The woman beside Enzo was tall, elegant, and wearing a cream-colored coat that probably had never encountered public transportation.
My first thought was that she was gorgeous.
My second was that I hated having a first thought.
My third was that I had absolutely no right to care who Enzo Caruso brought to a comedy club.
We had exchanged approximately twelve sarcastic sentences.
That did not constitute a relationship.
It barely constituted a customer-service interaction.
Still, something hot and stupid twisted beneath my ribs.
I looked at the coffee.
Then at him.
Then at her.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said into the microphone, “apparently my DoorDash driver has a bodyguard.”
The audience laughed.
Enzo smiled.
The woman beside him laughed harder than anyone.
That annoyed me too.
I performed my set.
I didn't roast Enzo much that night.
Not because Marcus had warned me.
Not because I was intimidated.
Because every time I looked at him, the woman beside him was there.
And I hated that it affected me.
After the show, I changed my shirt, packed my bag, and decided I was going home without walking through the hallway where Enzo might be waiting.
Mature.
Emotionally evolved.
Completely normal.
I made it halfway through the kitchen before Marcus caught me.
“Are you escaping through the employee exit?”
“No.”
“You're literally standing next to a box of frozen mozzarella sticks.”
“I wanted mozzarella sticks.”
“You hate mozzarella sticks.”
“I've grown.”
“Natalie.”
“What?”
“You're jealous.”
I nearly dropped my bag.
“Of what?”
“The woman.”
“I don't know that woman.”
“Exactly.”
“That sentence doesn't prove anything.”
He grinned.
“You are so jealous.”
“I hope your next seven audiences are corporate accountants.”
His grin disappeared.
“You wouldn't.”
“Try me.”
I pushed through the back door.
Enzo was waiting in the alley.
Of course he was.
The woman was gone.
He held two coffees.
“Planning to flee through kitchens often?” he asked.
“Only when pursued by emotionally unavailable real-estate developers.”
He handed me a cup.
I looked at it suspiciously.
“What's this?”
“Coffee.”
“I understand the broad concept.”
“Oat milk. Two sugars.”
I stared at him.
“How do you know how I take my coffee?”
“You complained about the club's coffee for nine minutes Tuesday.”
“Seven.”
“Nine.”
“That material has structure.”
“It has caffeine.”
I took the cup.
It was exactly right.
That bothered me more than it should have.
“So,” I said casually, “your date leave?”
“My sister?”
My face became hot.
Enzo watched me.
I drank coffee.
It was too hot.
I burned my tongue.
This was going extremely well.
“Your sister.”
“Lucia.”
“Sure.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You thought she was my date.”
“I thought nothing.”
“You performed thirty-seven minutes without looking at me.”
“I was expanding artistically.”
“You called a man in the second row an emotionally bankrupt Labrador.”
“He laughed.”
“You were jealous.”
I pointed at him.
“You don't get to use Marcus's material.”
“Who's Marcus?”
“My traitorous best friend.”
Enzo smiled.
“Coffee?”
“I already have coffee.”
“I mean tomorrow.”
I stared.
“You're asking me out?”
“Yes.”
“No bodyguard?”
“Marco may object.”
“No expensive restaurant where the waiter silently judges my shoes?”
“I know a diner.”
I looked down at my white sneakers.
Then back at the man wearing what was probably a five-thousand-dollar suit.
“You go to diners?”
“I contain multitudes.”
I laughed.
He smiled.
That was how it began.
Coffee became breakfast.
Breakfast became another coffee because neither of us wanted to leave.
I learned that Enzo drank espresso without sugar and had an almost offensive dislike of ketchup.
He learned I had once gotten trapped in an elevator with a children's magician and still considered it the longest twenty minutes of my life.
He didn't tell me much about his business.
I didn't ask much.
There were boundaries surrounding Enzo Caruso that I could feel even when I couldn't see them.
But I learned other things.
His father had died when Enzo was twenty-six.
His mother, Rosa, still called him every Sunday morning and complained that he worked too much.
Lucia was three years younger and apparently the only person alive who could insult him without checking exits first.
Marco had been his friend since they were teenagers.
“He laughs,” Enzo told me.
“I've seen no evidence.”
“He laughed at you.”
“That was fear.”
“It wasn't.”
Our coffee lasted three hours.
When we stepped outside, snow had started falling.
Enzo offered to drive me home.
“I have a car.”
“Where?”
“Four blocks away.”
“It's snowing.”
“Chicago. We do that here.”
He looked at my sneakers.
“You're going to walk four blocks in those?”
“Are you insulting my footwear?”
“Yes.”
I put a hand over my heart.
“He does have jokes.”
He walked me to my car anyway.
For the next three weeks, Enzo kept showing up.
Sometimes at the club.
Sometimes at the diner.
Once outside my apartment with takeout because I'd texted him that I was rewriting material and had forgotten dinner.
