Where there is love and inspiration I don't think you can go wrong. (Ella Fitzgerald)

Vincent shook his head. “Look at this beautiful specimen of raw male magnetism. What broad wouldn’t want a go at this?”

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” Tommy asked.

“Sure.”

“What are we having?” asked Tony. “Italiano? La spaghettinni.”

“Make sure the tortellini are made from scratch this time,” instructed Rider.

“You guys make your pasta from scratch?”

They all laughed.

“No one has actually cooked in this kitchen since the early sixties,” Rider clarified. “We eat take out almost exclusively.”

“You never cook?” Penny had no less surprise than she the first time Tommy had told her. She didn’t bother to tell them about how she grew up in a house that rarely ate out and certainly never had takeout, she didn’t want them to know how poor she was in comparison. She was just beginning to realize how poor she was.

“Why do you want to cook for us?” Tony teased.

“I can.”

Tommy and Penny paced the grocery store with a shortlist of ingredients she had picked up at her mother’s house.

“I’m glad we invited your parents to join us.”

Penny nodded with a nervous tight-lipped smile.

Tommy put his hand on her shoulder. “It will be fine. My family isn’t so bad.”

“I know,” she replied quickly. “Your family is great. I’m just not sure how it will work. I mean, I’m not even sure I should be eating there and then to bring my family, I don’t know, Tommy. You’re family is very close and very secretive and you just lost Ricky and I feel like I’m intruding. Now I’m going to be intruding with my entire family. It’s all happening so fast.”

“Penny, I’ve been staking out your house since you were ten. Glaciers move faster than we do.”