Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77124 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“It’s probably an asset in her field.”
“It’s probably in her blood thanks to me.”
“You?” I asked, dubious. She seemed a lot more level than her daughter.
“Marriage and motherhood sanded down some of my sharper edges,” she admitted. “But when I was young? I was constantly getting myself into trouble. It’s why Saylor could never get away with anything when she was a teenager. Before her, there was me. And I knew exactly what she was up to.”
“My mom never let us get away with shit either,” I admitted.
“Really?” Sam asked, head tipped to the side. “A mafia mom didn’t let her kids get away with anything?”
So, Saylor told her mom everything.
Interesting.
“Not if it involved trying to sneak out, drink, smoke, or anything else she wouldn’t approve of.”
“I like—oh, excuse me, one second,” she said as someone came in and moved toward the front desk.
I cleaned up our empty smoothies then moved to stand, glancing occasionally back toward the hallway that led to the locker rooms. Where I couldn’t seem to stop my mind from imagining Saylor. In a shower. Naked. Water running down her…
“So, I wouldn’t be a good mother if I didn’t tell you at least one early childhood embarrassing story about Saylor, right?”
“I mean, that does seem to be the way this is supposed to work,” I agreed. Even if I knew that was for dates, not business arrangements. What can I say? I wanted to know a funny story about someone as serious as Saylor.
“Well, she’s always loved everything Halloween since she was really little. And I probably let her watch some movies that were a little age-inappropriate. She especially liked ones about bad witches. Well, one day, we were in the grocery store and an older lady was there wearing a cape. It was winter,” Sam said, shrugging. “And she… had a pretty prominent wart on her nose…”
“Oh no,” I said, smiling already at how this story could go.
“I was a little distracted by my baby at the time, so I didn’t notice she was looking at her all horrified until she yelled at the top of her lungs It’s a witch! A witch! She’s gonna eat me and my brother!”
“I don’t want to know what you just told him,” Saylor’s voice cut into my laugh, and I turned to find her standing there with her wet hair in a clip, her eyes staring daggers into her mother.
“It was the witch story,” Sam said, smiling, enjoying her daughter’s discomfort.
“I was six,” Saylor insisted. “And I probably shouldn’t have known about the fact that witches eat children. Virgins, I will specify.”
“Oh, you didn’t even know what that word meant,” Sam said, brushing that away. “Well, I will let the two of you get going. Anthony, it was a pleasure to meet you. If you are ever looking for a new gym—“
“There are about ten thousand of them in the city,” Saylor interjected, moving between the two of us to make her way to the front door.
“I like your mom,” I told Saylor as we moved out onto the street in Hell’s Kitchen. Not too far from where she’d had me drop her off the night before. Not, I will add, in front of her apartment. I know this because as I was driving away, I saw her move back from the door she was standing at and start walking.
“Everyone does,” she agreed, turning, and starting to walk.
“Has she always owned the gym?”
“Ever since she married my father. After he died, she took it over.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like I’d pressed a sore spot.
“Don’t be. I never really even knew my father. He died in the ring,” she admitted. “Too many concussions,” she added, thinking I was going to ask. “The sad part, for my mom, was it was his last fight. He was going to retire just to run the gym and raise us. She’s literally never dated since.”
“My mother never dated after my father died either,” I admitted. “She said she had her soulmate, and that no one else could ever come close, so why bother?”
“That’s… really similar to what my mom said,” Saylor admitted, glancing over at me. “I personally don’t get it. Maybe she’s just like me; she likes being alone.”
That wasn’t it.
But I felt like there was no arguing with her about it, trying to explain that love like that existed, that I’d been seeing it happen again and again in my own family for years.
Lorenzo and Giana, Santi and Alessa, Brio and Ezmeray, Primo and Isabella, Emilio and Avery, Cesare and Mere, Cosimo and Halle, Salvatore and Whitney, Silvano and Millie, Mira and Vissi, and Renzo and Lore.
I was fucking surrounded by that shit.
I knew it was real.
I knew that if any one of those people lost their partner, they would be just like Saylor’s mom. Dedicating the rest of their life to their memory and love.