Page 46 of Mafia King
“Tell me!” I demand. “Where are you going? What are you wearing?”
“Come!” She grabs my hand and pulls me past the kitchen.
I wave to Paola and Anette, peek into Tavie’s room to see he’s not there, and let her take me up the narrow, carpeted stairway.
The word QUEEN is stamped across her butt cheeks in pink rhinestones.
“I know you said pants,” she says as we enter her room, which appears to have been a cyclone’s second stop after H&M, “but isn’t this so cute?”
The bed is piled with outfits on hangers. She plucks up a white cotton knee-length dress with an elastic neck that can be pushed over the shoulders and puts it against herself.
“Where are you going to eat?”
“Aldo’s.” She snaps up a yellow bolero jacket and places it on top, twirling in front of the closet mirror.
“What can you eat there that won’t make a mess on white?”
She looks at me, dead serious. “I can handle my sauce.”
I make a doubtfulhmand pick up a blue maxi skirt. Maybe she can handle her sauce and maybe skirts are better than pants, but I don’t care what she wears.
“This date,” I say, handing her the skirt and a white jacket so she knows I trust her with tomato sauce, “happened pretty quick. I mean, did he ask you out today for tonight?”
“We’ve been talking all week.” She poses with the maxi and jacket, then tosses the skirt and picks a pink minidress from inside her closet.
“Really?” Not good. If she’s decided she likes him, she’s going to get sucked in no matter what the terms of her father’s deal are.
“He had to talk to my mom and dad before he asked me.” The white jacket gets flung onto the bed, leaving the pink dress alone. “Make sure there were chaperones and… you know how it is.”
“I do know how it is.” I sift through the hangers, using them to divert my attention from my panic, and her attention from my intentions.
She rushes into the half-bathroom with the pink dress and strips with the door open.
“So you like him?” I say, putting things back into the closet.
“He’s so nice. He said I was beautiful, like, a hundred times. And smart. And he speaks to me in, like, this way… like he appreciates me even talking to him. He sent me the most beautiful flowers.”
“The ones out front?”
“Aren’t they gorgeous? And not just one dozen, but two!” She comes out barefooted, wearing pink, and turns to look at her backside in the mirror. “This needs to be, like, two inches shorter.”
“I think if you dress it up with accessories and something over your shoulders, it’ll be good.”
“You’re right!” She rushes back into the bathroom. “You have such good taste!”
She’s about to dive into shark-infested waters. I couldn’t care less what bathing suit she wears when she does it.
Giving up on rehanging everything, I stand in the bathroom doorway as she slides chunky bracelets around her wrist. “Gia, listen, he’s not what you think.”
In the mirror, I see her get immediately defensive. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m sure he likes you, because who wouldn’t?” I try to soften the blow. “But… remember me? My situation?”
“That worked out okay.”
This sucks. I am absolutely, horribly, terrible at subtlety. I have to spit the toad, as Santino would say.
“I overheard something on Sunday.”
