Page 69 of The Worst Best Man
“So, you two dating?” Gio asked.
“Yes,” Aiden said.
“No,” Frankie countered.
“Well, either way, you just got me out of awkward fix up attempt number sixteen. Mary Lou Dumbrowski.”
“Mary Lou’s single again?” Frankie said, ceasing her attempts to kill her brother.
Gio crossed to the tiny table and dumped the bag of food on it. “Yeah. Husband number three keeled over last month at the dry cleaners. Bam. Dead before he hit the floor.”
“Ma must be getting desperate if she’s moving on to fresh widows for you,” Frankie pointed out.
Aiden squeezed her hand and then released her. She didn’t seem murderous anymore.
“Ma don’t like having a 36-year-old bachelor son,” Gio explained. “She also doesn’t like being the only one of her sisters without grandbabies.”
“Marco just knocked up Rachel,” Frankie reminded him. “Marco’s our other brother and Rachel’s his wife,” she explained for Aiden’s benefit.
“Well, don’t worry because you just gave her even more grandmotherly hope,” Gio teased, unpacking the bags.
Frankie shook her head. “I hate you. What did you bring?”
Gio unpacked four deli sandwiches, pickles wrapped in wax paper, and a large bag of barbeque chips. “The usual. You hangin’ out, Aide?”
No one in his entire life had called him Aide before Franchesca. It appeared that the Baranski family enjoyed assigning nicknames.
“We taped the UFC fight from last night,” Gio said, wiggling a sandwich at him.
“Mixed martial arts?” Aiden asked, eyeing the glorious stacked sandwiches.
“Ugh,” Frankie rolled her eyes. “Fine. You can stay. But I call dibs on the roast beef.”
“You got beer?” Gio asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Keep your pants on.” Frankie headed into the kitchen, and Aiden followed her.
“We still need to talk,” he told her, reaching out to grip her slim wrist.
“Yeah, we do,” she sighed. “But not around the big mouth singing bass out there.”
“Have dinner with me tomorrow.”
She eyed him for a moment, and he thought she might be trying to come up with an excuse. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m picking the place.”
“Done.” He leaned in and brushed his lips against her cheek. “See how easy this is? You tell me what you want, and I give it to you.”
He had the pleasure of seeing goose bumps raise on her neck and arms. Aiden grabbed the beers she pulled from the fridge and wandered back to the living room.
They settled on her couch with Gio in the ratty armchair and ate sandwiches built by a master while watching men and women pummel each other into bloody submission. Frankie and Gio had action on nearly every match and enjoyed ribbing each other throughout. Aiden tried to imagine doing the same with his half-brother. It was unfathomable. They’d never had an easy relationship like this.
“So, how’d you two meet?” Gio asked, biting into a pastrami on rye.
Franchesca took a quick swallow of beer. “Well, Aide here called me a stripper five seconds after we were introduced. I told him he was an asshole. And then his brother kidnapped Chip the night before his wedding, and we had to track him down.”
Gio’s sandwich fell out of his hands into the wrapper in his lap.
“You serious?”
