Family Man E-Book

Heidi Cullinan

• Herausgeber: Dreamspinner Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 339

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Sometimes family chooses you. At forty, Vincent "Vinnie" Fierro is still afraid to admit he might be gay—even to himself. It'll be a problem for his big, fat Italian family. Still, after three failed marriages, it's getting harder to ignore what he really wants. Vinnie attempts some self-exploration in Chicago's Boystown bars, far from anyone who knows him. Naturally, he runs smack into someone from the neighborhood. Between working two jobs, going to school, taking care of his grandmother, and dealing with his mother's ongoing substance abuse, Trey Giles has little time for fun, let alone dating someone who swears he's straight. Yet after one night of dancing cheek-to-cheek, Trey agrees to let Vinnie court him and see if he truly belongs on this side of the fence—though Trey intends to keep his virginity intact. It seems like a solid plan, but nothing is simple when family is involved. When Vinnie's family finds out about their relationship, the situation is sticky enough, but when Trey's mother goes critical, Vinnie and Trey must decide whose happiness is most important—their families' or their own.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Blurb

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

About the Authors

By Heidi Cullinan

By Marie Sexton

Visit Dreamspinner Press

Copyright

Family Man

By Heidi Cullinan and Marie Sexton

Sometimes family chooses you.

At forty, Vincent “Vinnie” Fierro is still afraid to admit he might be gay—even to himself. It’ll be a problem for his big, fat Italian family. Still, after three failed marriages, it’s getting harder to ignore what he really wants.

Vinnie attempts some self-exploration in Chicago’s Boystown bars, far from anyone who knows him. Naturally, he runs smack into someone from the neighborhood.

Between working two jobs, going to school, taking care of his grandmother, and dealing with his mother’s ongoing substance abuse, Trey Giles has little time for fun, let alone dating someone who swears he’s straight. Yet after one night of dancing cheek-to-cheek, Trey agrees to let Vinnie court him and see if he truly belongs on this side of the fence—though Trey intends to keep his virginity intact.

It seems like a solid plan, but nothing is simple when family is involved. When Vinnie’s family finds out about their relationship, the situation is sticky enough, but when Trey’s mother goes critical, Vinnie and Trey must decide whose happiness is most important—their families’ or their own.

For everyone who’s stuck on the merry-go-round. We wish we could give you all big fat Italian families.

Acknowledgments

THANKS TO Dan, Lisa, and Jo for being outstanding beta readers as always.

I don’t care how poor a man is. If he has family, he’s rich.

—Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford

Chapter One

THE TRUTH about Vincent Fierro’s sexual orientation came to him as he lay underneath a client’s sink, unclogging onion skins from a busted garbage disposal in a two-bedroom condo on Aldine. I wonder, he mused, if maybe I’m gay.

The thought made him jerk his head back against the sink trap hard enough to give him a goose egg, and he swore under his breath as he tried to push the alarming idea away and focus on the job at hand. Though the job was tedious, it was uncomplicated, and no sooner had he dismissed the dark little thought it was back again.

It was stupid. Vince knew he wasn’t gay.

He blamed the onion fumes and his rumbling stomach, imagining them tangling with the knowledge he hadn’t had a date in a month and hadn’t been laid since Cara Paglia had taken him home to cheer him up after his last divorce, which had been in October. It had been too long since he’d given the old boy a ride, so long that answering a call for a gay married couple made him think for one idiot second this was his problem, why he had broken his mama’s heart with divorce number three. Maybe he was looking in the wrong pasture.

Vince rolled his eyes at himself and pulled out more onion goop. It was middle age. It was his sister-in-law the beautician at dinner the night before suggesting he let her start coloring and highlighting his hair now while the gray was barely noticeable. It was realizing a couple days a week at the gym and walking from Emilio’s to his brother’s house every other Sunday wasn’t enough to keep his three-year-old niece from asking if she could rest her head on his “nice squishy tummy” while they watched Tangled for the fiftieth time. It was finding out kids born the year he graduated high school were now legal to drink. It was his latest ex-wife leaving him for a twenty-eight-year-old.

