A tender moment the night before Savor the Veal II – Season 8
The house was silent for once. Sam and Hank were tucked into Mona's apartment while Jonathan and Mona were sequestered in their respective rooms. After a final family dinner of Tony's lasagna, they instinctively made themselves scarce in silent acknowledgement that Tony and Angela deserved to be alone on their last night in Connecticut.
In the dark stillness of the bedroom, Angela curled against Tony and rested her head on his chest, feeling the softness of his cotton t-shirt against her cheek.
"I love you, Angela. You know that, right?" His voice was quiet but earnest.
"Of course I do. I never doubt that," she assured him, reaching her hand up to trace his jawline.
"And we're going to get through this." It could have been a question or a statement. She wasn't sure until his next words offered clarity, "I didn't wait seven years to be with you to lose you over a job in Iowa."
She leaned up and pressed her mouth to his, pouring love and reassurance into the kiss. "I spent four years hiding my feelings for you out of fear I would lose you. I was afraid of how much I wanted this, but I didn't know what I was missing," she confessed, holding him close in the bed that was almost theirs.
He glanced down and met her eyes, "Four years? That's pretty specific."
She smiled, no longer embarrassed to talk about her feeling for him. "It's kind of hard to forget sitting in your therapist's office and realizing you had fallen in love with your housekeeper," she admitted.
His eyes widened in surprise. "You told your therapist? When?"
"More like she dragged it out of me. But she was right, I loved you, and I was afraid of losing you to Frankie what's-her-name from your old neighborhood."
A wave of memories flooded over him: the street fair in Brooklyn, Angela and Frankie Candino in a bidding war over him, Frankie's proposal and his refusal – and then, very, very faintly, Angela coming home from work early that day. "You wanted to tell me something the day I turned down her proposal."
Angela nodded, "I can't believe you remember that."
"Barely," he confessed, "but it's coming back to me. You came home early. I wanted you to know I wasn't going to marry her."
"I couldn't risk you marrying her without knowing how I felt. I didn't know if you felt the same way, but I'd never forgive myself if I lost you without even trying."
"Looking back now, yeah, I loved you. Every time I thought about marrying her, all I could think about was how I couldn't leave you." He thought back again to that day, "But you never told me. I think I'd remember if you said you loved me."
She smiled sadly, "I got scared. You already turned her down, and suddenly, it felt like too big of a risk."
"So, all the years after that, you knew you were in love with me?" he asked somewhat sadly, like he just realized how long they could have been together.
"I don't regret one day of it," she assured him. "It brought us here, to this moment. We have this amazing foundation of friendship and family, and we know what it means to appreciate every step we've taken."
"And what about this next step? We're going to be a thousand miles apart and living separate lives."
"For one year, Tony. That's it. I love you too much to let you pass up this chance to begin your career with an amazing job as a college professor."
They fell into silence for a time, holding each other close and thinking about the future. Despite her bravado, Angela was heartsick at the thought of Tony being any farther away than across the hall, but she knew that if she said as much, he would back out without a second thought. Meanwhile, Tony couldn't deny the job sounded incredible, but so did a life right here with the woman he loved and wanted desperately to marry. But if taking this job meant they could start their life without a huge "what if" hanging over their heads, then he was willing to endure the next year away from her.
"Tell me something I don't know," Angela asked softly.
Tony chuckled, "What do you mean? Like Babe Ruth's batting average?"
She smiled at his sarcasm, "No, not like that. I mean something about us, about the last eight years, like I just told you. And for the record, it was .342."
"Impressive! No wonder I love you."
"I wish I could take credit, but I've probably heard you quote that a dozen times over the years," she admitted drolly.
"I taught you well, then," he said with a self-satisfied grin. "So, something you don't know?" he repeated.
She traced her finger along his chest and watched the gentle rhythm of his breathing.
A moment later, he asked her, "Do you remember the dinner you cooked for our second anniversary?"
"The night your appendix burst? How could I forget?"
