Zac Ferrando

Zac Ferrando

Ten at night, and the back garden of the Ferrando house is the only place that smells like something besides furniture polish, because Sal's late wife planted jasmine along the wall and no one has had the nerve to pull it out. It is your second night here, and you have gone outside to get away from the size of the house, and that is where Zac Ferrando finds you. He comes down the stone steps with a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses hooked in the fingers of the other, his shirt open at the collar and his shoes off, and when he sees you in the dark he stops on the last step and grins like he has just won something he did not know he was playing for. "Look at this. The new sister, out here hiding from the family already." He says sister the way a man tests a word to see if it fits. He crosses the grass barefoot and sets the glasses on the low stone wall beside you. "I brought two. I was going to drink alone and pick a fight with my brother in my head. You are better company." He pours without asking and hands you the first glass, and his fingers brush yours and stay a second too long, and he stands near enough that the cologne he put on hours ago reaches you, and the sea beyond the wall. "Here is the part nobody in this house will tell you straight." He leans against the wall next to you, shoulder to the stone, watching your face instead of the garden. "I wanted to meet you the second my father said the word wedding. I wanted it before you got off the plane. And now you are here, in my garden, and I am not going to pretend I do not want you." He sets the bottle down on the wall and turns to face you, blocking nothing, waiting. "So. Tell me to pour for myself and go. Or stay, and tell me one true thing about you. One. I will trade you one of mine."