It was not because he was gay. Because Vince wasn’t gay. You didn’t marry three women and sleep with how many others and then decide—with your head under a sink and your eyes stinging of onion—that since you were thirty-eight and single you must be gay. Sex with another man wasn’t some random idea to try on when you’d gone through everything else.

Of course the little devil in the back of his mind had to whisper, It isn’t exactly a random idea, now, is it, Vinnie?

Clearing his throat and mentally drop-kicking the devil back to the rock he lived under, Vince pulled the last of the onion muck out of the housing, wiped his hands on a towel, and aimed his flashlight at the naked unit. His brain was blissfully occupied now with assessing rings and seals, and he grimaced as he saw both the blade and the hopper would need to be replaced. Given the unit itself was almost old enough to drink, they’d be better off getting a new one. Pushing himself out from inside the cupboard, Vince adjusted his T-shirt and followed the sound of voices down the hall to give his clients the news. He stopped outside the closed door to the home office, however, caught up in the hushed tones of their conversation.

“—feel so stupid. Why do onion skins clog a sink? Isn’t that what a garbage disposal is for?”

“It doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s old. Maybe the new ones can take it no problem. Don’t beat yourself up, sweetheart.”

“We don’t have the money for this, Kyle. Not with me laid off. God, but I wish—” The speaker broke off, and Vince thought he caught a muffled sigh.

“Shh. Hush. It’s going to be all right. You’re going to get another job. And if we don’t replace the disposal right away, then we’ll do without for a little while.”

“That’s all we’re doing, living without. And it’s all my fault—”

The first man was quite clearly near tears, but Kyle only got calmer and gentler the more upset his partner became. “It is not your fault. It’s the slimy subprime mortgagers and those assholes who made trading their shit a game who started this.”

“I should never have switched jobs. Never. If I’d stayed at First Union, I’d have seniority, and I’d still have a job.”

“Bill, stop. You’re making yourself crazy over a clogged sink.”

“That’s what I feel like! A clogged man.” The speaker choked back a sob before adding in an angry whisper, “I don’t know what the fuck you still see in me. I wouldn’t even blame you if you went off with some hot young thing with healthy self-esteem, a full head of hair, and a job.”

“If he had good health-insurance benefits and a low-mileage vehicle, I might be tempted.” On the other side of the door, Vince imagined Kyle lifting the other man’s chin and staring him in the face as he spoke. “Honey, I know this is rough. And I know damn well I’d be the same kind of wreck if it’d been me laid off for eighteen months. But you have to stop beating yourself up. You didn’t break the garbage disposal. It just broke. You didn’t make a bad move on your job. You got screwed. And I don’t care if you lose every hair on your head and gain twenty pounds. I love you, I married you, and you’re going to have to work a lot harder than this to get rid of me.”

No more sounds came from the room into the hallway except the occasional soft smack of lips parting and reuniting at a new angle. Vincent slipped quietly back to the kitchen, where he leaned on the wall next to the fridge and shut his eyes against the strange ache inside him.

That. He wanted that. Even as he reassured himself that was simply a healthy relationship he’d heard, not a magical gay relationship, he couldn’t stop the deeper, more aching whisper from rising inside him. I want a man to treat me like that.

Pushing the thought away in a panic, he headed back down the hallway, louder this time, clearing his throat and rapping smartly on the wood. The taller blond man opened it, moving to shield his partner from view as he blew his nose noisily into a tissue. “Finished already?”

Vince cleared his throat a second time. “Here’s the deal. It’s an old unit. I’m not gonna lie. A good chunk of the guts are dull or near to useless. The clog didn’t help much, but all it did was point out trouble that was already there.”

The man grimaced. “I see. So we need a new unit.”

“Well, that’s the thing.” Vince rubbed the back of his neck. “It’d be best, yeah. But if you wanted, you could limp this along a bit longer, if you were careful. I can jimmy the blade a bit, buy you time. It’d mean you’d be putting a lot of junk you’d normally send down the disposal into the trash instead until you replaced it. No onion skins. No potato peels or carrot shreds. But soggy cereal, pasta—anything that isn’t stringy or sticky or hard—would be okay in small batches and with a lot of water. Give it extra time to chop, ’cause it’ll need it. And in the meantime, you can save up for what you want. Do some research on how powerful you want it and then watch for a sale. I’ll leave some names for brands to watch for and ones to avoid. When you get what you want, give us a call, and we’ll install it.”

