Then he cast his lot with Sal and he was dead to her.
She never blamed me. She knew what it was. So I never lost her.
It wasn’t like we chatted on the phone daily. But, then again, we didn’t do that shit when Vinnie was alive. But she sent me Christmas and birthday cards, the occasional email update, and I did the same with her.
I knew by the sheepish, hesitant look on Manny’s face as he peered into Benny’s SUV, that he wasn’t looking forward to facing me.
It turned out not to be too hard to let any of the Bianchis off the hook. The thing was, it just kept bringing it back when I was already struggling to move on.
Benny parked and I managed to hop out on my own, even in a pair of high-heeled, platform pumps. I tugged my jacket tighter around me, seeing as we’d hit October, and just that morning, Indian summer said sayonara.
Benny met me on the sidewalk and took my hand in a firm grip as he moved us toward Manny and his woman.
I decided to get it over with quickly and called, “Hey,” on a big smile when we were ten feet away.
Manny blinked in surprise and I saw his woman’s head twitch.
This made me focus on her.
When I did, I noted she was pretty and petite, not a surprise with Manny. He liked them small but rounded, always did. She had dark hair that had a lot of curl, pretty blue eyes, and was wearing much the same as me in a way that told me it wasn’t her normal uniform—platform heels, jacket, sweater, and jeans.
I also saw she seemed tense and I liked that. Not because she was tense, but because she obviously knew what was going down and, equally obviously, was anxious for her man.
In other words, I had to let her off the hook too.
So when we got close, I tugged my hand from Benny’s, moved right in, and gave Manny a hug.
It took him a second, but then his arms closed around me loosely.
They felt good there and there it was. It was done. Standing in Manny’s arms, I was officially back in the fold of the Bianchi family.
This made my voice husky when I said in his ear, “Thanks for gettin’ my car from Hart’s.” Then I gave him a squeeze, leaned back, and gave him a big smile.
He stared at me a second, surprise in his dark eyes, before he said quietly, “No problem, Frankie. Glad I could do somethin’.”
I kept smiling at him as I pulled away and shoved a hand toward his woman. “Hey, I’m Frankie.”
“Uh, Sela,” she replied, taking my hand, her eyes darting between Manny and me. I knew she didn’t want to be rude by not looking at me, but she wanted to take the pulse of her guy.
Yes, I liked her.
To afford her that opportunity, I quickly said, “Nice to meet you,” aiming my smile her way. Then I gave her hand a squeeze, let it go, and looked up to Ben.
“Can we go up real quick so I can grab my laptop and some other shit?”
He was smiling down at me, his eyes warm and happy, his approval of how I’d handled that clear on his face, and his lips moved to say, “Anything you want, honey.”
I shot him a grin, then looked around the group. “We get this done, maybe we can all go to lunch.”
Manny grinned slowly at me. Sela stared at me and shifted closer to Manny.
Benny slid an arm around my shoulders and tucked me tight to his side, muttering, “Sounds like a plan.”
“Right, I’m hungry, let’s go,” I said, moving toward the building, wrapping an arm around Benny, and taking him with me.
I got two steps in before Manny rounded us at the back and stopped us by grabbing my hand.
I looked to him.
He spoke.
“I gotta say—”
“Don’t,” I whispered, curling my fingers tight around his. “Don’t. It’s over. Over for everybody. Just let it be over, Manny. Yeah?”
He held my gaze as his hand squeezed mine hard before he said, “Yeah, Frankie.”
I gave him another smile. He gave me one and let me go.
Benny moved me to the building.
I’d punched in the security code to open the door. We were in the lobby and he kept walking me to the elevators, but he did it dipping his head so he had my ear.
“You know you’re the shit, right?” he said there.
My chest warmed, my lips curled up, and I pulled my head back so he would lift his. When he did I caught his eyes. “Fuck yeah.”
He pulled me closer and did it laughing.
* * * * *
“Fuck it,” I muttered, leaning forward and putting my laptop on Benny’s coffee table.
I heaved myself out of his couch and moved through the house. Destination: garage, where Benny was working on my Z.
Obviously, we collected the Z. We also had a quick bite with Manny and Sela. Man, like his brother, didn’t waste the opportunity my quick forgiveness afforded him. He slid back into the Manny of old, teasing, giving me shit, making a lot of jokes, and generally acting like the annoying little brother you adored for reasons that made no sense, mostly because you adored him because he was annoying.
Sela thawed when she saw I wasn’t going to bust Manny’s chops, not even in a passive-aggressive way, and I was surprised to find she was sweet, kind of in the way Connie was sweet. Apparently, unlike his brother, Manny didn’t want a challenge. He wanted a woman to come there when she was told. Watching them together, I was glad he found what he wanted and a good one at that.
On my way to the garage, I ignored my jacket that I’d slung on the back of one of Benny’s kitchen table chairs. I was thinking I wouldn’t be out in the chill too long, thus I wouldn’t need one. So I walked out, down the stoop and the cement pathway, and I hit the garage. I opened the side door and heard the music, though I’d heard it before I even opened the door. Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam.”
Another urge to smile hit me. There wasn’t a lot of music I didn’t like, but there was no denying I was a metal girl down to my soul. Ben was all about metal too. I knew this from high school. I’d liked it since then, and right at that moment, I liked the idea that if it happened for us, if this worked, there would probably not be a time when we’d fight about what was playing on the stereo.
I moved between his SUV and my Z, which was backed into the garage, and found him under the hood.
There were things a man could do that were normal things to him that he would have no idea would give a private happy flutter to girls like me.
Working under the hood of a car was one of them.
I controlled the flutter and called, “Hey.”
He lifted up from what he was doing and rested his forearms on the filthy blanket he had draped over the side of the car. His hands were greasy, he held some tool in one of them, he turned his eyes to me, and the flutter became harder to control.