No Seat for Me at This Table novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Splinter

At Dino's workshop he pulls a splinter from her palm and she shuts down an almost-kiss with what he kept from her. At six in the morning her aunt orders her to apologise to Carla or stay away from Dad's birthday.

Dino's workshop was a rented garage in Red Hook with a roll-up door, a cot in the back and a hanging lamp over the workbench.

It smelled of cedar and glue.

We set my mother's table down in the middle of the floor, and neither of us said anything for a while.

I ran my hand along the edge to check for damage from the stairs.

A long splinter went into my palm.

"Ow."

"Let me see."

"It's fine."

"Gia, sit."

He pulled a stool under the lamp and took my hand in both of his.

He had a pair of tweezers in his pocket, because of course he did.

The splinter was deep, and the lamp was hot on the back of my neck.

I watched his face while he worked.

He had a scar through his left eyebrow from the day we were nine and I dared him to jump the fence behind the church.

He did not look up.

"Six weeks," I said.

"I know."

"I made that man a birthday dinner. I ironed his shirt for his cousin's wedding."

"I know."

"You ate at my table with him. You passed him the bread."

"I told Marco the first night," Dino said. "He said Carla swore it was nothing and I'd blow up the house before your father's sixtieth. He asked me to wait three weeks."

"And you said okay."

"I said okay."

The splinter came out.

He held it up to the light so I could see it was the whole thing, and then he set it on the bench.

He cleaned the cut with a rag that smelled of turpentine.

I didn't pull my hand back.

He wrapped a strip of cloth around my palm and tied it off, slowly, and his thumb stayed on the inside of my wrist.

My pulse was going hard against it, and I knew he could feel it.

He looked up then.

His face was closer than it should have been.

I could see sawdust in his eyelashes.

I could hear that I was breathing through my mouth.

He did not move, and he did not let go, and I understood that this was my call.

"Don't look at me like that," I said. "Not after you sat on your hands for six weeks."

His thumb lifted off my wrist.

"That's fair," he said.

He stood and went to the sink and ran the water for a long time.

My phone buzzed on the table.

It had buzzed all the way down four flights of stairs and across the bridge, and I had ignored it.

Now I looked.

Rocco had called a dozen times.

There were thirty texts from Marco, and the last one said: You embarrassed Carla in front of everyone. Call her.

Carla had posted a clip.

It was a still of my face against her black screen, pulled from the moment I took her phone, and over it she had written: My cousin's meltdown. Pray for us.

Under it were more than four thousand views and a long run of comments.

Is she the one who took the TABLE??

omg poor Carla, family is hard

Some people just can't share.

I read every one.

Dino came back and read the screen over my shoulder.

"Put it down," he said.

"They think I'm the one who did something."

"You are. You took the table."

I laughed, and it came out wrong, and I covered my mouth with my wrapped hand.

"It's my mother's," I said.

"I know. I was there when you carried it up."

He pulled a drop cloth off a stack of lumber and spread it over the cot.

"You sleep there. I'll take the floor."

"Dino."

"Sleep, Gia."

I lay down in my work clothes with my phone face down on my chest.

I could hear him settling on the concrete across the room, and I lay awake and listened to him not sleeping either.

At some point I must have gone under.

At six in the morning the phone rang against my ribs.

It was Aunt Lucia.

She was Carla's mother, my father's sister-in-law, and she had pinched my cheeks at every family party since I was born.

I sat up and answered.

"Gianna." Her voice was thick and furious. "Carla has been crying all night."

"Aunt Lucia, I can explain."

"You will explain to her, not to me. You will apologise to Carla in person by Sunday."

"Apologise for what?"

"Or you can stay away from your father's sixtieth birthday dinner," she said. "I mean it. Your father is already in agreement."

She hung up.

I sat on the edge of the cot with the phone in my hand, and across the room Dino had opened his eyes.

"What did she say?" he asked.

"My father agrees with her," I said.

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