The blond man didn’t answer right away, meeting Vince’s gaze instead as he took it all in. A silent conversation seemed to follow.

Heard us, did you?

Yep. Just trying to help. Know what it’s like.

And you don’t mind that we’re gay, big burly Italian boy like you?

Vince shrugged and averted his eyes.

“Thank you,” the man said. “I believe we’ll take your advice and limp along until we can save up. That was very thoughtful of you to suggest such a plan.”

“Not a problem.” Vince jerked his head toward the kitchen. “I’ll clean up and do a quick job on the blade. You want to put a cake pan or something under it for tonight. It shouldn’t leak, but if it does, that means you start shopping right now.”

“I will,” the man promised.

Vince felt good about himself for helping people in a tight spot, trying not to think of all the crazy shit he kept trying to think of instead. He was doing really well all the way up until he was scribbling brand names on the back of a business card and the blond man came into the kitchen holding out an envelope. “I want you to have these. They’re vouchers for tickets to a theater I manage down on Broadway.”

Vince held up a hand in protest. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I do.” The man smiled. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I know you heard us talking about money. And I also know you haven’t so much as batted an eye at the fact that we’re gay men.”

“Well, we are in Lakeview,” Vince said, voice heavy with meaning, and hoped he didn’t have to finish the rest of that sentence.

“You’d be surprised.” He thrust the tickets at Vince again. “Please. They’re good anytime from now through the rest of the year. Consider them a token of my sincere appreciation. And stop by the office if you use them. I’ll make sure you get good seats and complimentary drinks for the night.”

Not knowing what else to do, Vince took the envelope with a gruff nod.

The man caught his hand and squeezed it gently. “I hope someday someone gives you the kind of lift you gave me and my husband tonight. And be sure of it, I’ll be using Parino Brothers Plumbing from now on.”

Vince escaped shortly after that, leaving his card and a bill and accepting a check and two enthusiastic handshakes before heading back to the van. The strange flush of emotions and potential self-discoveries went back to the shop with him, and they followed him home as well, lingering through his solitary meal, a soak in the tub, and all the way through two glasses of brandy.

Chapter Two

THE NAGGING questions about Vince’s sexuality lingered even a few days later, and he blamed them for his desire to stop by his family’s restaurant without so much as a guilt trip from his mother.

Emilio’s Café had been on the corner of Taylor and Morgan since 1952 when Vince’s grandfather had kept his promise to give his wife a “little place to show off the best Italian cooking in Chicago” as soon as he got back from the war. He’d been back from the war for several years by then, obviously, but Giorgio Fierro had forgotten to check the price of Little Italy real estate before he’d made his bold vow. Which was why the café hadn’t been named Marisa’s Café, as he’d planned, but Emilio’s, after his great uncle who he’d finally persuaded to lend him the money on the condition of free meals for life and his name emblazoned on the sign above the roll-out awning. And the place mats, and the napkins, and the matchboxes, and even on the glasses and coffee cups, the latter two which were still stolen by college students wanting to take home a souvenir of their favorite hangout.

Plenty of University of Illinois students littered the restaurant when Vince stopped by, most taking up the big, curving booths in the back, but a group sat at the circular table in the middle, and several dotted the bar as well. Uncle Frank was manning that station, his wild salt-and-pepper (though mostly salt at this point) hair sticking out in at least seven directions, further solidifying his legend as “the crazy old man who puts hot sauce in your drink if he thinks you gave him a fake ID.” If only the kids knew how later Frank would go home and get teary over Lifetime Movies of the Week.

When Frank saw Vince come in, he stopped glowering at his customers long enough to give his nephew a nod.

“Vinnie!” The cry was the only warning Vince got before his cousin Vera tackled him from behind in a hug. Then she whapped him on the arm with a dishtowel. “What do you think you’re doing, not coming by the café for so long?” She’d moved in front of him now, her dark eyes narrowing beneath her wild mane of soft-permed hair. “You been eating at that Greek place again? Is that it?”

