Free Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) by Susan Fanetti

wouldn’t come.
     
    Tina sat quietly and waited. She didn’t huff or fidget, and when he opened her eyes, her expression hadn’t changed. She seemed interested, and the blush was fading.
     
    “Making…changes. Pizza’s okay. …Worked it out.”
     
    Her smile was wide and sunshine-bright, rimmed with those perfect red lips. “Okay, great! Then meat supreme sounds wicked awesome.”
     
    With a smile, he went up to the counter and placed their order. He wasn’t especially worried about placing it. He recognized the kid at the counter, and though he didn’t do the ordering often, he could get through it here with minimal fight. Santini’s was familiar to him, and that helped. The wider his comfort zone, the smoother his speech. To a point.
     
    He ordered a medium pizza, a basket of breadsticks, and a glass of water for Tina, paid, then carried the breadsticks and her drink back to their table.
     
    Now for the hard part.
     
    Deciding to be proactive and get her talking right away, like at the coffee shop, Joey jumped in and asked a question. “You still…work...at the market, too?”
     
    “Just a couple Saturdays a month, or during the holidays, when things get nuts. I stopped for a few years, but then my mom got sick, and I’ve been…I don’t know. Trying to keep people remembering her? You know how she was there. I’m not her, but I try to keep the banter going. Dad and Matt are too introverted for that.”
     
    “…Heard about…your mom. Sorry.” He wanted to ask how Mrs. Corti was doing, but he wasn’t sure he should.
     
    “Thanks. She’s still my mom, the same as ever, inside. She just can’t show it, except to the people who know how to see her and care to look.”
     
    That was the moment when this dinner became a date, at least as far as Joey was concerned. Right then, feeling a pain in his chest that had nothing to do with his lungs but everything to do with the thing between them, he decided that he wanted to try. Just try. Go slowly. Not be an idiot, not drop all of his guards, but open up to the possibility that somebody could understand him, could see him, and not merely the cage he was trapped in.
     
    He could open himself to the possibility that Tina Corti, whose doe eyes had once batted hopefully at him behind glasses and now seemed capable of seeing him clearly, might not think him less of a person because words and breath came slowly. That she might not find his struggles annoying or amusing. That she might think him worth the effort.
     
    Their pizza came out, and a few minutes was devoted to the server dishing out slices onto their plates, refilling their water glasses, and asking if they needed anything else.
     
    When they were alone again, Joey asked, “Tell me about her,” because he wanted to hear Tina talk about her mother.
     
    “My mom?”
     
    He nodded.
     
    After a sip of her water and a bite of her slice—she’d shaken parmesan and pepper flakes over it first—she said, “I guess you heard that she had a stroke at the market. More than two years ago now. It was a hemorrhagic stroke, and—”
     
    She stopped because he’d reached out and set his hand on hers, and now she was staring down at their hands. Joey never interrupted people when they spoke, not since the shooting. He couldn’t remember if he literally ever had, even once, in all those years. But he’d seen her starting an explanation that sounded almost boilerplate, like she’d repeated it over and over before, and it wasn’t why he’d asked.
     
    He knew about the stroke; Mrs. Corti had dropped at the market, when it was full of customers, and it had been all over the Cove for weeks after. So he didn’t need the medical details, unless that was what Tina truly wanted to talk about.
     
    When she looked back up at his face, her big brown eyes were even wider than usual, with surprise and curiosity. Joey girded himself for the effort to explain.
     
    “Know…about the…stroke. Unless