A while ago, I saw a tweet on Twitter that was something along the lines of: Imagine if Amanda unexpectedly met Carisi's mom.
It really stuck with me, and this idea was born. So, if whoever was responsible for that tweet ever sees this, thanks!
As always, thanks for following along. I have a few more ideas in mind to pass time for me during the hiatus, so I hope you stick around!
Xxx
Amanda Rollins was sitting quietly in the back of her and Carisi's favorite café scrolling mindlessly through her phone while she waited for Sonny to arrive with the girls. She looked up cautiously when she realized someone was approaching her table.
"Detective Rollins?" the woman asked tentatively, her dark hair was cut into a sleek bob, her turquoise blue glasses brought out the color of her eyes, and her red lipstick made her smile seem even brighter than it already was.
"Yes. Can I help you?" There was something vaguely familiar about the woman, but she couldn't place it.
"You don't know me, but, honey, I sure feel like I know you. I've never stopped praying for you after I lit that prayer candle at church for you. I'm-"
"Sonny's mom!" Amanda exclaimed, everything suddenly clicking into place as she kicked herself mentally for not piecing this together instantly.
"Yes," she confirmed with a smile and a nod of her head.
"I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you at first." Amanda apologized, embarrassed. "I've seen pictures. Sonny talks about you all the time! I feel like I know you, too..."
"I probably look a little different," she touched her hair subconsciously. "I've embraced my gray hair for years, but my girls convinced to try something different during quarantine and all, so I started dyeing it. There aren't many pictures of me like this."
"It's beautiful."
"You're too kind, sweetheart. I've had gray hair since Bella was in diapers, I swear. I think I'm going back to it. This," she waved her hands around her head, "doesn't feel like me."
"Was Sonny the reason for you gray her?" Amanda asked with a smile.
Mrs. Carisi laughed. "Oh, darling, the stories I can tell you...I do think he and Theresa are the reason I went gray prematurely. Sometimes people thought Bella was my granddaughter!"
Mrs. Carisi's laughter – like Sonny's - was contagious, and Amanda couldn't help but to laugh, too. "So, what brings you to this part of town?" She asked curiously. If Sonny wasn't Sonny, she might have considered this encounter to be an ambush, but she knew he wouldn't do that to her. Plus, she was the one who picked this café as their meeting place – changing it from the Panera they had originally agreed on barely fifteen minutes ago. "I hope everything is okay."
"Oh, it is. My husband had appointment with a specialist about getting his cataracts removed. Gina brought us here after because she said Sonny raves about their chicken salad sandwiches."
Amanda nodded. "They do have good chicken salad, but it's not as good as yours," and she couldn't help but to notice how the other woman beamed. "I craved your chicken salad when I was pregnant with Billie…. somehow it always managed to appear in the break room. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Sonny's mother shrugged. "Well, Sonny may have mentioned that you really enjoyed it, so he may just have ended up with a double batch to take home after Sunday dinners."
"Well, I really did appreciate it."
"I'll make another batch for you! Anytime you want it, call me! Make sure I give you my phone number before we leave."
Amanda laughed. "Oh, you don't have to do that..."
"Please, dear. Cooking is really the only thing I've been doing lately. Cooking for other people brings me so much joy."
"Like someone else I know," Amanda said softly, a smile on her face at the thought of Carisi appearing in her mind.
"Look," the older woman began, "I really don't want to intrude, but would you be interested in joining us?" She gestured over to where Gina and Sonny's dad were seated. "We have an extra seat."
Gina and Dom Sr. smiled and waved to Amanda and she waved back. "I would love, too," she answered sincerely. "But would you mind if we moved to that bigger table over there?" She pointed to a larger table. "Sonny is on his way here with the girls, actually. I had to go to the shooting range to requalify this afternoon, so he picked them up from daycare for me. We were going to meet here."
