Chapter 17 - An Invitation to Dinner
And Leo watched Beatrice.
He watched the way she entered rooms now without turning sideways as if apologizing to the walls. He watched how she stopped tugging her dresses down over her stomach. He watched how she lifted her chin when men twice her salary asked for instructions.
One evening in late October, Beatrice found him standing in the kitchen doorway while she taught Lily to roll pie dough.
“You’re staring,” she said without looking up.
Lily gasped. “Bee, you can’t say that to Daddy.”
Leo smiled faintly. “She can.”
Beatrice dusted flour from her hands. “Do you need something?”
“Yes.”
She waited.
His gaze moved from the flour on her cheek to the warmth in her eyes.
“I need to ask you to dinner.”
The rolling pin slipped from her hands and hit the counter.
Lily clapped both hands over her mouth.
Beatrice stared at him. “With Lily?” she asked.
Leo’s smile deepened. “No.”
Lily whispered loudly, “Bee, he means a date.”
Beatrice’s face went hot. “Thank you, sweetheart. I understood eventually.”
Leo laughed then. It was the first time Beatrice had heard it fully.
Not a dry sound. Not a dangerous one. A real laugh, rough with disuse and startlingly beautiful.
Their first dinner was not at an expensive restaurant. Beatrice refused.
“I don’t want to sit in a room where people pretend not to stare,” she said.
So Leo took her to a closed Italian bakery owned by an old widow named Mrs. Bellini, who had known him since he was a boy stealing bread and getting into fights behind the church.
They ate pasta at a small table near the ovens while rain streaked the window and Mrs. Bellini pretended not to watch them from the kitchen.
Leo told Beatrice about his wife, Elena, and the night the car exploded.
Beatrice told Leo about growing up in a South Side apartment where her mother worked double shifts and still made pancakes every Sunday.
Because dignity, she said, was sometimes just warm food on a chipped plate.
Leo listened like her life mattered.
That was how Beatrice fell in love with him.
May you like
Not because he was powerful. Not because he could destroy anyone who hurt her.
But because when she spoke, he did not look past her. He looked at her as if every word deserved a place to land.
