Page 58

The place is chaotic.

People pack the tables, eating lunch, as the boy working the cash register helps customers, orders piling up. Giuseppe doesn't at all seem concerned about that, though. He's not rushing in any way.

He's enjoying it.

The cashier glances at me as I approach and smiles warmly. "Your usual?"

I have a usual.

Naz would lecture me about that.

"Sure," I say, pulling out some cash to pay, leaving the change with him at the register, like usual, for them to keep as a tip.

There's only one small table empty, a two-seater along the wall that somebody just vacated, leaving their scraps just lying there. Ugh. I clean it off, throwing the trash in a nearby trashcan, and turn back around to take a seat when one of the chairs pulls out and somebody plops down in it.

Un-fucking-believable.

"Excuse me," I say loudly, approaching the table. "I was sitting there."

The guy looks up, and something inside of me twists. I blanch. It's wrong, I know it, and I feel terrible right away, but I physically recoil.

I don't know him, have never seen him before, but he's got a one-of-a-kind face. A horrid scar cuts down the whole side of it, right through his eye. The color of it is milky, cloudy, the blue sort of like a murky lake. It seems to stare right through me.

Vacant.

He notices my reaction. Ugh, he notices. I can tell it in his expression, the way his lips draw into a hard, thin line. It's like he toughened up in just those few seconds, like he's steeling himself because of my reaction to his face.

God, I suck.

I'm a horrible person.

"Apologies," he says. "There was nowhere else to sit."

He roughly shoves the chair back to stand up, but I stop him as I sit down across from him. "No, wait, it's totally okay."

He pauses, halfway out of the seat, and raises his eyebrows.

"There's no reason you can't sit here, too," I say. "I mean, I don't need that chair, and you're right... there's nowhere else to sit. So, really… have a seat."

He looks like he might still leave, and just stares at me in silence, his expression strained, before he settles back into the chair.

Digging through my bag, I pull out a beat-up catalogue of NYU. It'll probably be a while before I get my food, so I might as well go through it again and try to make some kind of decision about what I'm doing.

"So, I'm guessing you're a student?"

He says it quietly as he tinkers with a watch on his wrist, running his fingers along the metal band. It looks crazy expensive, like it might even be a Rolex, but he isn't exactly dressed like a wealthy businessman. Jeans, and a t-shirt, with a pair of white sneakers on his feet. He almost looks like he could be a student, except he's a bit older than me.

Thirty, maybe even older... I don't know.

I'm not good at judging age.

"Yeah, I am."

"What are you studying?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. I've just been kind of taking whatever. I'm actually supposed to declare a major in like, two hours, and I still have no idea what I want to do."

He laughs, the sound low and casual, like that genuinely amuses him. "Not easy deciding your future, is it?"

"Not in the least," I mutter, flipping through the pages of majors. "I've always sucked at making decisions, though, so this really is nothing new. It's just... I guess I have a hard time imagining myself doing any of this forever."

"That's because forever could be a very long time," he says. "Nobody wants to do the same thing forever. Nobody I know, anyway."

"That's what worries me," I say. "I like going to school, and learning, but I'm just not sure where it's going, and if I don't know where it's going, I'm worried there's no point, you know?"

Does he know?

I don't even know this guy and I'm asking him personal existential questions.

"Nah, there's always a point," he says. "So what if you don't do it forever? That's what's great about life... you can always change your mind and do something else instead. So don't think about forever. Think about today. Today might be all the forever you get, anyway."

"Is that how you decided a major?"

"Ah, no… never found myself in that position," he says. "Never went to college. Never even graduated from high school."

"Really? Why not?"

"There was nothing school could teach me that I cared to know," he says. "I found a better teacher out in the real world. I learned how to survive… how to thrive… and that was what mattered to me."

"So what do you do for a living? I mean, if you don't mind me asking…"

"I took over the family business."

"And what exactly is your family's business?"

He hesitates, a small smile tugging the corner of his lips. I think maybe he doesn't intent to tell me, but after a moment he simply says, "Produce."

Produce.

Like… farming?

"So, you grow things?"

"Sure. Well, the workers do… I more so just sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor, so to speak. Not a bad position to be in."

"I bet," I say, turning back to my catalogue. "Sadly, I'm a bit lacking on the family front, so I wasn't lucky enough to inherit any business… or anything, really… so I'm on my own here."

From the corner of my eye, I see his face cloud with confusion. "No family?"

"Well, I mean, I have a husband." Holding my hand up, I wiggle my ring toward him. "And I've got a father-in-law now. He actually owns this place. Otherwise, no… I had a mother, but she died over a year ago, and my father, well, he was a real piece of work. I never knew him, and he's dead now, anyway, so it doesn't really matter. I heard he had a mother that was still around, but I'm pretty sure she wants nothing to do with me considering she wanted nothing to do with him."

"And that's it? No brothers or sisters? No aunts or uncles? No cousins?"