Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
I relaxed a little.
“I haven’t caught you at a bad time, have I?” he asked.
I met Dahlia’s eye. “I’ve got dinner in a bit, but I have a few moments to talk. What’s up?”
She nodded encouragingly.
“Well,” he said. “I was thinking about how you said we should get together soon, and how I just found this great café near me. Wanna do lunch?”
I bit my lip. I did want to see him again. I wanted to know if the dinner had been a fluke, or something about our shared genetic code always made talking to him easy. Every moment I spent out of his presence, somebody had some worry about him, and that kicked my own worries into high gear.
“Yes,” I blurted.
A sharp sound like he’d smacked his own thigh crackled over the line. “Well, great! Say, one tomorrow?”
“One,” I agreed. “Just send me the name of the café.”
Dahlia grinned.
“Just one more thing,” he hedged. “Any chance you’d bring that grandbaby of mine?”
I grimaced. That, I had forgotten to talk to Gio about.
Dahlia gestured ‘what’ at me.
“Um,” I said. “I can, but he’s still pretty young, so Gio doesn’t like him going out without both of us whenever possible.”
A short silence reigned over the line.
“Sal? Is that okay?” I asked.
Dahlia furrowed her eyebrows.
“Oh, of course!” he said, his voice pleasant enough that I forgot the pause almost immediately. “I want to get to know everyone in your life. After all, isn’t it a dad’s job to judge if his little girl’s husband is a good man?”
Instincts warred inside me. Part of me, a large part, warmed instantly to the fatherly language. He cared. He wanted to make sure I was taken care of. A smaller, more suspicious part chafed a little against the proprietary language. I knew Gio was a good man. I’d picked him out myself, as I had done everything in my life without Sal.
Rather than saying any of that, I simply replied, “I’ll double-check the time with him. He’s a busy man, and he tends to eat when he can.”
“Of course,” Sal said. “I don’t want to mess with your life in any way. I’m flexible, so just let me know when, and I’ll be there!”
We said our goodbyes and hung up. Dahlia’s eyes burned into my skull.
“What?” I asked,
She huffed. “I’m gonna keep wanting to know everything. It’s like you have a new boyfriend, except it’s your dad. Every ‘date’ is gonna have something new to discuss.”
I threw my hands in the air. “I don’t know if I want to take my d—Sal apart like some random guy. He’s blood, even if he never turns into anything else.”
“Alright.” Dahlia leaned back against the couch. “I’ll stop bugging you unless it’s important.”
“Thank you,” I sighed. At least I had one person who wouldn’t be all over me about Sal all the time.
“I just have one question,” she said. “What’d you have to ask if it was okay about?”
The front door swung open on the squeaky hinge Gio kept promising he’d get fixed, and both of our heads shot up.
“Just me!” Alessandro called as he shut the door behind him.
“In the living room!” Dahlia hollered back.
I winced and waited for Elio to burst into tears, but thankfully, nothing came. It seemed after a year our little man was finally getting used to how the siblings communicated.
Alessandro trooped in, wearing scruffy jeans and a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows. I’d walked in on Gabriele lecturing him about how a family man should dress like the business man he was once, but it didn’t seem to have stuck.
He studied the butcher paper on the floor. “New art style, Olivia?”
I chuckled. “Elio’s first work, actually.”
He nodded. “That’d explain all the smearing.”
Gio leaned into the living room from the hallway that led to our bedroom with a squirming, damp Elio in his arms. “He’s an expressionist.”
I burst into laughter while everyone else chuckled politely. When my giggles subsided, I grinned at my husband, and he smiled back at me with a streak of bright blue paint on his cheekbone. Everything in the world felt right, simpler than it had been in a while.
“Dinner’s in fifteen,” Gio said. “Staying, Alessandro?”
He shrugged. “I got time. But I actually had something I wanted to talk to you about, Gio. Maybe after?”
“I’ll meet you in my office.” Gio left, and I heard his heavy footsteps all the way down the hall to our room.
Dahlia hopped up. “If we’ve got people over, I’m dressing up.”
Alessandro shook his head. “I’m not people.”
“And I’m not dressing up,” I said.
“You guys are no fun.” She shot us the bird and raced out of the room.
I nodded to the paint bowls. “Mind grabbing some?”
Alessandro lifted half the stack easily, not seeming to notice the way his hands instantly smeared orange and green.
“How’d it go with, uh, Salvatore last night?” he asked as we walked to the kitchen.
I peered at him. His gaze was trained steadily on the bowls, but I recognized the defensive set of his shoulders. Alessandro always got touchy about new people. He’d been the first one to dislike Elena, too.
“Pretty well,” I said. “I think I’m gonna see him again soon, maybe take Elio.”
Alessandro’s mouth hardened into a thin line. “Elio, huh? Is it safe for him to be leaving the compound like that?”
I scoffed. “He goes to the park once a week.”
“I guess,” Alessandro muttered. “Just… keep me in the loop, okay? Against all odds, I care about the stupid kid.”
