He squeezes my shoulders. “Come spend the holiday with us this year?” Christmas lights reflect gold and green in his eyes as he looks down at me. “Unless you have other plans?”
I don’t have other plans. Bobby has been furious this entire year straight that he and Robin are committed to spending the holidays on a cruise with Robin’s family because Robin’s eldest sister has decided to get married while everyone is together. Up until today, my vague plan has been turkey for one plus Smirnoff, gelato on tap, and the TV on. I haven’t actually been depressed about the idea, it’s felt simple and unfussy. I’ve been eyeing up new pajamas and saving a bottle of champagne just for the big day.
But what now? Gio has offered me a seat at the Belotti dinner table. I don’t need to be the little kid with her face pressed against the window this time, or even the woman telling herself her lonesome Christmas is stylish and independent. I long to say yes, to experience a real family Christmas Day.
“I’d love to,” I say, and I do an internal double-take at myself for blurting the words out before my head and my heart have had at least a ten-minute ruck about it. “Only if you’re sure? You can change your mind, I won’t be offended.”
His laugh comes easy and warms my cold cheeks. “I won’t change my mind.”
Okay, then. Christmas with the Belottis it is. It sounds like a movie I’d queue to see, and I stand there in the middle of the over-the-top lights of Dyker Heights and try to remind myself that Christmas Day falls before my New Year’s Day deadline, and to get a grip and soak in this temporary joy.
* * *
—
“THAT WAS BONKERS,” I say, back in the cherry-leather comfort of the Cadillac with the heaters on full. “Fabulous, but bonkers.”
“Bonkers,” he says.
The word sounds ridiculous in his accent.
“You know, crazy but fabulous,” I say.
“I know what the word means,” he says.
He pulls out into the slow-moving traffic and I settle back in my seat, my elbow on the armrest between us.
“I’m buying myself one of these,” I say, the brandy warm in my bloodstream. “I’ll roll grandly around New York in it every night.” I close my eyes and smile, my head tipped back against the seat. “I’ll take Smirnoff with me for the ride, and we’ll become infamous as that eccentric English woman and her stand-offish cat. We’ll wear sunglasses in the summer and matching knitted scarves in wintertime.”
He doesn’t reply, and I open one eye and find him pulled up at a red light and looking at me.
“You’re a sight for my sore eyes,” he says, and then he puts his hand on my knee and leaves it there when he pulls away from the light.
I remember back to confessing to Bobby about Gio’s good hands, and here we are a few months later with that very same hand resting on my knee. I cover it with my smaller one in the darkness of the car, and the only word I can put to how I feel is content. It’s not precisely the right word. Ideally I’d like something that combines content with a side order of the need to climb Gio Belotti like a tree, but he’s driving and this is one precious vehicle, so content will have to be enough for now.
“Where are we going?”
“Wait and see.”
I squeeze his hand. “Another surprise?”
“Yes.”
“Will I need more brandy?”
“You might.”
“You don’t like surprises,” I say. “You said so the other day.”
“I did?”
I nod. “To Sophia.”
“I probably used to like surprises, as a kid.” He keeps his eyes on the road. “These days, not so much.”
Shop facades and illuminated street signs throw colors across his profile as we move through the dark streets, electric blues, strobes of red. His thumb strokes my kneecap, a steady back and forth.
“You’re a very grown-up grown-up,” I say, with the tongue-loosening benefits of brandy.
He shoots me a look out the corner of his eye. “I guess I’ve had to be.”
I nod. I get that. I’ve no one else to be responsible for but myself, and I’m not all that great at that sometimes. Gio has the weight of caring for Bella and his family on his shoulders.
“You don’t have to feel responsible for me,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
He’s frowning as he drives, and I search my head for better words.
“I just meant that you already have a lot of people relying on you,” I say. “You don’t have to add me to the list of people you need to worry about. In fact, let me be the one with the list, and you on it.”
He makes a left turn on to a parking lot, and I squint into the darkness beyond the windscreen.
“Is that the sea?”
“The Atlantic Ocean,” he says. It doesn’t feel like a correction, more a wistful observation.
“We’re at the beach?”
“Coney Island.”
“As in the amusement park?”
“The rides are closed up for winter, but yeah. Shall we walk a while?”
The air outside is brisk, salty on my lips as we head for the wooden boardwalk.
“It’s so packed here on a summer’s day you can hardly move,” Gio says.
It’s certainly not like that right now. There’s barely a handful of people out on the wooden boardwalk tonight, a couple of dog walkers and the occasional hardy runner. We have the place pretty much to ourselves, and I feel eighteen again when Gio takes my hand as we stroll, roller coasters silhouetted on one side of us, the ocean on the other. I haven’t walked hand in hand with anyone in…I don’t honestly know how long. Adam wasn’t a PDA kind of man, even in the early days.
“We can grab some food if you’re hungry?”
“Maybe in a while,” I say, because I’d be happy to just walk like this until we run out of earth.
He passes me the brandy and I take a nip, my eyes on the outline of the big wheel. The cars have all been removed and mothballed for the winter, leaving just the spoked steel wheel arcing against the skyline.
“Bella was so scared on that one she cried all the way around,” he says, following my gaze. “She was only this high.” He indicates with his hand by his hip. “Stamped her feet to go on and then couldn’t wait to get off.”
It reminds me that his whole life history is wrapped around this city; tonight has been new to me but a trip down memory lane for him.
“My mother took me to a version of this as a kid,” I say, recalling the occasional Southend trip. “It was smaller, of course, but it has this same ramshackle beachside thing going on.” I laugh softly at an unexpected memory of my mother’s red fifties-style sundress. It was entirely inappropriate for roller coasters—not that it stopped her for one moment. “Fish and chips, bumper cars, bucket-and-spade days.”
“It’s Nathan’s hot dogs here,” he says.
We walk on a little farther, each absorbed in our own thoughts, and I take a good slug of brandy to ward off the chill. It’s good stuff—however cold it is tonight, I am fire inside.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I say.