Epilogue

EPILOGUE

G iovanna Emilia Zola—known to her family and friends as Joni—stood outside of the Ambassador Theatre in the heart of New York’s Broadway district. It was only eight o’clock—nowhere near late enough for her sister and brother’s co-baby shower to be winding down back in Belmont. Italians and Puerto Ricans knew how to get down. More than likely, the celebration would still be going by the time she got home, well after anyone expecting babies or older than eighty decided to retire for the night.

Normally, Joni wasn’t the type to skip out on any kind of party. She was more the dance-on-tables, sing-karaoke-’til-three, make-out-on-the-terrace-’til-five type. The one-everyone-stuck-around-to-see-what-she-would-do type.

Normally, she thrived on that kind of attention. Tonight, though, she just couldn’t stand it.

Yes, part of it was finding out literally the morning before the guests started arriving that her grandmother was moving to Italy for a year and renting out the house while she was gone, giving Joni exactly two weeks to pack up her world of twenty-four years in that house and find somewhere to live.

But it wasn’t just that.

It was the joy on her sister’s face when her giant hulk of a husband fed her a forkful of the too-sweet cake from Gino’s.

It was the way her brother grinned, giddy with excitement, at Nina’s giant belly whenever he thought she wasn’t watching him.

It was the fact that even Nonna, an almost eighty-year-old widow who hadn’t traveled so far as Yonkers in the last fifty years, was stepping out for an adventure of her own and probably getting laid to boot.

Everyone had something.

And Joni had nothing but a bum knee, a GED, and a body most men liked to look at but had never once talked about marrying.

She found herself standing outside the Ambassador Theatre, tall and brown with the banners for Chicago toppling down its sides, displaying its dancers with their fish-netted legs and red lips and sexpot looks for days. The choreography was famous, just like almost any show done by the great Bob Fosse. You couldn’t watch these dancers with their sultry, sinuous moves and not want to be them.

And she’d almost done it. God, she’d been so close. Two days from accomplishing the dream she’d had since she was seven years old and her second-grade class got to see Cats right before it left Broadway. It was a bonkers musical, just one random song after another while these people dressed up like freaking kitties had danced all over the stage, hung like acrobats, even swayed their way up and down the aisles. She hadn’t had the slightest idea what was happening. All she knew was that she wanted to be right there. On that stage. With those people.

And everyone’s eyes on her.

At the time, she’d been a mediocre student in a weekly ballet class at the Belmont community center. But from that point onward, she became the star, to the point where Ms. Velasquez told Nonna within a year that Joni had real promise and helped get her a scholarship to a serious dance studio downtown.

Dance was the only thing she’d ever been able to focus on. It was there when she couldn’t pass the tenth grade. It was there when she couldn’t hold on to any other jobs. It was there always, the only dream she’d ever had, existing right here on these very streets, in theaters like this, giving her hope she could really be something in this life.

Until it all ended just six months ago, days before she was supposed to dance on Broadway right here. In this very show.

They’d taken her name and pictures off the outside display the day after she’d screwed up her knee. She only knew because Kayla, the company member who was taking her place, had posted a picture of it on her Instagram stories with a bunch of heart emojis and the words OMG MY brOADWAY DEBUT!!! in giant red letters that matched the Chicago logo.

Joni turned, but instead of walking in the direction of Times Square, toward lights and people and, most importantly, the subway stations that would carry her back home to the Bronx, she walked west toward Hell’s Kitchen, until she found herself on Eighth Avenue, where cars rushed past the odd, twenty-four-hour mix of theaters, tourist shops, and the last remnants of the peepshows and strip clubs that used to take up most of this part of town well before she’d been born.

“Hey, sweetheart! Need a lift?” shouted a guy from a beat-up Acura zooming past while it blared old-school Run-DMC from the stereo.

The others with him hooted and whistled, like she was no better than the sex workers who used to walk this corner back in the day.

“To your mother’s house!” she called, swinging a hand toward the car like she wanted to give the guy the finger. It was the same half-gesture she’d learned from her grandmother and her aunties and however many other women all over the Bronx who did the exact same thing to any no-good asshole who yelled things at strange women on a Saturday night.

But the car had long disappeared with the flow of traffic under the city lights. And when Joni stopped staring in the direction it had gone, she turned and found herself looking up at a sign, lit up just like one of the marquees on Broadway, except this one had silhouettes of naked girls and a cat wearing a top hat on the front holding a stack of dollar bills.

Funny what a difference a block makes.