That text was how we accidentally exchanged numbers.
I insisted it was practical.
Marcus insisted I was lying.
Then Enzo invited me to Sunday dinner.
“With your family?”
“Yes.”
“Like your actual family?”
“As opposed to?”
“I don't know. Your board of directors?”
“My mother wants to meet you.”
I stopped walking.
“Your mother knows about me?”
“She has internet access.”
“Oh, God.”
“She watched your clips.”
“Oh, God.”
“She likes you.”
“That somehow makes this worse.”
His family's home was in a quiet neighborhood where the trees were old and the houses had wide porches.
Not what I'd expected.
Rosa Caruso opened the door before Enzo knocked.
She was five-foot-three, silver-haired, and immediately ignored her son.
“Natalie!”
She hugged me.
Not a polite hug.
A real Italian-mother hug that rearranged internal organs.
“You're beautiful.”
“Mom.”
“What? She is.”
“I like her,” I told Enzo.
“I knew you would.”
Lucia appeared behind Rosa.
“Sorry about the comedy-club misunderstanding.”
“You knew?”
“Enzo called me afterward.”
I looked at him.
“You told your sister I was jealous?”
“No.”
Lucia smiled.
“He didn't have to.”
Traitorous genetics.
Dinner was loud.
Warm.
Messy.
Nothing like the image I had constructed around Enzo.
Rosa complained that he never ate enough.
Lucia told stories about him as a teenager.
Marco arrived halfway through dinner and was apparently family enough to open the refrigerator without asking.
I laughed until my stomach hurt.
And Enzo changed inside that house.
His shoulders loosened.
He washed dishes.
He argued with his mother about garlic.
He kissed Rosa's forehead when she passed him.
I saw the man beneath the reputation.
That was dangerous in a way the rumors weren't.
After dinner, Rosa brought out photographs.
Enzo protested.
Nobody listened.
There was Enzo at twelve with terrible hair.
Enzo at sixteen beside an ancient Buick.
Enzo holding baby Lucia with an expression of terrified responsibility.
Then Rosa showed me a picture of him at twenty-eight.
His father stood beside him.
Enzo became quiet.
Rosa noticed.
She closed the album.
Later, outside, I asked, “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You're a terrible liar.”
“So I've been told.”
We stood beneath the porch light.
Snow drifted through the dark.
“You loved him,” I said.
“My father?”
I nodded.
“Yes.”
Something complicated moved through his expression.
“He taught me that protecting your family meant controlling every variable.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.”
“You know you can't control everything, right?”
His gaze settled on me.
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
Then he kissed me.
No dramatic grab.
No movie-star dip.
He simply touched my cheek and waited.
I could have stepped away.
I didn't.
The kiss was warm and careful and devastatingly gentle.
When we separated, I whispered, “This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably.”
“Your reputation is terrifying.”
“So you've mentioned.”
“You own more suits than any reasonable person.”
“I can change.”
“No, you can't.”
He smiled.
I kissed him again.
For six weeks, life became ridiculous.
Enzo sent flowers once.
I told him flowers were predictable.
So the next day, a delivery truck arrived outside the Lantern.
Two men carried in a four-foot stuffed pink flamingo.
A card hung around its neck.
Less predictable. —E
I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
The flamingo became part of my act.
I named him Giuseppe.
Photos went online.
People loved it.
People also noticed Enzo.
Clips of our crowd work began spreading.
A local entertainment blog called us “Chicago's strangest almost-couple.”
Then a video from the Lantern hit two million views.
My phone started ringing.
Agents.
Podcasts.
Producers.
Clubs I'd begged for five-minute guest spots suddenly wanted weekends.
One afternoon, my manager called.
“Natalie, sit down.”
“I am sitting.”
“Stand up and sit down again.”
“Marcus.”
“National tour.”
Silence.
“What?”
“A promoter wants you opening twenty-two cities.”
I couldn't breathe.
This was everything I'd worked for.
Six years of half-empty rooms.
Late-night drives.
Being told I was too female, too loud, too curvy, too conversational, too old to be “new.”
And suddenly—
Twenty-two cities.
I called Enzo first.
He answered on the second ring.
“I got the tour.”
Silence.
Then warmth.
“Natalie.”
“I got it.”
“I'm proud of you.”
Those words nearly made me cry.
But then he asked, “Who's producing it?”
I told him.
His tone changed.
Barely.
“Send me the contract.”
My smile faded.
“Why?”
“I'll have someone look at it.”
“I already have an attorney.”
“Natalie—”
“I said I have an attorney.”
A pause.
“Okay.”
But it wasn't okay.
I could hear it.
For the first time since we'd met, the thing I had sensed around Enzo became visible.
The need to protect.
The need to control.
And neither of us understood yet how badly that instinct was about to hurt me.