Free After the Storm (All I've Ever Needed) by Jewel Moore

met my mother on my birthday, cara .   Did she treat you any differently to the guys?”
    “No,” she conceded.   If anything his mother had gone out of her way to ensure that she was well looked after.
    Natalie had almost not gone to the birthday celebration.
    He had announced the first Monday in December, “Guys, my ma’s inviting you all for dinner at the restaurant for my birthday on Friday 16 th so don’t make any plans.”
    Assumed she wasn’t invited, Natalie had come to work early that morning and logged off her PC an hour earlier than usual at five, not wanting to be there when the last of the group left at six to join the others at the pub and then to the restaurant.   The humiliation would have been too much to bear.   She had grabbed her bag and was reaching for her jacket when Stephano asked, with something sounding very much like hurt in his voice, “Natalie, aren’t you coming to the restaurant?   My mother’s looking forward to meeting you.”
    “Me?” she’d asked incredulously.
    “Yes, I’ve told her all about you and she wants to meet the brave young woman who works in an office with nine men.”
    “I didn’t know that I was invited,” she had admitted honestly.
    “Of course you’re invited!”   Stephano threw up his hands in typical Italian fashion of disbelief.   “You were here when I issued the invitation!”
    “Yes, but you said, ‘guys’.”
    “You’re one of us, aren’t you?”
    “Yes,” she’d conceded.   It was a mark of respect and most times she liked the fact that they afforded her mutual respect.   But sometimes she wondered if the guys would have found it as easy to think of her as one of them had she been a petite, blue-eyed blonde.
      “Well, alright then. Give me another half an hour.   I just need to reply to this email and I’ll be ready.”   Stephano had picked up his mobile and said, “I’ll just tell the guys to finish their drinks and we’ll leave at half five, instead of six.”
    His mother had closed the restaurant for the celebration and it had turned out well.   She had flitted around the room encouraging her son’s colleagues to try each of the dishes she had prepared specially for the occasion.   She was a petite, expressive woman who entwined English and Italian words in a totally delightful way.   It seemed impossible to Natalie that she had lived in the UK for almost thirty years and she’d understood why Stephano’s casual conservations were also heavily punctuated with Italian, especially the endearments—his mother used them at the end of almost every sentence.
    Natalie had found disconcerting and oddly appealing to see Stephano’s features mirrored in his mother’s more delicate bone structure.   Bizarrely she’d thought that he would look like his father.   Santo, his father, wasn’t much taller than his mother and his slightly rotund body showed the effects of her exquisite cooking.   Later that evening   Antoinette had cupped her son’s face and kissed him on the lips and announced that he was the spitting image of her “Papà”.   Natalie had smiled as his mother had hugged him—he had been seated at the time and his mother had been standing and there had been much different in their heights.
    His mother had paid Natalie special attention that evening, but she had felt that it was only natural for the woman to gravitate toward the only other female.   But treating a dinner guest well was not the same as having that person date your beloved son.
    “That doesn’t mean that your mother would be okay with us seeing each other.”
    “My mother is a romantic.”   Stephano took his left hand off the steering wheel and reached for Natalie’s.   “She gave up a life of luxury to run away to Britain with my father.   He was a laborer with the construction company my grandfather had hired to build an extension on his mansion.   They were both eighteen.   They fell in love and when my grandfather had