“He comes in,” Frank said as he wiped out a glass. “Just not when you’re working.”

Vera hit Vince with her dishtowel again.

Vince held up his hands and backed away. “Easy, easy! I been on a job up in Skokie. A complete refit of six condos. Had a call in Lakeview Tuesday too. I barely get anywhere these days.” Vera mellowed somewhat, and he pressed his advantage. “How are the kids doing? Does Davy have a game coming up I could go see?”

“Saturday.” Vera beamed. “You should have seen him last week. Hit a home run and a triple in the same inning. And in the last he nailed a line drive so hard it knocked the shortstop on his ass.”

“Well, tell him Cousin Vinnie expects to see somebody go to the hospital on Saturday.”

Vera laughed and bussed a kiss on his cheek. “It’s good to see you, Vin. Don’t you be a stranger no more.”

He barely sat down at a table before the door to the kitchen burst open and more family came out. This one was his niece and goddaughter, Marcie, wearing her waitress uniform and a shy, pretty smile that hid her braces. “Hi, Uncle Vinnie.” As she passed a group of college kids, a straw wrapper hit her in the side of the face, and she staggered back, blushing as red as the place mats.

Every male member of the Fierro family acted at once. Frank was bellowing from behind the bar and shuffling arthritically to the pass-through as Marcie’s older brother set his busboy tub on a table and started weaving through chairs, but Vince, only two tables over, beat them all and moved to loom over the well-groomed and tanned blond idiot.

“You got some sort of problem?” Vince asked, his voice making it very clear, that yes, the blond idiot did.

Predictably, the idiot went for machismo. “It was just a stupid gag. Jesus.”

An angry gasp from behind Vince told him that his Uncle Marco had come out from the kitchen in time to hear the blasphemy.

Vince leaned over the empty chair at the great circular table and glared at the blond idiot. “Apologize.”

The idiot blinked. “What?”

“Apologize,” Marco said, angry where Vince had been quietly threatening. “To Marcie and to the Son of God, you lousy son of a bitch!”

“Marco, Vincent—what on earth are you doing?”

It was Lisa, Vince’s mom. She came out of the kitchen and stared at them all with her hands on her hips. “Well? Answer me!”

“This punk was picking on Marcie,” Marco said.

“I was not! It was an accident!”

Lisa reached out and smacked each one of them on the side of the head, one after the other. Vince, then Frank, then Marco. “What are you, a bunch of Fierro hooligans again, running around the neighborhood, beating up anybody who looks at your sisters twice?”

“But, Ma—” Vince started to say.

“Enough. Go sit down.”

Fierro men may have been tough, but nobody was going to question Lisa. The men all hung their head like boys and backed up a step. The blond punk started to laugh.

Smack.

Vince was pretty sure his mom had smacked the kid far harder than she’d smacked him.

“What the hell?” the kid yelled.

“You don’t get off the hook so easy. Just because I kept them from beating you to a pulp doesn’t mean you don’t owe my granddaughter an apology.”

The blond blushed. “Sorry.”

Lisa’s hand slapped him squarely in the back of the head this time, almost pitching him into his lemonade. “Stand up, boy, and say it like you mean it.”

The boy did, scooting his chair back, his face now much redder than Marcie’s. “I’m very sorry, miss. I was rude, and it won’t happen again.” A grunt from Marco had him adding quickly, “And I’m sorry, Jesus, for taking your name in vain.”

“Good boy,” Lisa said, patting him on the head. “Enjoy your meal.”

She turned and left. Marco and Frank nodded. Marcie hurried back to the kitchen. She was mortified, Vince knew.

Tough. Nobody messed with Fierro girls. Nobody.

The Fierros dispersed, all of them casting independent warning glances as they returned to their previous positions. On his way back to the table, Vince grabbed a newspaper and hid behind it as he sat down, pretending to read while he listened intently to the heated whispers. He caught “Holy shit!” and “What the fuck was that?” and “Jesus, I’m never coming here again,” and then a familiar voice, much louder said, “What the hell did you guys do while I was in the bathroom?”

Vince lowered his paper enough to peer over the top of it. Yep. It was Trey Giles slipping into the empty chair Vince had been leaning over.

