I know I said these are unrelated, but there has been a theme lately, so if you want to read between the lines and pretend that they are all supposed to tie in with each other, you can. :-) If not, that's cool, too. It's Rollisi together and I honestly don't care about anything else right now and have no idea what little story may come next yet. LOL
Sonny quietly slipped into his parents' house, away from the hustle and bustle of the large, stereotypical Italian gathering in the backyard for his parents 45th wedding anniversary. There was enough food to feed the entire neighborhood for a week, enough alcohol to open their own bar, a few competitive games of bocce going on, and an as equally competitive game of tag going on among all of the children.
The back door opened, and he heard a voice a moment later. "There you are, Sonny. The party's outside, ya know." Her words were slurred as she spoke.
Sonny took a deep breath. "Theresa," he greeted simply. "Don't ya think ya should stop?" He eyed the glass in her hand before she brought it to her lips and finished off what was left. "What's that? Your fourth glass?"
"We're Italian," she shrugged with an eyeroll. "It's basically water for us. And besides, I thought ya were a lawyer, not a judge. You're being judgy." She brushed past him and reached for the bottle of Brunello to refill her glass. "Oops," she giggled when the bottle was empty. "Ssh. Don't tell Mom and Dad I finished it," she "whispered" as she brought a finger to her lips dramatically.
Sonny rolled his eyes and shook his head. He knew Theresa was tipsy, but she was not was drunk as she was acting. Not only did he have plenty of years of patrol experience under his belt to know the difference, but he had plenty of experience with his sister to know how she operated, also. Theresa liked to act drunker than she was, it had been her usual MO for years, and to this day, Sonny couldn't figure out why.
"You can drop the act, Tree." He crossed his arms. "It's just us in here."
"Not for long," she smirked, her words less slurred, confirming his theory, and as if on cue, the door opened again, and Gina walked in with Bella following close behind.
"Okay," he sighed. "What is this? What's going on?"
Bella winced and shot him a look that said – I'm sorry.
"We just wanna talk with our favorite brother." Gina said casually.
"I'm your only brother," he deadpanned, already worried about whatever it was his sisters were conspiring up, "unless there's some deep, dark family secret I don't know about."
Gina and Theresa shared a laugh, but Bella wore a more concerned expression on her face.
"For the record, I told them to mind their own damn business," Bella said apologetically.
Sonny wasn't surprised. He loved all of his sisters, obviously, and they all drove him crazy in their own way, but he and Bella definitely had the strongest bond and closest relationship. "I think I'm gonna need a drink for whatever this is," he muttered.
"You should probably make it a double, Sonny," Bella offered, sympathetically.
Sonny walked over to open the cupboard above the refrigerator and retrieve a bottle of the good liquor from his parents' not so secret "secret" stash.
"Actually, pour me some of that, too, while you're at it." Bella decided.
"You want whiskey? What the hell is going on?" A beat or two passed as he poured the drinks and no one said anything else. "I have a million things on my mind, right now, so you all better start talkin' before I lose my patience."
Not only was he worried about Amanda who was called into to work early that morning to chase down a lead, he was also still processing the fact that when he was getting the girls in the car to head out to Staten Island, Billie looked at him and said "Love you, Daddy," clear as day while he buckled her car seat. Jessie, who was playing on her tablet, looked over at him and said "Yeah, I love you too, Daddy," with a grin, as if it was something she said hundreds of times before to him and it was one of the only things he could focus on besides Amanda all afternoon.
"Go on, Theresa. You started this whole thing," Bella said waving her hands in the air, gesturing towards her sister, before she took the glass Sonny offered her.
"Yeah, she's right," Gina agreed with a shrug, suddenly having second thoughts about the "intervention" her oldest sister had planned for their brother.
"Hey! I thought you backed me up on this, Gina?" Theresa shot back. "We're supposed to be a united front."
"Yeah, well, I think I gave into peer pressure, and I am regretting it now. Bella is right. It's none of our business."
