Page 44 of Fall Into You
But it never comes.
“Please don’t think that I’m pressuring you,” he says with another deep sigh. “I’m just really happy, and I hate having to hide why. But I told you I would wait and that I would be patient, so that’s what I’m gonna do. It’s just…some days are harder than others.” Matt smiles sheepishly at me.
“Matt, thank you,” I say simply, following it with a kiss. It builds, as most of them tend to do between the two of us, his tongue parting my lips, breath quickening, heart racing, and I remember the promise I made to myself earlier tonight. I need to make sure he knows that he’s loved. And tonight, there’s one way I could show him.
I stand up and unzip my dress in front of him, left only in my lingerie and high heels. He inhales a sharp gasp, making my heart do backflips in my chest.
“Jesus,” he whispers, pulling me closer by the hips until I straddle him. I kiss him again, getting lost in the feel of him, in his scent, in the way he says my name against my neck, and he pulls me down onto the mattress with him so that I can show him just how much he means to me, how much I care.
“DANIELLE,you have to roll itgentlywith your thumb on the fork, not like a brute,” my mother says, exasperated with my sister-in-law. Danielle frowns, trying her hardest to follow directions, but she’s still unable to get the shape of the gnocchi right.
We’re in my mother’s kitchen, preparing lunch for the family, and Mom is trying to teach Danielle another one of her Italian dishes. She says that if she and my brother refuse teach their children the Italian language, they at least need to learn how to eat proper Italian food.
“Like this?” She holds up the small dumpling with an eager smile. My mother looks at me and rolls her eyes. I give her a look, asking her to cut her some slack, and she exhales.
“Better, but not good.”
Danielle takes it as a win. Smiling, she drops her sweet potato gnocchi on the tray next to the others we’ve prepared so far. After we’ve rolled all the dough into little pieces, we’ll boil them until they float to the top of the pot and enjoy one of my favorite dishes. “Do these go with your red sauce?”
“Ovviamente no, Danielle,” my Mom tells her in Italian and shakes her head. “Obviously not. The flavor profiles don’t match. With this, we doburro fuso e salvia. Brown butter and sage.” Danielle blushes and looks down, embarrassed that she got that one wrong, grabbing another piece of dough and rolling it onto the fork.
Normally, my mother and Danielle get along swimmingly, but when it comes to the kitchen, Catterina Castelli is unforgiving and relentless. That, combined with Danielle’s subpar cooking skills, type-A personality, and eagerness to please, just makes for a tense situation all around. I gotta give them both props, though, because cooking together has always been and always will be a horribly tense situation, but they always make the effort for the twins. Danielle and Vinny may have not made any effort to have their kids learn Italian, but they definitely try their hardest to make sure that their children grow up with the same traditions we did, and food is a huge part of that.
“Maaaahhhh!!” we hear Vinny bellow from the living room. “I need you!!” My mother sighs, wipes her hands on a kitchen towel, and tells him, “Vengo! I’m coming,” muttering the occasional Italian expletive under her breath.
“So,” Danielle doesn’t waste a minute. “Are you still seeing Matt?”
“Shhhh!!” I hiss, looking over my shoulder in case anyone is around to hear her. “Are you crazy? Vinny could hear you. We can’t talk about this here.”
Danielle rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t worry about Vinny. He’s not coming in here anytime soon. Tell me. I need to know! Ideserveto know.”
“Ugh,” I say, rolling another bit of dough into a snake-like shape before cutting it into more pieces to be rolled and shaped.
“Girl, I caught him naked in your closet, and I didn’t say anything,” she points out. It’s annoying, but I do have to give her credit where credit is due. Without her help, things would have definitely exploded into a cataclysmic event—not to be dramatic or anything. “You owe me.”
“He was onlyhalf-naked,” I clarify. She really did save my ass that day—and the day she invited him for dinner at her house. I guess she deserves a little info. “Fine.” I wipe my hands on a kitchen towel and serve us both a glass of wine—I feel like the situation calls for it. Girl talk is always better with a good glass of red. “We’re great. He’s great.” I try to stop a huge smile from breaking out all over my face, but I can’t help it. It’s something that happens every time I think or talk about him.
I’m gross and annoying, I know. I love it.
“Did he give you anything special?” she asks eagerly, wiggling her eyebrows as I pass her one of the glasses.
“Ew, Danielle. You already know we had sex! There’s no need to get specific about it.”
She snorts. “No, silly. I mean the necklace. Did he give you the necklace?”
My hand flies to the gold necklace under my sweater. I haven’t taken it off since last week when Matt so sweetly gave it to me before the fundraiser. “How did you know about that?”
She smiles proudly at herself and takes a swig from her glass of wine. “The guycalledme to ask if I could help him find a picture or remember the design or something so he could send it to his jeweler andhave it made.”
“Wait.” I take a deep breath. “So, it wasn’t just a coincidence that his mom had something similar to it in her collection? He actually asked her to make it for him?” My heart squeezes in my chest at what it must have taken for Matt to talk to his mother about us. I know he’s not close with her and that they have their issues, so I understand how even bigger of a deal it is that he called her to help.
“Yup. And I don’t even know how he managed that. I thought it took ages to get custom shit done,” Danielle says, and I nod in agreement.
“His mom owns her own jewelry line. But still.”
“He’s so sweet,” she says simply with a sigh.
“The sweetest. He makes me really happy, Dani. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy, and that kind of makes me sad. Becausehowcould I have wasted my time with other men, you know?” I can’t even begin to wrap my mind around the fact that I dated all the losers and assholes that came before him. “But whatever. I mean, I wouldn’t change anything because this road led me to him, but still… I’ve just never felt this way before.”
