It was after midnight. I was no longer the birthday girl, so I didn’t presume to exempt myself from clean-up duty. Besides, given the hardened looks on my parents’ faces, it seemed unwise to be anything other than the obedient daughter. Mr. Beresdorfer’s parting remarks had cast a pall over the entire evening’s events, and though I was pretty sure my dad had been too distracted to notice me consorting with “the enemy,” for lack of a better term, it was all I could think about. What sort of girl kisses a boy without even knowing his name? Had that really been me? It all seemed so surreal. Stranger still, there was no telling if—or how—I would ever see him again. He was Roman Monte, after all. I still hadn’t fully digested that piece of information. As I mopped to the rhythm of these inner musings, Enzo and Frankie stripped the white linens off tables and replaced them with our traditional checkered tablecloths. Over at the dessert table, Mom and Aunt Val put plastic wrap over what little remained of the tiramisu, torta della nonna, and rum cake.