The chair beside him scraped back, and Frank sat down in it. “What’s a nice boy like little Trey doing with that pack of baboos?” He glowered at the table. “I should go call his grandma right now.”

“Hush.” Vince settled firmly behind the paper again. “I’m trying to listen.”

Someone was just wrapping up a retelling of the scene. “God, Trey, I thought you said this was a good place.”

“It is. And I hope you haven’t screwed it up, because I want to come back here again.”

Frank clucked his tongue. “Like we’d ever keep Sophia’s grandson away.”

“Hush,” Vince hissed.

“But you did apologize, right?” Trey was asking. “And they seemed satisfied?”

“I guess.” That was the blond idiot.

“Listen, man. You’re going to leave a huge tip. I mean huge. I won’t have the Fierros thinking I’m hanging with schmucks who are rude and cheap.” The idiot gurgled a protest, but Trey ran over him. “You’ll do that, or you’ll be finishing this project on your own. Got it? Because you all know I’m the one carrying us on this anyway.” The rest Vince couldn’t catch, as Trey was murmuring it under his breath, but it was clear he was pissed.

Vince smiled and lowered the paper.

Frank nodded, looking satisfied. “Such a nice young man. So good to his granny.” He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed at his eye. Then he frowned at the empty place in front of Vince. “Marcie didn’t take your order.” He rose slowly, his creaky joints making the task a chore. “You want a scotch? Yes. Yes. I’ll get you a scotch.”

“Thanks, Uncle Frank,” Vince said, wishing he could give the older man a hand. He wasn’t even old. Not old enough to hurt like he did. But he’d been arthritic since Vince had been the one getting dressed down for being a baboo in the café, and now Frank practically had a ninety-year-old body instead of the sixty-five-year-old he should.

But he had enough pride for ten Italian men, so Vince said nothing, just let Frank get him a double. In the time that had taken, Marcie had come back out and asked if Vince wanted the special or his usual. After glancing at the board and seeing the special was spinach ravioli, he ordered the special. Marcie went back to the kitchen, and Vince read a few sections of the paper before Frank came back with his scotch. He sat down once again, settling in for a chat.

“Vera’s right,” he said, leaning back with a shot of his own. “You don’t come by often enough. And I know you ain’t eating at the downtown place, because they think you’re coming here.”

Vince suppressed the urge to sigh. “Neither of you are in my neighborhood, and I work in Northbrook.”

Frank made a face. “You work for a fool. Why don’t you come work with your family?”

“Jack’s my uncle too.”

“Bah.” Frank waved the idea away with his hand. “The Parinos. They don’t know what family is. They all live in the suburbs, and none of them the same one. You should live here, Vinnie. Here with your family.” He gestured to the round table. “Like little Trey Oscar, taking care of Sophia and his mother.”

Vince said nothing, only took a sip of his scotch.

Frank kept talking. “Four generations. Four generations work here, Vinnie. How many families can say that, eh? How many families stay that close? You should come back. There’s a condo opening up down the street from your grandmother, bless her heart. Live there and work here.”

“I have a job,” Vince pointed out.

“A job that works you too hard. And I know you’re thinking of leaving. You’re always thinking of leaving. You should. Come back to the restaurant. You could take over the books from your cousin Lou. God bless him, but he can’t add worth a damn.”

Vince didn’t do the books anymore, because he knew damn well what should have been simple accounting also came with being the organizer-in-chief and being everyone’s errand boy. He also knew from long experience that this conversation wouldn’t get any better, so he changed the subject. “How’s Amanda and the new baby?”

Frank’s eyes lit up. “Ah. He’s a feisty one. Never wants to nap. Drives his mama crazy.” He launched into stories about his daughter and her third baby, the first boy, and Vince listened, generally interested.

As Marcie came out with his order and Frank’s stories drifted into the more mundane retellings of what neighbors had come to the café for breakfast, his mind began to drift back, as it had so often this week, to the Lakeview job, to the couple again. The same feelings of confusion and longing filled him, and he realized that instead of curing them, being in the den of his family only made them worse. He felt lonely. He felt cut off.