Mrs. Carisi didn't even bat an eyelash at the mention that her son was picking up someone else's kids from daycare, and Amanda couldn't help but to wonder if Sonny let it slip to his family that they were seeing each other. Their relationship was forever – she knew it in her soul – but it was still new, only six weeks since she kissed him on the Hudson River the day Fin and Phoebe decided to not get married and the day of Sonny's inevitable break up with Nicole. She was never in a relationship like this before – one with a good guy, so she wanted to take things slow and settle into a routine between them and the girls before they broadcasted the change in their relationship.
"Oh, how wonderful! This was meant to be!"
Amandas phone lit up with a notification, and Mrs. Carisi couldn't help but to notice that the wallpaper was a picture of Sonny and the girls. It looked recent, she decided, from the brief glimpse she caught, and she couldn't help but to wonder if the very good mood her son had been in the last few times they talked had anything to do with the beautiful blonde detective and her adorable little girls.
"Oh, look at that. They'll be here soon." She quickly typed back: Can't wait. I have a surprise when you get here – before she and Mrs. Carisi went over to Dom and Gina. They exchanged quick hellos before moving to the bigger table, after Mrs. Carisi announced that Sonny was on his way with Billie and Jessie. Amanda watched with a smile as Dom pulled out each of the chairs for her, his wife, and Gina before he sat down himself, and it was so easy for her to see how Sonny became Sonny – the man that she loved.
There wasn't an ounce of awkwardness as the four of them sat there chatting, and Amanda found herself regretting all the times she turned Sonny down when he offered to take her (and later her and the girls) out to Staten Island with him. Perhaps, if she had, she would have realized sooner that she was capable of being in a family that was the exact opposite of her own. She could break the cycle and show her girls they deserve happiness, too.
When Sonny entered the café a short while later, Billie on his hip, a diaper bag slung over his shoulder, and Jessie holding his hand, he was completely in shock at the scene in front of him. His parents, his sister, and Amanda were all sitting together laughing and talking like they had known each other forever. His heart swelled at the sight. His two worlds were colliding in the best possible way. If it were up to him alone, he would have told the entire world they were dating, but Amanda needed some time before she was ready for that, and he understood. He knew it would be worth the wait.
Amanda had asked what his family would think of them being together so soon after he and Nicole broke up and Sonny had confessed that he never even told his family he was seeing anyone. When she asked why, he said there was a part of him that always knew it wasn't going to go anywhere with Nicole, but when it came to her – Amanda Rollins - the woman he's loved in some way or another for over seven years – he was certain of they were forever.
He asked her, carefully, one night when they were cuddled up together on the couch binging some awful reality TV show, why she was so worried about meeting his family. She said that she didn't have a lot of experience with family – good family. She didn't want them to think less of her or think that she was corrupting him because she had two kids with two different men. He assured her that none of that mattered, and just because his family was close to one another, didn't mean that they didn't have their own share of drama and family issues, either. All families are messy in their own ways, he reminded her.
"Who are those people with Momma?" Jessie asked curiously as she held his hand a little tighter.
"That's my family. My mom, my dad, and one of my sisters," he explained.
"You have a family?"
He laughed. "Yeah, Jess. A big one. You'll get to meet everyone someday."
"Are there kids to play with?"
"So many!" He exclaimed. "Gina," he said as he pointed to his sister, "has four kids, but they're a little bit older than you. Bella's kids are closer in age to you and Billie."
"Oh, wow."
"Now this is a surprise," Sonny said as they approached the table.
"I told you so," she practically sang.
He placed his hand on Amanda's shoulder and squeezed affectionately to gauge her reaction, and she just smiled and placed her hand over his. In their unspoken conversation, he could tell that she was ready to disclose to his family – just like they had to their bosses a few weeks prior.
The action was brief, only lasting a second or two, as they looked into each other's eyes, but it did not go unnoticed by his mother.