"Alright. Alright." Sonny cut in in a tone that had him feeling more like he was refereeing an argument between Billie and Jessie than listening to his grown sisters. "Can someone just tell me what the hell we are talking about? You wanna send Ma and Pop to a retirement community or somethin'? They aren't that old yet."
"No, it's not that," Bella said, softly, before staring down Theresa in a way that only a sister could.
The door creaked opened again. "Nonna said we need more... limoncello," Mia finished slowly when she realized all of her aunts, mother, and uncle had stopped talking the moment she stepped into the kitchen. "Uh, am I interrupting something? I can tell Nonna I couldn't find it..." she trailed off as she tried to read the room.
"Uhh..." Gina moved around the kitchen. "Here it is!" She declared as she pulled a bottle of homemade limoncello out of the box of party supplies under the counter. "Tell her there's only one more left after that, but I promised to save it for when Amanda got here. I told her I wouldn't let her miss out."
"Okay," Mia replied suspiciously as she backed out of the kitchen door.
"Things with you and Amanda seem...serious." Theresa said after she was sure Mia was gone and no one else was lingering by the door.
"Uh, yeah." He answered, distractedly as he glanced at a notification on his watch. It was a text from Amanda that said: Be there soon. ETA twenty-three minutes.
"But she's not here tonight."
"She and Fin got stuck workin' a lead. She'll be here soon."
"It's Saturday."
"Perps don't care about that." He shot back. "You know that. Remember how pissed Ma would get when I was late or missed Sunday dinners?"
"And you brought her kids with you, like some kind of babysitter." Theresa continued.
"Babysitter?! Did you seriously just say that to me, Tree? I love those girls like they're my own."
"But they're not. Ma told me Amanda said she doesn't even know if she wants to have another baby. I just...I just don't want you to settle for a ready-made family and then regret it someday... especially not havin' a kid of your own and all."
Theresa dropped the bomb and Bella and Gina sucked in a breath as they waited for Sonny to respond. They were expecting the Italian rage, but he was eerily quiet and that was even more alarming. In a family where were being loud was sign of affection, and yelling symbolized strong emotions, there was always something almost frightening about silence.
He took a breath and slowly let it exhale. "Okay. Okay, here's how we are gonna do this," he began, scrubbing a hand over his face. "We're doing it the Carisi way. We're gonna get this all out right here, right now, and then so help me God, we better never discuss this again. Are. We. All. Clear?" He punctuated each word harshly.
"Mmhm."
"Yes."
"Okay."
"I neva', eva' wanna hear you say that those girls aren't mine." His accent was coming out in full force as he braced his hands against the countertop. "Ya hear me? I have loved those little girls since the moment they were born. I was there for Jessie's first steps. I stayed awake all night with Billie when she was getting her molars so Rollins could get a few uninterrupted hours of sleep. I know what doctors they go to, what medicines they're allergic to. I know their favorite toys, their favorite songs, favorite books. I changed their dirty diapers and wiped their tears after nightmares. I've been to ballet recitals, gymnastics, and parent teacher conferences. I've been there for the good moments and the not so good moments. It's not always sunshine and rainbows, no, because that's life, it's complicated and messy and confusing, but my God, I love Amanda, Jessie and Billie so much. Maybe our relationship came to be in a jumbled-up order, but we're family, and we have been for a very long time."
"Why couldn't Amanda stay awake with her own teething child?" Theresa raised an eyebrow, swirling her glass causing the wine to swish around inside of it.
Sonny shot his sister a look – of course that would be her only takeaway from his little monologue. "She was coming off of an 18 hour shift a few weeks after being abducted and held hostage by a crazy ex-cop. Is that a good enough reason for you, Your Honor? Who's being judgy now?" He muttered.
She shrugged and Sonny couldn't recall the last time he had been this upset with his sister. "They don't call you dad, though, do they? You don't have legal ties to them."
He scoffed. "You're somethin' else." He finished off the whiskey in his glass and poured another. He wanted to tell his sister that the girls did call him "dad" today, but it was still new, and special, and he wasn't telling Theresa that before he told Amanda. Instead, he took a different approach.