He felt wrong. Like everything he was doing was wrong.

His eyes slid over to the round table, where even the blond idiot was carrying on about how good Marco’s cooking was. He saw the boys leaning on the girls and the girls flirting with the boys. He saw them laughing and talking. All connected. Happy.

Well, they were all hooked up except for Trey, but then Trey was never hooked up with anyone. If he did hook up, Vince doubted it would be with one of these girls, rich kids from the suburbs. No, it’d be with that girl from that group he always came in with.

Though as Vince thought about it, there were more guys than girls in that group, and the guys were always hanging all over each other. He’d figured it was just being friendly.

What if it wasn’t? What if Trey were…?

Well, what if? What the hell would it matter to you?

Vince didn’t know. He felt embarrassed, then felt foolish for being embarrassed. He needed to get out more. He needed to get laid.

Gaze drifting back to Trey, Vince took in Trey’s shining blond hair, which fell into his eyes as he reached over a book in his lap to take a bite of ravioli.

Vince blinked hard, almost alarmed at where his mind had been going.

Laid by a girl. An adult woman. Jesus, Trey was just a kid.

No, he’s twenty-two at least. He might even be older. And really, if you think about it, he’s as pretty as most girls….

“You come back more often,” Frank said, interrupting Vince’s thoughts. “And you think about what I said. I know you’ve had your troubles with women, and I know you don’t want to get married again. But that doesn’t mean you need to go live like a monk up on LaSalle. We don’t need another Hank, hiding out and being gloomy. Come back to us, Vinnie. Come back to your family, where you belong.”

Vince watched Trey Giles’s sandy-blond hair fall as he bent his head and laughed at something someone at his table had said. “I’ll come by more often, Uncle Frank.” Vince’s gaze stayed on Trey’s hair. “I promise.”

Chapter Three

WHOEVER CAME up with the idea of group projects, may he die a slow and torturous death.

It was hard enough balancing two jobs with my classes, and now the one night I wasn’t waiting tables, I had to spend with five of my “peers.” Never mind that I was older than all of them, albeit by only a few years. Never mind that their spoiled rich-kid attitudes rubbed me wrong. Never mind they couldn’t remember my name: one called me Todd, the other called me Hey you—what was so hard about Trey?

The cold, hard truth was my grade now depended on five fuckwits. I wasn’t about to let them ruin my GPA.

On some level I’d known it was a mistake bringing them to Emilio’s. I’d managed to talk them out of the first place they named—a tapas and wine bar that would have cost a fortune and left me hungry. The food at Emilio’s was good and inexpensive, and the Fierros had always treated my Gram and me like family. The fact that the fuckwits had now apparently pissed off that family was like a rotten cherry on top of an already bad day. I could still feel Vinnie’s piercing gaze on the back of my head.

I’d been trying to corral the rest of them into actually working for half an hour, to no avail. The two girls were too busy talking about the latest episode of American Idol, and the guys were too busy trying to impress the girls. I was about to ask for at least the third time if any of them had started their parts of the project yet, but one of the girls—Kat—cut me off.

“Did you guys register for fall semester yet?”

“I did,” Ken said. “I got it down perfect. Nothing before noon, and no classes on Fridays.”

“I don’t mind morning classes,” Kat replied. “It’s the evening labs I hate. Don’t they know we have lives?”

“I’m only taking twelve credits.” Misty smiled at us as if she was giving us the answer to the meaning of life. “Any more than that is just too hard.”

“Twelve is a lot if you have to work full-time too,” I said, trying to be sympathetic.

She blinked at me, wrinkling her nose in confusion. She flicked her earring with a perfectly manicured nail, and I realized the absurdity of my assumption. She didn’t work. Certainly she didn’t work full-time.

“I registered for twenty-five credits.” That was Aiden. He had the role of Entitled Youth down pat.

“Twenty-five?” I asked. “How can you do so much?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to keep them all. I sent the confirmation off to my dad. Now I just have to wait for the check. After I cash it, I’ll drop most of them.”

“Aiden, that’s awful!” Kat laughed.

He shrugged. “As long as I keep one class, I’m good. I’ll tell him I failed out or that they interfered with my work schedule.”