She looked like a kid on Christmas morning. "Is there-"
"Ma!" Gina warned, cutting off the rest of her mother's sentence, since she knew exactly where it was going to go. "Sonny just got here. Give him a second before you interrogate him."
Jessie climbed up onto Amanda's lap and wrapped her arms around her mother's neck. "Mommy!" She exclaimed. "Uncle Sonny let us pick the music in the car when he picked us up!"
"Oh, did he? I'm sure he loved listening to the Moana soundtrack all the way across town."
"Hey, how'd you know I picked that?"
"Because I'm your momma and I just know!" She kissed Jessie's cheek.
Jessie laughed and continued recounting the car ride over to her mother. "And Uncle Sonny said we weren't cookin' tonight for dinner cause we're gonna eat here, but he promised to make pancakes tomorrow morin' with sprinkles even though tomorrow is a daycare and work day!" She announced with the biggest smile on her face, completely oblivious to all the information she was divulging.
"Did he now?" She looked up at Sonny with an amused smirk on her face and all he did was shrug casually – like making pancakes for the girls before he had to rush to court for a pretrial was the most normal thing in the world – and maybe for them, it was.
Jessie bobbed her head up and down happily. "Yeah!"
Amanda quickly tried to steer the conversation away from Jessie sharing too much about the new relationship between her and Carisi. She cleared her throat. "Jess, there are some people for you to meet." She said before making introductions. "Can you say hello?"
Jessie said hello, and then made conversation with each one of them. She told Mrs. Carisi that Uncle Sonny lets her help make sauce- real sauce, not the kind in the jar like her momma makes- and he said he learned from her so maybe someday she could make sauce with her to see if Uncle Sonny does it the right way. Then, when Dom Sr. pulled a quarter out from behind her ear and asked her if she remembers to scrub behind them, she laughed hysterically, insisting there were no quarters hiding in her ears. Now, she was sitting beside Gina and totally engrossed with the silly Snapchat filters they were looking at.
Sonny placed the diaper bag on the floor behind Amanda's chair and handed Billie to her before went over to kiss his mother on the cheek. "What brings you guys here?"
"I had an appointment with that eye doctor today." His dad explained. "Gina took us and then said we should come here to get something to eat afterwards."
Sonny frowned. "I thought your appointment was next week."
"It was, but they had a cancellation, so they got me in sooner for the consultation."
"You guys shoulda told me."
His mother shrugged. "I must've forgot, but it looks like there's something you forgot to tell us, anyway, so..." she teased. "I'll make chicken salad and you can bring these three lovely ladies out to visit soon... then we can call it even?"
"It was my doing," Amanda rushed to explain with a blush, shifting Billie in her arms as the toddler tried to get a better view of all the new faces. "This is still kind of new, and I was nervous. I don't have a lot of family experience, and..."
Mrs. Carisi reached out and touched Amanda's hand, "Honey, it's okay. Everything happens when it's supposed to happen."
Without any warning, Billie smiled at Mrs. Carisi and said, "Hi!" Before she lurched forward towards her.
Sonny's mother expertly caught the squirming toddler in her arms. "Well, hello to you, darling. Aren't you a doll? Look at those curls!" She exclaimed as she touched Billie's blonde hair.
With both of her children in good hands, Amanda decided to follow Sonny to the counter when he went to order their dinner. She smiled when his hand touched the small of her back. It was a touch they shared hundreds of times when they were partners, out of habit, but ever since the change in their relationship, it filled her with even more of a thrill.
Sonny looked over his shoulder after placing their order, smiling at his mother when she held up Billie's hand and prompted her to wave. He waved back and then turned his attention back to Amanda. "Of all the places in New York, what are the odds of this happening?" He asked her, swaying gently to nudge her with his hip.
She shrugged. "I don't know, but I'm glad it did."
"Yeah?" He gave her that half smile, half smirk that she had never seen him use on anyone else besides her that always managed to make her heart melt.
"Yeah," she grinned. "I may not have realized I was ready, but fate did."