The Ex by Freida McFadden(27)

“Hello?” I say.

“Where are you?” Nonna demands to know. Well, she clearly isn’t sprawled out in our apartment with a broken hip.

“I’m… taking a stroll in the city.”

“No!” she snaps. “You are following that boy, Jo-el!”

Damn. How does she know that? “I’m not following Joel.”

“If you want a date,” she says, “my friend Tina from book club told me about her son, Antonio…”

“Nonna…”

“He’s a very important man! Tina says all these club owners pay him for protection.”

I frown at the phone. “Are you saying… he’s a mobster?”

Nonna is quiet on the other line. “Oh. Do you think that’s what that means?”

Oh my God. “Look, I have to go.”

“Patatina.” Her tone softens. “You are so beautiful. Stop doing this to yourself.”

“I’m just taking a walk, Nonna.”

“Fine. In that case, you bring home a cannoli. You want to follow that fool around town, you have to bring home a cannoli.”

“Okay.” It’s a small price to pay.

While Joel and his friends are taking a break, the man I don’t recognize wanders over to the hot dog cart. I thought I knew all of Joel’s friends, but I’ve definitely never seen this man before. He has dark hair and eyes like mine and similar coloring to my own, but I don’t think he’s Italian like me—I can spot a fellow paisano a mile away. Maybe Greek? Before I can stop myself, I’ve wandered to the hot dog cart and gotten in line behind the man, trying to get a closer look.

“Mustard only,” the man is telling the hot dog vendor. That’s how I like my hot dogs too. “And a bottle of water.”

The vendor prepares the hot dog, and the smell of it makes my stomach churn. I skipped lunch today. I’ve been skipping a lot of meals lately. Even when I cook up a storm, I can’t eat any of it. But at least Nonna is putting on some weight. She was too skinny before.

“That’ll be ten dollars,” the vendor tells Joel’s friend.

His eyes widen, as they should. Ten dollars for a hot dog and water? “Ten dollars?”

The vendor nods.

Joel’s friend looks at the cart, searching for a price that isn’t there. “That seems like… a lot.”

The vendor shrugs. “That is the price, my friend.”

This guy is clearly not a native New Yorker, because instead of calling the vendor on his bullshit, he reaches for his wallet and pulls out a ten-dollar bill. He is going to pay ten dollars for a hot dog and water. I can watch no more.

“You are not paying ten dollars for a hot dog and water!” I speak up. I address the hot dog vendor, my arms folded across my chest. “Four dollars. That’s fair.”

The vendor narrows his eyes at me. “Five dollars.”

“Four dollars.” I square my shoulders. “Four dollars or else I report you for not having prices displayed on your cart.”

The vendor looks at me like he wants to wrap his fingers around my neck and strangle me. But he knows I’m right. “Four dollars,” he says grudgingly to the man.

The man is looking at me now, a smile playing on his face. Up close, he is much more attractive than he was from across the field. There’s a dimple on his left cheek when he smiles. “And I’ll pay for whatever this young lady wants,” he adds.

My cheeks grow warm. “I don’t want anything.”

“Of course you do,” he insists. “You were in line.”

I can’t tell him that I was only in line to get a better look at him. “You don’t have to pay, I mean.”

“Well, you saved me six dollars,” he points out.

“You want something or not, lady?” the vendor snaps at me.

They’re both staring at me, so I mumble, “Just a water.”

I accept the water grudgingly. I need to get out of here before Joel sees me. I don’t want him to figure out I’ve been following him. If he does, it won’t be good. At the very least, he’ll delete the WhereAmI app from his phone.

“I’m Dean,” the guy says before I can hurry away. He’s still smiling at me with that sexy dimple. Joel used to look at me that way.

“Oh,” I say.

He’s waiting for me to tell him my name. But if I tell him my name, he’ll report back to Joel, and he’ll know it’s me. And then Joel will wonder what I happened to be doing at that exact same place in the park as him.

But before I can figure out what to tell him, the guy Dean snaps his fingers and says, “Sophia Loren.”

I blink at him. “Excuse me?”

He fumbles with his hot dog. “Sorry. I was trying to figure out who you look like. I’m a sucker for old films and Sophia Loren was this great Italian actress from… well, a long time ago.”

“I know who Sophia Loren is,” I say. I love old films too, and Marriage Italian Style is one of Nonna’s favorite movies. I bought it for her on DVD several years ago. “I don’t think I look like her.”

“I disagree,” Dean says, his dark eyes serious even though he’s still smiling. “You’re a dead ringer.”