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Lauren

“ So, you’re, like, together now?” Ryan asked.

It was late the next morning, and my roommates and I were gathered in the kitchen, Taylor and Ryan seated at the island while I cooked pancakes and caught them up on everything they’d missed.

“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” I said. “We more agreed that it wasn’t as casual as we first thought.”

“No labels,” Taylor said. “Very cool. Very modern.”

I chucked a blueberry at her head.

She dodged out of the way, and Walter went skittering over the hardwood after it.

I turned back to the stove and poured a few more pancakes.

Nic had texted me late, apologizing for not being able to make it back.

Afterward, I’d tried to go to sleep, but I’d been too wired, too worried about what he was up to, if he was okay.

I hadn’t missed the way he flinched every time I touched his side.

Whatever wound was there was still healing, and it made me wonder how often he got hurt, how dangerous his line of work really was.

I’d gotten another text early this morning from him saying that he’d made it back to his apartment safely, and finally, I’d been able to pass out.

We’d agreed to try for something less casual, but I hadn’t really stopped to consider what a relationship with Nic would look like.

How many nights would I spend sleepless and worried about his safety?

How often would he have to race off to follow his dad’s orders?

I could imagine countless scenarios in which it happened.

Post-sex again. While running errands. In the middle of date night at a restaurant, him leaving me to awkwardly finish my meal alone.

Whatever Nic was working on to go legit, I hoped it would happen soon; I didn’t think I had it in me to be a long-term mob moll.

Almost as bad as the thought of him getting hurt was the thought of him hurting other people, possibly innocent people.

There was already too much darkness in Nic’s eyes.

I couldn’t stand the thought of having to watch the last spark of light fade entirely.

I flipped the pancakes, thinking back over the past few days, wondering if I’d been too quick to overlook certain things.

Nic had agreed that there would be no more secrets between us, but I couldn’t shake the thought that there was more he was keeping from me.

Like the oh-so -careful way he said he wouldn’t put more trackers on me . . .

It made me wonder what other lies Nic was telling, by omission or otherwise. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but there was an uneasy feeling in my gut that wouldn’t go away, and I’d learned to trust it over the years. It had rarely led me astray.

I scooped three pancakes onto a plate and turned toward Taylor, setting them in front of her.

She picked up her fork and stuffed one in her mouth, mumbling “thank you” around it.

“You’re welcome,” I said, turning back to the stove, distracted.

I felt unsettled, like I had unfinished business. Not just with Nic, but with my sister, too, and even though I’d planned to spend the day filming, I decided to go see Kristen first to try to have an adult conversation with her for once instead of falling back into our usual childhood bickering.

By the time I sat down to eat, Taylor and Ryan were done with their food, and Ryan was filling us in on Ben accepting Ryan’s offer to work together.

“He’s bringing over his own client list,” they said. “It’s smaller than mine, but that’s good, because I’m trying to do less work, not more, so I can hand some of mine over to him.”

“Was that who you were FaceTiming earlier?” I asked.

Ryan’s cheeks pinked, and they dropped their gaze. “Yup.”

I zeroed in on it. “You think he’s cute.”

Their eyes flashed wide. “What? No.” Ryan was a horrible liar.

Taylor set her coffee down. “Oh my god, you do!”

I poked Ryan’s side with my fork. “You can’t hit on your employee, you ho bag. It’s unethical.”

“He’s not even my employee yet!” Ryan argued, squirming away.

Taylor and I spent the next five minutes teasing them until they finally caved and showed us Ben’s social media.

“Oh, he’s pretty,” I said.

Taylor agreed, grabbing the phone out of Ryan’s hand and punching the screen with her finger. “Oops! Just followed.”

The blood drained from Ryan’s face. “I’ll kill you this time.”

With a shriek, Taylor went sprinting toward the stairs, Ryan hot on her heels, Walter hot on their heels.

I sighed as I watched them disappear up the stairs, praying the insulation was thick enough to smother the noise they were making.

My grandparents’ store occupied the first floor of a hundred-year -old building in the heart of Little Italy. They were both first-generation Americans, their parents fleeing Mussolini and the rise of the fascists in the 1920s.

