This was a good plan, the best part being I’d get a break from Benny during it. I’d take dealing with Theresa over Benny any day.
“Gotcha. But just sayin’, if you need to be at the restaurant at night, I’ll be good here alone.”
“You’ll be here alone and schemin’. So that shit’s not gonna happen.”
To preserve the precarious mellow mood I had going, I decided not to reply.
“So, you’re down with that plan?” he pressed.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Then yes, I’m down with that plan.”
He smiled at me.
I allowed myself a nanosecond to long for a life where I could be lying in a sweet nightie in Benny Bianchi’s bed with him sitting close, holding my hand against his taut abs, smiling at me, and what I would be free to do in that pleasant happenstance, before I shut that shit down.
“Bring the remote with my cake,” I ordered.
“Back to spicy,” he muttered, still smiling.
He liked spicy. If I was playing it smart, I wouldn’t give him spicy.
But I was Francesca Angelica Concetti. That just wasn’t in me.
“I was under the impression I’m here to finish recuperating, Benny. I can’t do that if you starve me to death.”
I felt those tight abs shaking with his silent laughter and I liked that feeling a whole lot. Too much.
Dangerously much.
Then he gave my hand a squeeze, let it go, and pushed up from the bed, muttering, “At your service.”
I should have let it go, I really should have. But I didn’t because it was just…not…me.
“I will note at this juncture that if I was in my own apartment, which doesn’t have steps and is a lot smaller, I could get my own coffeecake.”
“You’re right,” he replied, not looking at me and walking toward the door. “But you probably wouldn’t have coffeecake.”
“No, I would have Gina makin’ me ciabatta toast with homemade ciabatta, which, incidentally, she’d deliver to me in bed without the hassle.”
“Then lucky you’re here,” he returned, walking through the door. “Entenmann’s cheese coffeecake with crumble is better, even than Gina’s ciabatta.”
There it was. I should have kept my mouth shut.
Because he was right.
***
I lay in Benny’s bed, eyes glued to the TV, plate in my hand with a slice of coffeecake the size of which, coupled with last night’s dinner, proved irrefutably that Ben didn’t intend to starve me.
I did this as Benny took a shower.
I was good, resting, eating, a fresh cup o’ joe sitting on the nightstand and a huge slice of fresh Entenmann’s in hand, but I was wishing for pain. Pain would take my mind off Benny in the shower.
Fortunately, the shower turned off.
Unfortunately, this conjured images of Ben standing at his sink in nothing but a towel, running his hands through his hair.
I was reconsidering Asheeka’s offer of her brothers and their brothers coming to my rescue when Ben, with excellent timing, exited the bathroom.
Looking his way, I found I was right. He gelled as a necessary afterthought to tame all that thick, unruly hair. It was wet and an attempt had been made, just not a very good one, which left it wet, messy, and hot. This meant it would dry messy and hot.
He was wearing another white tee but different jeans—more faded and there was a worn white patch that was nearly threadbare at his crotch.
My mouth got dry.
The doorbell rang.
Theresa was there.
My mouth suddenly filled with saliva.
Ben’s eyes came to me. “You’re good,” he said quietly.
“Uh-huh,” I mumbled disbelievingly.
“You think I’d let anything harm you?”
Oh God. More dangerous territory.
A man, any man, said that to a woman, he dug his way in there, straight into your heart. A man who looked like Ben said it, that hole he was digging went deep. A man who looked like Ben said it and meant it, he got in so deep, he’d never get out.
“Ben—”
“You think she would, even before you took a hit?”
I didn’t reply.
“You’re good, cara,” he whispered, then moved to the door.
I hastily set my plate aside and took a sip of coffee.
After putting the mug back on the nightstand, I didn’t know what to do with my hands or eyes.
I didn’t figure it out before Benny appeared in the door again.
He came through and on his heels came Theresa.
Later, I would process the fact that Ben positioned himself in the room halfway between me and his mother. I would also process the fact that he did this as a show of support for both of us. He took no sides. What he was saying was, if this started to turn bad, he was in the position to deal, for either one of us.
It was a good thing for a son to do. It was a good thing for a woman’s man to do.
At that moment, though, I only had eyes for Theresa, who looked unsure of herself, and that look cut straight to the bone.
Theresa Bianchi had a husband, four children, three grandchildren, and ran the front of a very busy, very popular restaurant for forty years. She wasn’t unsure about anything. There was not an occasion when she didn’t know what to do.
Except one like this one.
She stopped three feet in the room and I watched as she struggled with how to place her body, what to do with her hands. She even visibly struggled with holding my gaze.
Watching it and unable to stand it, I blurted, “Thanks for the magazines.”
Her head twitched and her body got tight.
“And the coffeecake.” I threw out a hand to the nightstand.
Her eyes went there.
“There’s leftover,” I said, explaining the remaining cake quickly, “because Ben cut a slice for Refrigerator Perry, not a woman who’s been subsisting on IVs, then Jell-O, making her stomach the size of a golf ball.”
“You did all right with the pie last night, cara,” Benny put in, and I looked at him.
He was grinning, happy, relieved, and his eyes on me were proud.
He was a man who could easily take a girl’s breath away.
Standing there, looking at me like that, he’d never been more breathtaking.
“It was a Bianchi pie,” I returned and said no more for that said it all.
Ben’s grin got bigger.
Theresa made a noise and we both looked back to her.
She was fighting tears and I knew she’d win just because that was who she was, so I shut up and gave her time.
I was right. She won.
And when she did it, she lifted her chin slightly, took two more steps into the room, and declared, “That coffeecake was for sweet tooth snackin’. Not breakfast.” She looked to her son. “You didn’t make Frankie bacon and eggs?”
“She asked for coffeecake,” Benny replied.
“Tomorrow she gets bacon and eggs,” Theresa decreed.
“Tomorrow she gets what she got today, which is whatever the fuck she wants,” Benny shot back, and this was killing me because I liked his words, but more, I liked watching his banter with his mom.
I missed it and it hurt to have it back because I wasn’t going to be able to keep it.
Theresa crossed her arms on her chest and set her expression straight to severe.
“I am uncertain why you, your father, and your brother feel the need to include the f-word in every other sentence.”