I looked down at my lap to hide my expression. It wouldn’t do to have them see how much I hated them. How much I resented them all, cashing their daddies’ checks, living in apartments they didn’t have to pay for, not even bothering to appreciate what they had. I worked over fifty hours most weeks. Thirty-four at the restaurant, the most they’d give me, because even one more would require them to give me benefits, and they were too cheap for that. Thirty-four hours of screaming chefs and bitchy patrons, all for the lousy tips that would pay the bills and Gram’s second mortgage. Then I worked another fifteen hours at the coffee shop, rising at 4:40 so I could be there when they opened at 5:00, burning my hands on steamed milk and skinny half-cafs just so I could afford one class a semester. If I was lucky, I’d earn my degree in another year and a half. That was if my mother didn’t go on another spending binge or Gram didn’t break her hip. If there were no household problems, like the broken pipe that flooded our small basement and stole my class from me three semesters ago.

They paused in their exchange of Tales of Beating the System, and I did my best to reroute them back to the task at hand. For better or worse, forty-five minutes later we stopped working—Aiden was bored, Kat didn’t have enough money in her meter, and Misty had a headache. Of course they all promised to get their part done the very next day, but I’d learned long ago exactly how much a promise meant: absolutely fucking nothing.

It was just as well we wrapped things up though because I wanted to check in with Gram before I headed off to The Rose for my shift. I owed her that, and a whole lot more.

My dad died shortly after my second birthday. He was shot during what should have been a routine traffic stop. I didn’t even have a memory of him to console me. So many times, I’d pored over the photos of us at our old house in Oak Park, my dad pushing me on a baby swing or laughing while I stood wearing his badge, his police cap hanging down over my eyes. I’d tried to convince myself that I remembered him, but I was old enough now to admit the truth. He was nothing more than a shadow in my mind where happiness should have been.

Two years after his death, Mom and I came to live with his parents. I hadn’t understood why. Back then, I’d loved Gram’s narrow brownstone on Loomis: my grandfather had still been alive, and I’d come home from school to see him fussing with our tiny speck of yard in an eternal battle with the shade trees before his shift at the plant, or touching up the paint on the rail. The neighborhood had been full of kids, many of them Fierros, and our house was warm with laughter and love.

Now our section of the block was more than a little rundown, and Gram’s brownstone wasn’t helping anything. Even if any of us had time to touch up the paint on the railing, we wouldn’t waste money on it. The steps had finally become so rickety we’d had to deal with them, but that had amounted to me clumsily nailing thicker boards over the top of the broken ones and hoping no inspector came by to tell me I was breaking city code. The yard was a weedy, barren mess. The neighborhood mostly housed college students. There were no packs of kids running the streets. No kickball games. No Kick the Can. And as for our house—well, I loved my Gram and my mom, but the laughter had stopped long ago.

“Gram,” I called when I came in the front door. “I’m home. Did you need me to go to the store for anything before I go to work?”

It wasn’t Gram who answered, though. It was my mom’s voice that drifted in from the kitchen.

“I already went to the store. I’m making your favorite: goulash.”

Goulash hadn’t been my favorite since I’d hit puberty and learned to distinguish Chef Boyardee from dog food. “I won’t be here for dinner. I have to work tonight.”

My mom came out of the kitchen with her paring knife still clutched in her right hand. She wore jeans and a T-shirt, and she even had on a bit of makeup. She looked better than she had in a long time, though she did have a needy look about her that set off the old alarm bells. “But, honey, I was all set to make you dinner, then take you to a movie.”

Why exactly she’d decided out of the blue to try to turn the evening into a mother/son date was anyone’s guess. “I can’t. Not tonight.”

“But, Trey—”

“I have to work, Ma. What do you want me to do? Call in sick?”

Even suggesting such a thing was a mistake. “You could. Then we could go—”

“I was kidding.”

Her smile disappeared. Her shoulders drooped. She sighed, a big, dramatic gesture full of self-pity, because although it was me working two jobs while trying to go to school, in her mind she was the one who was really being inconvenienced. “I get so lonely. You’re never here, and Gram isn’t much company. I don’t know anybody—”

“We’ve lived here for more than twenty years. You know everybody.”

