Page 43 of Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon
He shifts his bowl of pasta to the crook of one elbow now and bro-hugs Hector before waving to the fry cooks. I haven’t seen him in a couple of months, this tattooed ragamuffin, but he’s still gorgeous in that infuriating way that handsome men can be gorgeous without even trying.
“Grace,” he says. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here.”
“Figured I’d pop in and make sure Zoe isn’t stealing coasters again,” I say.
Zoe shrugs. “Busted.”
There was a time when Dom would storm in here and kiss my cheek with such bravado that I’d feel it in my lower stomach. He catches more air than skin now, though, barely brushing past. “How are you?” he asks.
“Good,” I say. “I hear you’re down to cater the party again.”
“My neighborly duty,” he says. “Figure this place should serve something edible at least once a year.”
Zoe makes a whacking-off motion, and Dom holds up the bowl: thin noodles with red sauce. “I’m thinking something like this for the main course,” he says.
Five years ago, Dom crashed the Edgar Allan’s holiday party with a bunch of gourmet flatbreads from the Italian Embassy. He’s showed up with food every year since.
“Holy shit, Scorsese,” says Zoe. “Spaghetti from an Italian restaurant? You’re really digging deep this year.”
Zoe can’tnottalk shit to Dom; it’s the basis of their entire friendship/rivalry. She nicknamed him “Scorsese” a few years ago after she told him he was like some wannabe gangster from a Martin Scorsese movie, and everyone other than him thought it was hilarious.
He takes a fork out of the pocket of his white chef’s coat, twirls pasta. “Just wait,” he says.
“Whoa, is that from here?” asks the other Miller Lite guy.
“Nah,” says Zoe. “He applied for a job a while back, but he didn’tget it because he couldn’t figure out the deep fryer.” She leaves out that the Italian Embassy is one of the best restaurants in Baltimore, that Dom is renowned, and that the dish he’s holding smells so good that all conversation around us has stopped.
“So, is that, like, out of a can?” I ask. “Ragu? No, you’re more of a Prego guy, right?”
Dom, unsmiling, shakes his head and holds out the fork. He meant to come over and talk to Zoe, but here I am, so he’s stuck with me.
As others have mentioned, he loves me—or at least he did. This wasn’t a secret, because he told anyone who’d listen, including my husband. He’d say things like, “Someday you’ll leave that tall simpleton and run off with me,” and Tim would say something like, “You know I can hear you, right? I’m literally right here.” They were buddies, too, Tim and Dom. They went to Ravens and Orioles games with some of the other bar and restaurant owners from the neighborhood, lobbied the liquor board together. Tim and I would tease Dom relentlessly about his revolving door of girlfriends. Since Tim died, though, Dom has treated me like little more than an acquaintance—a neighbor he barely knows. Him loving me was everyone’s little joke. My husband dying made it less funny.
When the spaghetti hits my tongue my eyes close. Like all next-level food, the flavors arrive in stages. Pasta, something buttery and salty, tomatoes, garlic. “Jesus…Christ.”
He looks at Zoe, then back at me.
“Not bad,” I say. “It’ll work, I guess.”
“Okay, gimme,” says Zoe. “I skipped breakfast.” She snatches the bowl away, grabs one of the Miller Lite guys’ unused forks, and digs in. “You son of a bitch. Why doesn’t my spaghetti taste like this?”
“Good to see you, Grace,” Dom says, formal, like when he hugged me at Tim’s funeral. “I’ll shoot you the rest of the menu after I figure it out.” Then he hustles out the door.
“Soooo, that’snoton the menu then?” the first Miller Lite guy asks.
“Eat your fries, sweetie,” says Zoe.
And now I’m heading for the door, too. “I’ll be right back.”
I’m just in a T-shirt, so I hug myself as I shout Dom’s name.
He stops in the middle of the street and turns, waving a car past ashe says, “Yeah?” His expression is pained, like it always is now on the rare occasion he has to actually talk to me.
“Would you come here?” I say.
He looks both ways then jogs back to the curb. “What’s up?”
It’s a fair question. Along with no jacket I came out here with no idea what I wanted to say to him. “How’ve you been?”