One of the doors swung open, making way for clouds of stale alcohol, screeches of eighties hair bands, and men hooting at the dancers collecting cash in their G-strings.

Maybe this was where she belonged. She knew enough girls in this business who swore up and down you could make some real money if you were any good. Joni already knew men liked her—had known since she was far too young. Why not put that to use? She was naked all the time in her bedroom—was there really much difference doing it in front of strangers who wanted to give her their money for the pleasure?

She bit her lip and almost reached for the door. But it opened again as another man left, and again, the scent of stale alcohol followed along with cheap cigars and bad sex.

Not here, at least. Not now. There had to be other ways to find rent for a place to live that wouldn’t make her siblings give her that look of shame every time they saw her—the one she’d been avoiding all her life.

Joni turned on her heel and walked on, until she had reached her final destination in Hell’s Kitchen.

“Hey, Winston,” she said to the bouncer, who waved her into Opal without a word.

The bar was quiet for a Saturday night, but it was still early. It didn’t really fill until almost midnight anyway, when the girls got on their platforms and Tom, the owner, turned up the bass. It was early enough that Tom himself was still manning the bar until the main staff arrived.

Joni took a chance.

“Hey, kid,” said Tom as she approached. “You’re not working tonight. Unless you changed your mind about that spot again…”

Joni glanced nervously at the empty platforms built into the wall over the bar. The second one from the right used to be hers—the prime spot everyone saw the second they walked in the door. It wasn’t Broadway, but it was still an audience. An audience she almost missed…

But Joni shook her head. “No, I still can’t dance. But I wanted to know if we could start training tonight instead of next week. I just found out my living situation is changing, and?—”

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Tom said. “I don’t got the time, and we’re expecting a rush after Chicago gets out. I’m already out a bartender as it is until the ten o’clock shift starts.”

“Then tonight is perfect!” Joni cried. “I’ll be your apprentice. I’ll even work for free tonight, Tom—do whatever you want, help however I can, do what you do so I can take over when you’re ready. Please , Tom. Just until Conrad or Liz get here. I can do it, I know I can.”

The older man gave her a long look. “You think you can really do this? You can’t be messing up my cash flow, Joni. I know you ain’t so good with numbers.”

Joni bit her lip. It always came back to that, didn’t it? So what if she barely passed her GED and flunked out of college? Twice. Dancing was supposed to be her exit from that world, but it wasn’t like bartending was rocket science.

“I’m better now than when I was a shot girl,” she lied completely. “I won’t mess up any of the tabs. Please, Tom, I’m desperate. I—I really need this.”

Something in her voice broke, but that seemed to do it for her boss. Tom just pulled at his mustache and shook his graying brown head.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Don’t go crying on me now. You’re lucky you’re so cute, you know that, honey?”

“Thank you!” Joni squealed as she practically leaped over the bar and threw her arms around Tom’s neck.

“Easy,” said the barman, though he was laughing as he did. “Now, go in the back and get yourself an apron, all right? You’re gonna need it until you get your bearings.”

All smiles, Joni practically skipped through the bar to follow Billy’s commands. Maybe it wasn’t a job on Wall Street, but if she could get her shit together, she might convince Billy to give her this shift and start making some real tips. Maybe then she could afford at least a room with a few other people—Hoboken, maybe, or Riverdale, near Kate.

Her dreams of living in Manhattan and dancing on Broadway were long gone, but maybe one day, she could find what her siblings had in partners and jobs and kids and all that. But for now, she could start small. A job today. A place to live next week.

One step at a time.

Almost like a dance.

Francesca

“I wonder where Joni went,” I said as I got ready for bed later that evening.

Xavier and I had left the party in time to get Sofia down for bed, though it was still in full swing when we’d said our goodbyes.

My husband looked like a particularly delicious rake this evening, sitting shirtless in nothing but a pair of silk pajama pants that pooled around his hips. His winding tattoo climbed up from the waistband, wrapping around his torso and left arm, which he tucked over my shoulder. He was reviewing menus from prospective chefs for the gastropub he was planning in Brooklyn. His forehead crinkled with an adorably pensive expression as he made notes on each one, frowning over the words in a way that caused a divot to appear between his brows.

“Was she here?” he murmured as he penciled a note that looked like it said “mushroom fiesta,” but was probably something else.

“Of course not,” I said as I combed out my hair in front of the full-length mirror set up next to our shared closet.

The room was small for the two of us. A guestroom we were using while our primary suite downstairs was being finished. I didn’t mind. I was used to cozy enclaves, and considering I had been sleeping at the top of a staircase until about nine months ago, this was still pretty damn luxurious to me.

