Page 50 of Thank you, Next
Women would go crazy for him. Probably ones who weren’t scared that they’d fuck up a relationship with him.
After she’d taken a few bites and he was satisfied that she was enjoying the food, he said, “You never met my mom. She sounds a lot like your dad in a lot of ways.”
“I didn’t, but I know that Lexi didn’t have anything nice to say about her. And she can usually find something nice to say about anyone. Including her ex-husbands. She’s particularly fond of your father.”
“I don’t think she ever wanted to have a kid, but she and my dad had me to save their marriage. She was raised in this old-school Italian family that expected her to get married at eighteen and pop out as many babies as possible until she couldn’t anymore and became a nonna to take care of her babies’ babies. Or so she told it. She resented having to take care of me, and having a kid didn’t make her fall back in love with my dad. She just kind of bounced after that.”
This was more than Will had said about his mother since she’d known him. She didn’t know what to do other than listen and hope he shared more. Hearing him talk about his mother made her feel less vulnerable, less like she was exposing her internal organs. “But I had my nonna until I was fifteen. She just up and moved to the States from Italy after my mom left and took care of me until my dad got married again.”
“I knew that was why you cooked Italian food, but I didn’t know that she was with you that long.” It had to have had an impact, if he made his whole life’s work about his grandmother’s cooking.
“It was only for a few years. I inherited some of her recipes, but I never feel like they have the same magic.” Alex wanted to reach out to the little boy who had been comforted by his grandma’s food. She wanted to wrap him up and hug him and tell him that everything would be okay.
“But she went back to Italy when your father got married to Lexi?”
Will’s father had been married almost as many times as Lexi. She remembered him as an okay guy, but looking back he probably could have used a therapist instead of six wives.
“As an adult who made the wrong choice in partners at first, I get it now. Sometimes things just don’t work out. But after my mom, I don’t think he had it in him to fight for another relationship. He didn’t want to put work into a thing only to have it fall apart on him. So they all fell apart on him anyway.”
Did Will think that he was just like his father in that way? Could he not see that he had more perseverance in his pinky finger than his father had in his whole body?
“You’re nothing like him,” Alex said. He needed to know how special and wonderful he was. She wouldn’t allow him not to know that. “I barely remember what it was like to be in a room with him. He’s not the kind of man that you think about all the time, even when he’s not around. I think Lexi married him because she needed a break from intense love affairs. And then, of course, you came along as part of the package with your dad. She apparently collects a specific brand of stray.”
Will laughed. He got up to refill their wine and dish up their main course from the Dutch oven on the stove. The scent hit her nostrils immediately, and her mouth started watering. It had a little to do with Will’s very fine backside, but it was mostly about the fact that he’d made osso buco for her. She hadn’t had his rendition of the dish in years but had fallen in love with it because she’d stolen some leftovers from Lexi’s fridge when she’d been low on grocery money during law school.
It had been during the time period when Will had started dating April, so she’d been doing her best to avoid him. But she’d never tried to pretend she didn’t enjoy his food.
“Lexi said you were really into this.”
Alex took a sip of wine. She would have expected him to serve a red with this, but it was a crisp white to cut the richness. “She usually hid it from me after I cleaned her out once.”
“I wish I had known. I would have made sure you got some more.”
“You were with April then.”
Will put down her dish in front of her and shrugged. “But I still could have fed you.”
“No. No way.” Alex shook her head. “If you would have fed me on a regular basis, I would have been so in love with you that I would have tried to stop your wedding.”
After taking her first bite, she knew it was true. She moaned, and Will blushed. She loved how he could be so gruff and tough, but also so sweet like this. He infuriated her when he tried to interfere or when they butted heads, but he backed off eventually. The way he took care of her, always checking to make sure she wasn’t working through lunch, should annoy her. She was an adult. And it was so foreign that she was shocked at how quickly she’d gotten used to it.
“Nothing standing in our way now.” His eyes were dark, but she was pretty sure she could see clearly into his soul at that moment. He was trying to tell her that he loved her without saying the words. She knew that she wasn’t ready to hear them. She wouldn’t believe him if he said it. It was hard to believe that anyone loved her in the romantic sense.
It scared her how quickly and easily she’d come to rely on him, and she was scared that she couldn’t withstand the growing pressure inside her to run far away from the magnitude of her feelings. It had been so much easier to love him when he was nothing more than an idea of the man she couldn’t have. The fact that he wanted her now terrified her, even though she knew he wouldn’t abuse her trust. Some part of her knew her heart was safe with him.
“You seem to have ended up so well-adjusted.” Alex narrowed her gaze at him. “How did that happen?”
“According to my ex, I’m an android with my emotions features disabled.”
“Then she doesn’t see who you are.”
Will shrugged again. “I guess that I was probably that with her. I loved her, but not enough. It’s only recently that I’ve been feeling a lot.”
There was that look again, the one that had the whole world in it.
Instead of dwelling on her fears or delving deeper into the terror of intimacy, Alex asked him about the restaurant and all the preparations for the opening. Will followed her lead, and he had plenty to say about it. She couldn’t believe that she’d ever thought he was as taciturn as she had. She’d merely not been looking at him through the right lenses.
After they finished eating and Alex helped him clean up, he took her out front and mixed them both Negronis. Then he took her on a tour of the parts of the restaurant that had been completed in the last week.