“But I don’t have any friends.”

We’d been over this more times than I could count. They say misery loves company, but the truth is, misery gets lonely pretty damn fast. “Mom, I don’t have time for this right now.”

“You never have time. You work too hard. You should be home—”

I turned away, heading up the stairs to change into my work clothes. What could I say to her? Yes, I was young. Yes, life was unfair. I would have loved to be one of the college boys who could show up to a few classes and spend the rest of my time getting high. But the fact of the matter was, somebody had to pay the mortgage.

It wasn’t going to be Mom.

“Don’t wait up,” I said. I didn’t bother to acknowledge the disappointment on her face. God knew she’d never bothered to acknowledge mine.

Chapter Four

A FEW nights after he’d gone to Emilio’s, Vince called his sister Rachel. She answered on the third ring.

“Vinnie. I thought you’d forgotten my phone number.”

“Hey, Rach. Sorry. Been busy.” He rubbed hard against the back of his neck. “What about you? Are you busy? Right now, I mean?”

Rachel went immediately serious. “I knew it. Something’s wrong, isn’t it. You never call unless something’s wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Vince lied. “I just wondered if I could stop by and talk to you, that’s all.”

“Sure, hon. Where are you?”

That was a good question. Vince looked around to get his bearings. “Rush and Wabash.”

“Okay. See you soon.”

It was past ten when Vinnie finally got to Rachel’s apartment. She lived in the Marina Towers, three floors from the top, which Vinnie hated because he always felt like he was going to puke from the wind-resistant design. The term was a not-so-humorous oxymoron, because while the building might be safer from damage, “wind resistant” for the residents meant a great deal of swaying back and forth. Normally he got used to it once he’d been in the building for a while, or once he’d had a few drinks, but when the wind was up like it was tonight, the motion never seemed to subside, which was why he had to stop halfway down her hallway and let the wall prop him up for a minute before he continued on to her door.

She answered wearing what he would have sworn was a bright-blue kimono over a soft peach lacy number with spaghetti straps. Vince staggered back a few steps and held up his hands. “What the hell, Rach?”

“What?” Frowning, she glanced down at herself before rolling her eyes. “Jesus, Vinnie. You think I’m supposed to get dressed because my big lunk of a brother is coming over?”

“You trying to tell me you were sitting around the house wearing that?” he demanded.

Now she was mad. “If I’d known you were coming over to play Italian Big Brother, I would have told you to stay home. I was getting ready for bed, if you must know. Are you coming in or what?”

Vince grunted and shoved his hands in his pockets, keeping them there as she pulled the door open wider and he shuffled inside.

Rachel’s apartment was the same as it ever was: like an ad out of some luxury-living magazine. Like the ones, in fact, that she’d pored over as a kid when she’d hid out in his bedroom. Everything was sleek and white and minimal and arranged to take in the amazing view of Lake Michigan through the open curtains. Vince hated it, because he always felt like he was going to get dirt on something. Which was why he didn’t sit down on the couch but sat on one of the chrome barstools and watched Rachel pull down the bottle of Oban and pour him three fingers into a tumbler.

“You should be nicer to me, considering what I picked up this afternoon.” She slid the glass toward Vince, then opened a cupboard as he took the first sip of scotch. The woodsy smoke taste exploded over his tongue, making him wish he’d brought a cigar—and then he saw she’d produced a box of Havana Ovals and a lighter.

Groaning, Vince sagged against the bar and held out his hand. When she only lifted her eyebrows and smirked at him, he said, “Please, Rach. I’m sorry I freaked out that you met me at the door like a streetwalker.”

She snorted, but she smiled too, and most importantly she passed the cigarettes over. Vince was a bit of a snob when it came to cigarettes—he only smoked Nat Shermans, usually settling for the naturals. Havana Ovals weren’t made with Havana tobacco anymore, but they were the Cadillacs of the Nat Sherman line: rich, unfiltered 100s wrapped in brown paper. Vince drew the box to his nose, shut his eyes, and inhaled. It smelled like tobacco and heaven.

“Take them out to the balcony,” she called over her shoulder as she poured gin into her martini shaker.