of days ago, and it was time to nest.
They’d struck a compromise between his need for order and hers for clutter. The living room was furnished with his furniture from his apartment. Danish, with clean lines and neutral, solid colors. Their electronics, books, and music were the dominant décor. The kitchen was a lot busier, but in an orderly way. Neither of them cooked, though they were both making the occasional attempt, so neither was especially invested in what the kitchen looked like. Manny had one of the spare rooms to do with as she pleased. The guest room looked like a guest room—Manny’s bed, refinished, a dresser, and a nightstand. Not a room they cared about for themselves.
The bedroom was where they’d really compromised. His furniture, which was bigger, newer, and sturdier—also, it matched. But she’d chosen the bedding, which was fucking psychedelic. There were a lot of things hanging on the walls, but they were sensibly organized.
Somehow, they’d made a home that they were both comfortable in. In the same way they’d found a way to live a life they were both comfortable in.
His wife was the most complex, complicated person he’d ever known. He’d had to learn a whole new way to see the world, a whole new way of being, in order to give her the space she needed to learn how to love, how to let him touch her the way she touched him. His life was richer and deeper for it—for her. Fuller. Complete. Nearly perfect.
He made some new holes in her belt and brought it back to her. “Here, you go. Use your tools the right way, young lady.”
She raised her arms, and he fixed the belt around her waist. “Yes, Dad. You came in uninvited again.”
“Hey, I’m doing something nice for you over here. A little consideration, maybe?” She stuck out her tongue, and he bent down and kissed her. “Shout if you need me. I’m still outside.”
While Manny was freak-ifying her room, Luca had been out on the deck—his favorite place of the house—building a rack for his boards. He didn’t care what the doctors said; he knew his body. His knee felt good. His back felt good. He felt good. It had been six months. He was getting back out there.
He’d bought a longboard. If it kept him on the waves, then there was no shame in a longboard.
oOo
He met Carlo just after dawn on a Saturday in May. Luca had been at the beach for more than half an hour, just soaking in the salt air, getting his mind in the right place. If he’d said he wasn’t anxious about what he was about to do, he’d have been lying, and that wasn’t his style. He didn’t lie to himself or anyone else.
He felt good. Strong. But the doctors felt certain that surfing was beyond him. He knew that if they were right, and he went out anyway, he could end up fucking his leg for real and true. Like possibly losing t
he bottom half.
But he wanted this—no, he needed it. He’d been surfing since he was six years old. Nearly thirty years. He intended to be surfing for forty more, at least.
Manny had stayed home. She understood, but she didn’t want to watch. Just in case.
So he stood alone in the sand with his new longboard under his arm and watched the waves. Morning glass was just wearing off the water, and the waves were mushy. Good. He wasn’t nuts—he didn’t want to make this attempt in heavy surf.
“You ready for this, brother?” Carlo was coming up behind him, carrying his shortboard, already leashed.
Carlo hadn’t even questioned Luca’s intent. He’d been surfing since he was six, too. And he’d just bought Trey his first board. He got it.
“Let’s do it.” Luca leashed his board to his ankle, and he and Carlo set out into the water.
Touch (The Pagano Family Book 2) Page 35