Carmen’s eyes were saucers as he came walking out, offering me a hand. “Long time no see.”
“Yeah, you know how it is.”
“That I do.”
“This is Carmen. She wanted to meet someone… in your profession.”
Lucky’s keen eyes moved from Carmen’s face to her hand, then back again.
He offered his hand, then pulled her closer over the counter. “Tell me his name, and I’ll make him disappear,” he said, making Carmen’s mouth fall open.
He shot me a smirk, knowing exactly what he was doing. “I got this handled,” I told him.
“If she really wants to be impressed by… local restaurateurs, you should take her to Famiglia when she’s feeling up to it,” he said as someone slid our slices onto the counter. “Enjoy your lunch. It was nice to meet you, Carmen.”
“Okay,” Carmen said, shooting me a smile as we sat at a booth. “I think I could pick a mafia guy out of a crowd now.”
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“They have a certain vibe. Kind of like how you and the bikers have a vibe. Just different.”
With that, we ate pizza, talked about Famiglia and various other businesses that washed criminal money around Navesink Bank.
“Do you still want to hit up the beach, or are you in too much of a food coma?”
“I know I need to take it easy on my ankle, but I wouldn’t mind a short, slow walk.”
“If you get tired, I can piggyback you,” I assured her, bussing our tray, then leading her to the door.
I didn’t remember the last time I spent a whole day just… hanging out with a woman. It was probably back in high school. But there was just something different about Carmen. It was like the rest of the world went blurry, and she came into sharp focus. And I didn’t want to look at anything else.
Because of how much I was noticing her, too, I could easily see how different she was here in Navesink Bank than she was back home. Everything about her had been tense, coiled, like everything within her was waiting for the ground to fall away beneath her feet. And, I guess, her life these past few years had been very much like that.
In Navesink Bank, though, despite being in pain, she was so much looser, lighter, more go-with-the-flow. She smiled easily. She laughed a lot. And that tension that seemed permanently etched around her eyes had eased. I almost couldn’t imagine how different she might be after a few weeks or months.
That wasn’t exactly in the cards, though.
And I was choosing to ignore how that knowledge made my stomach dip each time I thought about her leaving.
Because she had to leave.
She had a life.
And it wasn’t in Navesink Bank.
“God, that’s a view,” she said as we drove over the bridge, getting to the apex where you could look down and see the sprawling yellow sand beaches, the white of the waves crashing at the shore, and beyond that, the endless blue of the ocean.
“Right? There’s another bridge to get here that is usually less full of traffic, but I wouldn’t give up this view.”
“You come here a lot?”
“I run the pathway several days a week. Sometimes I’ll run on the sand, if it’s not too packed.”
“My idea of a beach day is planting my ass in a beach chair with an umbrella overhead and some illegal margaritas hidden in a stainless steel tumbler.”
“That sounds like a good time, too.”
Suddenly, that was all I was picturing: the two of us getting up at the crack of dawn so we could get a parking space before the lots closed, packing a lunch, then spending hours in beachchairs or on a blanket, then she could take a nap while I went for a run, and when I got back, both of us going into the water to cool down.