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Dani leaned her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her fist, her eyes searching Vanessa’s face.

Under the scrutiny, Vanessa felt herself flushing hotter.

To combat the heat, she fished an ice cube out of her glass and sucked on it.

On impulse, she pulled her phone out and showed Dani Scott’s picture, as if it would make him more real, somehow.

Her sister-in-law didn’t remark on his ruggedly handsome face. “How did you meet?” Dani finally asked.

“The Holidates app. Four months ago, the St. Patrick’s Day parade after-party. The date went really well, and we’ve been hanging out ever since.”

“What’s he like?” It was difficult to interpret the expression on Dani’s face. She seemed genuinely interested, but she wasn’t smiling. There was a shadow of something behind her eyes. Maybe it was the rum.

“Well,” Vanessa said, well past keeping her mouth shut.

This fucking punch was like over-priced truth serum.

“He’s about forty. He started a green tech firm with his brother and a college buddy about ten years ago.

He lives on Riverside Drive in this beauuuutiful pre-war building, but he’s from Woodlawn originally.

He’s really down to earth. He’s street smart but also book smart.

Divorced, and no kids. He’s like everything I put on my dreamboat checklist when I was sixteen. ”

Dani ate one of her straggler fries with a thoughtful expression, the space between her eyebrows slightly wrinkled. “He sounds amazing. Does it feel like you’re getting to the serious phase?” She brushed salt crystals and crumbs off her fingertips with a swiping gesture.

“I think so. We…” Taking a deep breath, Vanessa released it in a rush.

A flurry of words came tumbling after. “He’s taking me to the Montreal Jazz Festival for a week.

I was going to go by myself but then Robert and Zoe wanted to go and when he said he’d come too so I wouldn’t be the third wheel I said ‘yeah, sure’ and I just really, really want to get fucked and move on already, you know?

So, yeah. That’ll be our first time together, if everything goes well.

And beyond that, I think this trip will be the test. I’m thirty-five years old.

I’m tired of being alone, and I just want to have my family already. ”

Dani absorbed that information with wide eyes. “Wow.” She seemed lost for words. “Wow.”

“I know, yes, wow, it’s a big deal. But I think I’m ready. I haven’t been with anybody but Santino all this time and I need to see if Scott and I could be a thing.”

“So, you haven’t slept together in all these months? Are you listening to those podcast girlies now or what?” Dani spluttered with a giggle.

“Can’t no podcast girlie tell me anything, okay?

I realized I rushed into things too quickly with Santino.

We went from zero to one hundred so fast it made my head spin, and I got caught up.

If I’d taken my time getting to know him, maybe I would have seen he was still all about that bitch ex of his.

” Seemed like the punch had loosened the anger she usually held in check around Dani, as well as her tongue.

“All this would be different. I wouldn’t still be fighting for my freedom from someone who doesn’t love me.

I don’t even think he likes me, as a person.

” Abruptly, she forced herself to shut the hell up.

She didn’t need to rehash this with Dani or anyone else.

“Things are still early with Scott, but it feels really fucking good to be dating a grown up for once, that’s all. ”

Dani’s face was now somber. “I haven’t wanted to ask since we became friends, but I’ve always felt like there was something missing from this story.

I know you and Tino fought a lot over things, and maybe I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with you guys as a couple, but it seemed like real love.

Did you really break up with him because he got on the app to get Nico a date with me, or because he was friends with his ex?

I mean, I know that seemed disrespectful to you, but was it something you couldn’t work through? ”

Pausing, her mouth dropping open with shock, Vanessa asked, “Is that what he told y’all? That I’m so fucking insecure that him chatting it up with her on the phone was the whole reason I left my marriage?”

It was Dani’s turn to look surprised. “There was something else?”

“Yeah,” Vanessa said, her voice riding on a hard, sharp laugh. “There was something else . If I tell you what happened, will you promise to keep it between us? You haven’t had any liquor in you in a while, and you might get a little lippy.”

Dani made a face. “What, me? Pssh. Baby, I am Fort Knox. Wonder Woman’s lasso couldn’t get a secret out of me,” she scoffed, swaying indignantly on her stool. Then she took another long sip and made a beckoning gesture with her hands. “Bring it. Mix dis punch wit’ some tea, Jamaican gyal.”

“Alright.” Vanessa took another swallow.

The drink opened her well of memories wide as the sea, the beautiful, crystal-clear waters of Aruba.

She dove in headfirst, almost relieved to finally tell her side of the story.

“Santino took Antoinette to Aruba for an overnight trip two weeks after we all got back from the San Gennaro Festival. To the resort where he and I eloped.”

“No. Nooo .” The shock on Dani’s face would have been funny under other circumstances.

“Yes. Yes!” Vanessa said sarcastically. “At the start of our second year married, he was getting calls or texts from her when she was still in Boston in school. She said her parents had died in an accident, and she didn’t have other family.

He insisted they’d never slept together, and they were close old friends.