This country loved shitting on immigrants, despite the fact that almost everyone here was descended from them, and back then, the Italians had been the chosen group to bear the brunt of that hatred, with laws enacted to limit their immigration and prejudice against them running amok.

They were often ostracized and segregated to certain areas, forced to band together to keep safe and preserve their culture while surrounded by people who wanted to tear it apart.

That was part of why there was a “Little Italy” in almost every large city in North America.

My grandparents had been determined to claw their way out of the poverty that ran rampant through the old neighborhood back in the day, and, seeing a need for a deli, they scraped and saved until they were able to open one.

It started small, operating out of the front room of their tiny apartment, before slowly becoming profitable enough that they were able to rent out a storefront.

Now, over fifty years later, Nonna owned the building outright, the ground floor housing a large deli-cum -general store, and the second floor outfitted with a decent-sized three-bedroom apartment that my sister and her family had moved into when they’d taken over the store after Nonno died.

The bell above the door chimed when I walked in, announcing my arrival.

It was midday Sunday, and all the churches in the neighborhood had just let out.

The place was packed. I wove my way through the familiar aisles, memories of running up and down them as a toddler, and then later, stocking shelves as a teenager, flooding my mind.

Everyone knew everyone here, and I stopped several times to exchange pleasantries with my middle school history teacher, a girl I’d played soccer with, and, awkwardly, the first boy I’d ever kissed.

Neither of us made eye contact. I was sure we were both remembering the way he’d come in his pants and then panicked and said he’d pissed himself like that was somehow better.

Hugo, my brother-in -law , saw me approaching and flipped up the section of counter next to the register so I could slip through.

He was a big man, tall, husky, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest. If this were a Scorsese movie, he’d be cast as Goon #2, wearing a full tracksuit and smoking a cigar in the background of a scene while the A-listers discussed offing someone in the foreground.

Most of the time, he put his size to use working guard detail at the estate of Lorenzo Brusomini, the current head of the mob, but on Sundays, Kristen had the day off, and Hugo took over the register.

“Hey, good to see you,” he said, leaning down to give me a one-armed hug.

“You, too,” I said, squeezing him back. “Is Kristen upstairs?”

“Yeah,” he said, releasing me. “Go easy on her, eh? This kid’s giving her a harder time than the other two did. One second, Joe,” he told the man waiting to check out. He turned back to me. “Capiche?”

I nodded, keeping my mouth shut instead of pointing out that of the two of us, I wasn’t the one who started shit. Hugo was Kristen’s husband; it was his job to take her side.

“Hey,” he called as I headed toward the storeroom door. “Be quiet going up. She just put the kids down.”

“I will,” I said, slipping into the back.

I paused when the door clicked shut behind me, taking a deep, calming breath filled with the familiar scents of my childhood: coffee and parmesan and fresh basil and the sweet hint of anise-flavored biscotti, all paired with the gym-sock smell of sliced salami, soppressata, and prosciutto.

It sounded disgusting when listed out, but to me, it was heaven.

I felt safe in here, protected, reminded of my grandparents taking me and my sister in and giving us the best childhoods they could.

With one last inhale, I passed through the door in the back corner and took the stairs up.

“Kristen?” I whisper-hissed after using my key.

“In here,” she hissed back.

I followed the sound of her voice into the living room, where she was sprawled out on the couch, a book in her hand.

She lay on her side, her other hand around her burgeoning belly, where my third niece or nephew was incubating, or growing, or whatever the term was.

Her dark hair was piled on top of her head in a messy bun, and she wore sweats and one of her husband’s old shirts.

There were dark circles under her eyes that made me wonder if she hadn’t been sleeping, and suddenly, I was less concerned about how she treated me than I had been before coming over.

My sister was clearly having a hard time, and even though we didn’t get along that well, I still cared about her.

“How you doing?” I asked, weaving around discarded toys as I made my way closer.

She set her book down and lifted the plastic tub just beside her on the floor. “Well, I’m six months into this pregnancy and still have to cart an emergency puke bucket everywhere I go, so you tell me.”

Her tone was harsh, but I tried not to take it personally. I’d be pissy, too, if I was constantly upchucking. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Can I get you anything?”