#149 - "What do your ancestors mean to you?"

You would’ve thought being Italian, and traditional when it comes to family, a guy would know a lot about the people who lived before him. But whatever ancestors Ray Vecchio had in Italy, stayed in Italy. He’s American through and through, born and raised in the Windy City. Being a second generation immigrant doesn’t really inspire him to whip out the family tree on a rainy day, especially since his parents show him all he needs to know about where he came from. 

( The Vecchio's )

Distraction [For Ynez]

He opens the closet door, scanning across the rows of hanging clothes, scratching idly at his face. He hates packing; it’s something about being able to fit everything he has into a couple of cases that depresses him. The last time he’d packed, he’d been heading to Florida to start a new life with Stella. Now he’s flying back to Chicago to live his old life without her. Or what’s left of his old life anyway. He knows he’ll have to come back someday - the papers for the bowling alley will have to be finalized and he and Stella need to at least sort out the house if they can’t sort out themselves.

She won’t be home for at least an hour, maybe more and he’s hoping he can get most of it done before she gets here. He grabs a handful of shirts and tosses them onto the bed before heading into the back room for his case. As he walks through the study, he catches sight of his laptop, the screen glaring at him in the dark. He’s been checking his mail more and more since he’s been talking to Fraser again but it’s Ynez’s messages he looks for first. A new email flashes in front of him, it has her cell number in it. He grabs a pad and scrawls it across the top, careful not to write a name along side. He tears the sheet out, logs off the net and continues across the room, stuffing the paper into his back pocket. He needs to pack. He really needs to pack.

He sighs as he throws the suitcase onto the bed a couple of minutes later and flops down next to it. He hears the paper crackle when he lands, can almost imagine it burning a hole through his trousers. He shouldn’t ring her. She’s gone out for the evening, and she obviously didn’t feel comfortable talking earlier and yet he can’t help wondering. She wouldn’t have offered her number if she didn’t want him to call. Okay, he’d asked for it but the same basic principle applies. No good packing if he can’t concentrate and since he’s been talking to Ynez, he’s found it much harder to concentrate than normal. Sighing again, he walks into the sitting room, flicking off the light switch as he goes past. He grabs his mobile off the coffee table and pulls her number out. He takes a deep breath as he punches the numbers, and listens to the dialling tone.