Joel has turned off the WhereAmI app, just as he promised he would. When I open it up, the app reports his location as not found. I wonder if Olive has access to the app now.
He’s head over heels for her. I can see it in his eyes. He can’t listen to one negative thing about her. It goes in one ear and out the other.
She is going to get him killed.
The lock turns in the door to the apartment. Nonna is home. She shuffles into the living room, the wrinkles in her face even deeper than they were this morning. In the last few months, she’s slowed down a lot. It occurs to me that maybe she should be using a cane. Joel used to tell me about all the elderly women he’d get who came in with hip fractures. And how a large percentage of those women went on to die.
“How are you feeling, Nonna?” I ask her.
“I just had an appointment with Dr. Dino,” she tells me.
My stomach sinks the way it always does when I think of Dean. For three days after our date, he was texting and calling me. I answered a few texts and none of his calls. Since then, the communications from him gradually tapered, and now I haven’t heard from him in two days. I know I’m royally screwing this up, but all I can think of right now is Joel and Olive.
Dean deserves someone better than me. Someone who isn’t obsessed with another man. He’s a great guy, and I’m a train wreck. Can’t he see that?
“I told him he needs to call you,” Nonna says. “But he says you do not return his calls. Is this true?”
I don’t know what to say. “It’s complicated…”
“Not complicated!” She looks so furious, I want to duck. “What are you looking for? Why do you want Jo-el so much? He doesn’t want you! Dr. Dino—he wants you! He’s in love with you!”
“No, he’s not,” I mumble. “I hardly know him, Nonna.”
“It doesn’t take long to know, patatina.” My grandmother’s voice softens. “With Nonno, I knew the moment I saw him. I knew we would get married and have children and spend our lives together. And we did.”
“I don’t feel that way about Dean.”
“Maybe not.” Her dark eyes look sharply at me. “But he feels that way about you. So if you do not want that wonderful man, you tell him the truth.”
She’s right. I owe Dean that much.
