Page 11 of The Great Dating Fake Off
I ignore his grumbling. “I’ll drive this thing until the wheels fall off, and that’s that. I’ve had it for a long time. It has sentimental value.”
It was the first big object that was all mine, my first taste of freedom at age eighteen. And when I moved to Arizona for college, and then relocated to Washington for a corporate job, and then was forced to relocate again when the company opened a branch in California, it was my little slice of consistency.
More recently, it was my functional “home” for two weeks during my move to Great River. I drove myself across the country, sleeping at national and state parks along the way as I towed my tiny trailer with barely enough personal effects to fill it. It was the move that marked my final fresh start, at least for a few decades. After a lifetime of being dragged around the country, first by my mother and later by my own circumstances, I was ready to settle in one place.
After the last year and a half, I’m already certain New York was the best choice I’ve ever made.I’m never leaving.
I prop my favorite boots on the dash—white with embroidered flowers, hand-me-downs from my mom’s coastal cowgirl era—and smooth my hand across the armrest. This SUV is a tangible bridge from my past to my present and loaded with memories. As always, when I let myself get attached to something, I have trouble letting it go. My heart is like a sticky trap for sentimental trinkets, moments, and people.
Benji adjusts the rearview mirror. “Parking lot looks pretty full. I’m taking it as a sign from beyond that this week is a horrendous mistake and we should go home.”
I shoot him a look. “This week is happening, Captain Ominous. We came all the way here, and Rosalina is expecting us.”
“She’ll be too busy getting married to care. Hell, she’s probably already forgotten I said we’d come for the week. Why couldn’t we just come the day of the ceremony like I originally wanted?”
“Because she was so excited you agreed to the week. Don’t you remember her squeal? And the rest of your family will care that you’re here. Especially your grandfather. Right?”
He frowns, knowing I’ve trapped him with logic. Benji’s primary interest in going to the wedding for the whole week, apart from appeasing his sister, is to spend time with Santino. The man is his idol. If Benji voluntarily tells a story from his youth without me prying it out of him with the jaws of life, it’s going to involve Santino.
That hasn’t stopped Benji from trying to backpedal his way out of this wedding when his anxiety spikes, though.
In the four days since I committed us to this, he’s popped out of his office only three times: to ask if I really thought our parttime employee would be able to handle the store on her own for six days, to present me with a family tree—complete with pictures—to study (the Ferraros could be named the fertile-os for how many of them there are), and to inform me of the Unmentionables, which are the facts he doesn’t want his family to learn about his personal life. Specifically, that he hasn’t taken the bar exam and never will despite finishing law school, that he doesn’t want kids, and that he’s considering adding a PhD to his degree list for fun.
He pulls into one of the few empty spots and shifts into park.We leave it running for Tairn—who is safely tucked in his travel crate in the back—and venture toward the entrance of the resort to get our keys.
Cool air rushes out to greet us as we step inside the lobby, followed swiftly by a string of Italian swear words. I trace the source four feet to our left where a middle-aged woman yells at another middle-aged woman who looks like the copy-paste version of her. Their conversation is too fast and thickly accented for me to parse exactly what they’re saying.
“Are they yelling at each other or with each other?” I whisper to Benji.
He spares them a fleeting glance. “At.”
“Why would a woman call another woman a di”—I crinkle my nose—“Testa di cazzo.”
“Just ignore it,” Benji grumbles, pulling at the center of his Baltimore Ravens shirt—worn not for the team, but for the mascot—as he casts a look at the crowded lobby. “Let’s not linger in here. I don’t want to get pulled into a million conversations before dinner.”
I quicken my pace to keep up with him. The carpet is a swirl of red and gold, almost as though it’s aflame. A large ornamental fox sits on the rough-hewn mantel of a stone fireplace, standing guard over the lobby’s comings and goings.
A group of twenty or thirty people yell over one another near the check-in counter. A teenage girl has a teenage boy in a headlock. I recognize a few faces from Benji’s meticulously crafted family tree.
To our right, another group of at least ten people I don’t recognize speak in hushed tones. Their posture, as a whole, is more formal. They seem tense, like a coven of vampires who need to feed.
“Okay, so those chatty people by the counter are your family. Ferraros.” I nod toward the huddle waiting to check in. “What about the group over to the right? You think that could be the groom’s side?”
Benji glances over my head. “They look the part.”
A woman with smooth, enviable hair and a classy wool coat from the coven catches my eye. I lift a hand to wave.
She does not return it.
“They seem like a barrel of laughs,” I mutter, dropping my hand.
He dismisses this with a flick of his wrist. “Definitely the groom’s side, then. The Mazzellis are notorious snobs. Don’t take it personally.”
“How do you know the groom’s family?”
His gaze drifts like an ocean current, taking in the sea of people. “Our families have a history.”
“You’re going to have to give me a little more than that, Sugar Cheeks.” I catch his eye. “I’m beta testing nicknames, do you like that one?”