"I'm well aware of what the law says regarding my relationship to those girls. Not that it's any of your business, but we've talked about it before...serving their fathers with papers so I can adopt the girls when we do get married, but that's not an easily accepted practice in family court. Whether that happens or not, it doesn't change how much I love them. And if anyone in this family treats them differently because they don't share Carisi DNA, I don't think I can forgive that." He said firmly. "I would die for those girls - walk through fire, crawl on broken glass, take a bullet, anything to keep them safe. Because I love them – and their mother- that much. Wouldn't you do that for your kids?" He asked them, eyebrows raised.
"Of course!" Theresa replied, instantly.
"Without a doubt," Bella responded.
Gina shrugged. "Well, I don't have any kids, but I'd do that for my dog, so... I get what you're sayin', Sonny."
"So don't ever question my relationship with Amanda and those precious little girls or how much I love them. They are my family. I don't expect you to understand, unless you're in a situation like this... but I shouldn't have to say that I love 'em like they are my own, because to me they are my own...in the ways that matter."
The door creaked open and Mr. and Mrs. Carisi came stumbling through it, laughing. Instantly their laughter died down when they realized the room was quiet.
"Uh-oh. Something's wrong, Dominick." Mrs. Carisi said to her husband, bringing a hand to rest on his arm. "They're never this quiet – even when they were kids. They were only quiet when something happened. Is it Amanda, Sonny?" she asked, immediately concerned. "Is she alright? I'm worried. She's still not here. I know you said she had to work, but..."
"She's on her way, Ma. She'll be here soon."
"Oh, thank goodness."
Dominick Sr. crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side, studying his children carefully. "Your mother's right, though. Something's going on. You four are never this quiet." His eyes scanned the room and he noticed what Sonny was drinking. "And Sonny's drinking the good whiskey..."
"Theresa is sticking her nose where it doesn't belong regarding Sonny and Amanda," Gina blurted out in a huff.
"Oh, great, Gina. Be a tattletale. I thought Bella would have been the one to rat me out."
"Don't think I won't!" Bella shot back. "She just beat me to it!" Then, like she was eight years old again tattletaling on her siblings she turned to her parents. "Theresa's giving Sonny shit 'cause she thinks he's settling for a ready-made family."
"That wasn't my intent!"
"Then what was your intent?!" Gina crossed her arms. "Huh? Do you ever think anything through? Or do you just like to stir the pot? Like you did in high school with me and Frankie DeLuca."
And before he knew it, at the name drop of Gina's high school boyfriend, World War III nearly broke out in the Carisi kitchen. Sonny was quietly sipping his second glass of whiskey while his sisters were all trying to talk over each other.
"God, I feel like I'm ten years old again," Sonny muttered.
"Enough!" Mrs. Carisi scolded, as her husband whistled to get everyone's attention. "Stop it. You're too old to be acting like this. You're just like Aunt Loretta, Theresa -always sticking your nose where it doesn't belong. Don't do that. It caused a lot of problems between us, and I missed out on a lot of time with her because we were too busy holding grudges. And you two," she looked between Gina and Bella, "know better than to tattle."
"Now, Sonny," she continued, "are you happy? With Amanda and the girls?" She asked even though she knew without a shadow of a doubt what the answer was. She never saw her son this happy before.
"Yes!"
"Good. That's all that matters." She shrugged her shoulders. "Leave your brother alone," she told her daughters. "He's happy and that's all that matters."
Dominick Sr. nodded his head in agreement. "Stay in your lane, girls."
Before anyone could say anything else, or their mother could insist they apologize to one another, a child's cry could be heard from outside. Billie's cry, Sonny knew in an instant and he rounded the kitchen counter at such a speed that he felt like he was a cop chasing a perp again.
It was only a matter of seconds before he opened the back door, and was met with Mia holding a crying Billie in her arms.
"She tripped and fell in the driveway," Mia rushed to explain, hoping to alleviate her uncle's fears. "She got a little scrape right here on her knee," she said, shifting Billie in her arms to show him. "But I think she's scared. She started crying and asking for "Daddy..." Mia trailed off.