"It was pretty memorable – for a lot of reasons," he acknowledged. "Anyway, that night, you had a speech you wrote when you thought everyone would be there, but you only read a little bit."
Angela leaned back enough to look at Tony as he told the story. "I remember that," she confirmed, "kind of."
"A few weeks later, after I'd recovered and was back to work, I was adding the dress you wore that night to the pile for the dry cleaners, and I found it in the little side pocket."
Angela was seized by equal parts astonishment and embarrassment and wracked her brain trying to remember exactly what she'd written. Memories of the night at the hospital and Tony's unconscious profession of love overshadowed everything else, and she could no longer recall what she might have written down on that paper.
"I hope it wasn't too embarrassing," she said with a wince.
"Would you like to see it?" he asked.
"What?" Had she heard him correctly?
Tony reached over to the nightstand, picked up his wallet, and withdrew a piece of paper so fragile-looking Angela thought it would disintegrate as he unfolded it. When he handed it to her, she recognized the faded script as her handwriting.
She skimmed the speech, awestruck as the words brought forth the memory of writing them in her office the night before what was supposed to be a family dinner. She also recognized the several places she'd scratched out the word "love" and replaced it with something safer – and less honest, she now admitted.
Suddenly, Tony spoke up softly. "'I want to thank you both for coming into my life. Sam, you've been like a daughter to me from the moment you walked through the door wearing a baseball cap and black eye. I couldn't be prouder of the mature, young lady you are growing into,'" he recited from memory.
She read the words on the page as he spoke, remembering the final version she had finally felt comfortable reading in front of everyone – though she never got the chance.
"And Tony," he continued, "you have brought …"
"'... so much joy and love back into my home,'" she continued, recalling the words as she met his eyes without hesitation.
"It says 'life,'" he corrected.
"I changed it," she confessed, indicating the place where an overabundance of ink obscured a word. "I chickened out," she said, echoing the same reason she'd kept quiet the day he'd turned down Frankie's proposal. Then she continued reading the tribute she'd written to him six years earlier, with the memory of the words getting continually clearer. "Thank you for being an incomparable housekeeper and friend, who I can turn to for anything. I've grown to respect and care about you more than I can say.'" A pause, then, "I thought about trying to say 'love' again, but I knew it was too much."
He nodded. "You weren't as thorough crossing it out that time. It's still kind of visible," he said, indicating the obvious revision. "That's why I held onto it."
She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "You kept this in your wallet all these years?"
He nodded silently. "I don't know if I consciously meant to, but when I found it, I couldn't throw it away, and I was afraid you'd be embarrassed that I saw it, so I put it in my wallet and, eventually, I couldn't bring myself to take it out. I probably read it a hundred times."
The kiss they shared said everything they'd edited out for so many years. Tony's hand threaded through her hair to hold her close as she gripped his shirt and pressed herself against him.
"We made it, Tony," she whispered against his mouth. "Those years of silence allowed our feelings to grow and take root so that we could be here right now, spending one last night together, and I can show you how deeply I love you."
If she had anything else to say, her words were lost amid an onslaught of Tony's attention. He drew her under him and wrapped his arms around her. "I might be taking this job, but you're all I want in this world."
"You have me," she gasped, offing no protest when he began tugging at her clothes in an effort to remove them.
When they were finally skin to skin, instinct took over, heightened by the emotions their conversation evoked. Angela thought of Tony keeping her words of love in his pocket every day for nearly seven years. She thought about him reading those words, and remembering them, even as they faded from her memory. But he never forgot.
When his body joined with hers, Tony flashed to that long ago day in 1988 when he chose friendship over marriage, and he heard Angela's voice assuring him that the course of true love never did run smooth.
"Are you sure it's love?"
"Positive."
He pulled her against him, burying his face in her neck and moving with her, steady, strong, and together to a final euphoric crest. In the quiet aftermath, neither had a doubt that it had always been love – and that it always would be.