I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s okay, she’s in a rough spot, she wants comforting. ’ Totally okay.”

Dani’s eyes were huge as she took another long sip of punch. “Nico and Gina did tell me Santino really hadn’t slept with Antoinette in high school. She was saving it for marriage.”

“Okay. But then she meets this guy and gets engaged in grad school and we don’t hear anything for a while.

He was supposedly this rich Norwegian whose family lived in Manhattan.

So, after graduation, she moves back to New York with homeboy and suddenly she’s calling Santino again at all hours of the day and late at night.

Weird hours like three in the morning. Even if they hadn’t slept together in high school, it seemed off to me.

I didn’t like it. I told him that, but he didn’t put a stop to it.

I said I thought it was super disrespectful because he was married, but she was like whatever, she just needed a friend so much even though she was engaged. ”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t have liked that either. I’m with you,” Dani affirmed. “Okay, so what then? Did the fiancé get angry about her keeping in touch like that?”

“I have no idea. What I do know is, Santino comes home one night, two weeks after we’re back from San Gennaro.

He cooks me dinner, which he never does, gives me three big juicy O’s, and then tells me Antoinette came to the station house the week prior.

She said she was on the run from Scandi homeboy and needed Santino to help her get away from him. ”

“The fuck?”

“Mm-hm. She overheard the fiancé talking on the phone about having somebody killed. Like a business competitor. Not killed like ‘crush his business’ but like ‘somebody’s dumping a body Upstate’ killed.”

“What did she want Santino to do? He’s a firefighter, not a cop,” Dani spluttered.

“That’s what I said. But you know about Uncle Paulie.

Santino and that ratchet Dominic went to Uncle Paulie and got her a fake passport, and then set up a bank account under her new false name.

Then he told me he was going to escort her ass down to Aruba to the resort we stayed in and said Nonno’s friend who owned the place would harbor her.

He said the fiancé had resources, so he had to get her as far away as possible. ”

“Shit…he went to the Badinellis,” Dani murmured. “Pop said never do that.”

“Right, exactly. I told him when we got together that I wouldn’t date him if he was involved in anything shady.

Santino either didn’t know or didn’t care that procuring a fake passport was a federal offense which he could get jail time for.

Same with the fake Social Security number and using it to open an account under a false identity.

That’s bank fraud. But he brushed it off like it was nothing.

At that time, I’d just passed the bar and was about to take my oath as an officer of the court.

If anybody were to find out I’d known about a crime about to be committed, that would’ve been my ass too. So long, law license. And…”

Dani put her hand over hers on the table when Vanessa’s lip began to tremble. “And?”

“That guy could’ve found him and h-hurt him for helping her. Santino put himself in danger for her. He risked jail time for her. He took her overnight to the place where we got married, the place that was supposed to be ours. The fuck was I supposed to think except that he l-loved her?”

Dammit, she couldn’t control the wobble of her voice or the salt that prickled at the backs of her eyes.

“All I could assume was he’d been waiting for her to be ready for him and when the chance came, he took it, like some Of Human Bondage shit, which is not nearly as fun as what the title sounds like.

” She laughed and sniffled. “I told him if he left with her, that he shouldn’t plan on coming back, but he did it anyway.

He chose her. And that’s all I needed to know about what he felt for me and our marriage. He ended it, not me.”

Dani’s shoulders slumped, air rushing out between her pursed lips. “Alright, that shit was outlandish. I can’t even fucking find a word that describes how over the top that was for him to do all that. But…”

“Oh, Lord, no. Please. please, please, Dani, don’t. Don’t make excuses for him.” Vanessa put her fingertips to her face and shook her head with her eyes shut.

“I’m just saying. Santino goes hard for his family and his friends.

Too hard, yeah, maybe,” she allowed when Vanessa scoffed.

“But that’s who he is. If he believes someone needs his help, he’s there.

Either way, I have zero doubt how much he loved you and still does.

We don’t talk about him, so you don’t know, but you leaving hurt him, deeply. Nico told me —”

“I knew this would be your response. I shouldn’t have said anything,” Vanessa interrupted, swiping away an angry tear as Dani’s gaze saddened.

She didn’t want to hear about Santino’s pain, not when it was self-induced, not when it couldn’t compare to how he’d crushed her heart. She hiccupped, then suddenly laughed.

Putting her hands together as if in prayer, she pleaded, “Can we stop talking about him? Let’s get more punch. Oh look, there’s Jade after all. Hey, girl!”

She waved, ignoring Dani’s attempts to stay on that dreadful topic with a, “But, Santino…”

Vanessa beckoned Jade over, who grinned at them as she trudged across the lawn.

“Van, he loves you. You know that, right?” Dani asked softly, staring at her with sorrow and sympathy in her expressive dark eyes.

“Ha ha, no. Fort Knox, remember?” Vanessa put her finger to her lips. Then she clapped her hands twice like a royal. “Let the fun commence!”