Plus, I sort of liked cuddling up together every night. I had no plans to stop once we were back in a king-size bed.

“She disappeared about an hour before we left. You didn’t notice?”

Xavi looked down his long nose at me in a way that said both “you ridiculous woman” and “I love you to pieces” at the same time. It was one of my favorite expressions.

“Considering I spent most of my evening eating far too much of your grandmother’s pasta and trying to stop your brother from making jokes about punching me again, I can’t say I noticed when one of your four sisters left a crowd of two hundred.”

“Fifty-five, maybe, but I see your point,” I said as I turned back to the mirror. “And I don’t think my siblings will ever get over that joke, so you’d better get used to it.”

“They’d better get used to me,” Xavier mumbled as he went back to his menus. “Bloody prat.”

I smiled to myself. While I doubted that Matthew and Xavier were ever going to be best friends, a grudging respect had grown between the two after the story of our last months in London had gotten around. The fact that Xavier had essentially given up an entire dukedom to raise his kids near my family definitely earned him a bunch of points. Likewise, the insults that Xavier accorded my brother had been downgrading steadily. Calling Matthew a “bloody prat” was practically asking him out for beers in Xavier-speak.

So maybe they weren’t bosom buddies yet. But I had faith.

A pair of arms wrapped around my waist as Xavier’s chin appeared over my shoulder in the mirror’s reflection. His hands curved over my stomach, which was roughly the size of a basketball pressing through the fabric of my nightie.

“Sometimes I think you will never be as beautiful as you look right now,” Xavier murmured before nipping lightly at my ear. “But the next day, you blow me away all over again.”

I purred like a kitten as his big hands rubbed over my bump, then slid up to cup my breasts, which were full and increasingly tender. Every inch of my skin was set alight when Xavier touched me.

He said the same thing nearly every day as my pregnancy progressed, and miraculously, it seemed like he meant it. As I’d started to show, I’d worried that Xavier might be repelled by my changing body—a true hardship given the fact that my increased libido showed no signs of letting up. But every day, this beautiful man found ways to show me how desired I was, how treasured in his eyes. We took the concept of choice seriously in our house—and every day, we both chose each other.

I drifted my hands over his forearms, wrapping my ribcage, reveling in the muscles that somehow managed to be powerful and graceful at the same time. I trailed a finger over the whirling designs over his left wrist, then threaded my fingers with his and leaned back into his chest, content to rest there for a moment, looking at the two of us—no, three of us here together.

We had circled around and around for weeks when it came to names, especially now that we knew we had to be prepared with two options.

“What about Masumi or Henry?” I’d offered at first, but that was quickly batted away.

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Xavier had said. “My parents made enough trouble in their own lives. I’d rather let them rest now.”

There was one person he wanted to honor, however—the only other person who had ever loved Xavier for exactly who he was, no questions asked, no expectations, no other requirements.

In the end, Lucia or Luciano had meant the same thing as their namesake, Lucy: light. That was what she had been to Xavier. And that was what we were to each other now.

At first, I’d been sad when the radiologist told us he thought the first 3D ultrasounds had been read incorrectly. I’d really believed I was having a little boy. I’d imagined the way he’d look—button-nosed and blue-eyed like his sister and father, but maybe with slightly darker skin and a bow-shaped mouth like mine. Sofia was a tiny thing, but I thought maybe her brother would be tall like their dad. And loved by both of us for anything he wanted to be. So, so loved.

But standing there, I realized it didn’t matter whether the baby was a boy or a girl, what features they might have from either of us. The last part of my dreams were never going to change. This treasure would be adored just like their sister. We’d worship this little creature with everything we had. Give them everything we could.

I imagined myself their parent, holding the baby, cooing to their face, kissing their dimples. And I smiled because it was going to happen, no matter what. It really felt like our family was going to happen no matter what. We were meant to meet that night in the bar. I was meant to have Xavier’s baby, just like he was meant to run into me years later. No matter how many times we tried to stay apart, fate kept throwing us back together.

Just like it had again with this little one inside me.

“Babe. Babe .” Xavier’s fingers guided my face back up to meet his, those blue eyes sparking with curiosity and love. “I know that look, Ces. What book are you living in now?”

My smile widened. My husband knew me well. But he didn’t know this.

“Just me.”

I pulled him down for a kiss. Then another. And another and another until Xavier’s grin lit up the room and his growl stirred my deepest desires.

“Just Francesca Zola Parker,” I said against his lips, sighing with more contentment than I ever thought possible. “My story has such a happy ending, it’s the only one I need.”