Billie, who calmed down significantly when she saw him, was still sniffling and reached her arms out towards him. "Daddy!"
"I got you," he said as she settled against his chest after Mia handed her to him. "I got you," he repeated, kissing the top of her head. "It's okay."
"I'll go get the first aid kit," Mrs. Carisi said softly, offering Billie a sad smile. "We'll get you all fixed up. I bet Nonna has some princess band-aids around here somewhere. Let me go see what I can find."
"Cin-ella?" Billie asked with a sniffle.
"I think I have those," Nonna replied before she left the kitchen.
"Okay, Itsy-Bitsy," Sonny said. "Let's get you cleaned up." He walked over to the sink and set her down on the countertop – ironically in the same spot his mother used to put him in when she had to clean up all of his summertime injuries as a kid.
"No!" Billie clung on to his neck when he tried to pull away.
"Oh, it's okay. You're such a brave girl. You can sit here while I clean up your knee. I know you can."
"Brave?" She repeated. "Like Momma?"
"Just like Momma," Sonny replied, nodding his head.
Billie nodded, and released her grip on his neck. Sonny was about to reach over to wet a paper towel, but when he turned around, Theresa was already offering him one. "I'm sorry," she mouthed, and Sonny nodded, knowing that this was her extending an olive branch of sorts, and quite possibly the closest he'd get to a real apology because Theresa Carisi rarely apologized – even if she was in the wrong.
Billie winced when the cool paper towel touched her skin, but without missing a beat, Sonny talked to her in silly voices and distracted her. She barely even noticed when Nonna Carisi returned with the first aid kit and Sonny applied the antiseptic and a Cinderella band-aid because she was giggling at Sonny's antics.
Just as he finished applying the band-aid, the front door opened and the familiar pattern of Amanda's footsteps sounded on the hardwood floor in the hallway. "Hey, is the party inside or outside?" She teased when she saw the Carisi family all huddled in the kitchen.
Sonny's sisters stepped off to the side as they greeted her, and she caught sight of a puffy eyed, red faced Billie sitting on the countertop. "What happened?" She asked softly, moving towards Sonny and Billie as she dropped her purse on the kitchen table.
"I got a boo-boo," Billie pouted, tears welling up once again now that she saw her mother. "Daddy fixed it! And Nonna gave me a Cine-ella band-aid!"
Amanda's eyes flew to Carisi's and she could see the pride in them, mirroring the look on her own face. "Daddy fixed it?" she repeated, in awe, running her hand through Billie's hair.
Billie nodded with a sniffle. "Mmhm! All better! Play now?" She asked, her eyes darting between Sonny and Amanda.
"Yeah, sure." Amanda lifted her from the countertop and placed her on the ground. She chuckled softly at how completely oblivious Billie was to how much this moment meant to her.
"We'll take her back outside," Mrs. Carisi said with a knowing smile as she reached for Billie's hand.
"Come on, girls," Dominick Sr. gestured to his daughters, "let's go rejoin the party and give them a minute."
Amanda watched everyone file out the back door before she turned around to face Sonny again. "So... that's new, Daddy."
"I didn't put her up to it; I swear!" He waved his hands in surrender with a chuckle. "I was getting her all situated in the car this morning and she just looked at me and outta nowhere said "Love you, Daddy" and then Jessie looked over and said "I love you, too, Daddy," and Amanda...it was just...it was...amazing. I couldn't wait to tell you. It's okay, right? I know they don't really see Al and Murphy all that much, but if it's not okay I under-"
"Of course, it's okay. It's more than okay." She cut him off before he could finish that thought. "Al and Murphy didn't earn that title. They don't deserve it, either." She sniffled as she blinked back a few tears. "You deserve it, Dominick. You earned it a long time ago."
"Are you crying?" He asked.
"No." She sniffled again.
"Yes, you are." He closed the distance between them and reached out to brush her tears away. "I know you say you never cry, but you're a terrible liar." He said with a grin alluding to past conversations.
"They're happy tears." She laughed softly, standing on her tip toes to kiss him. "I'm just so happy...for you...for the girls...for the family we are."