“Would have been better at the restaurant with some wine,” I added.

She swallowed before wiping her mouth with a paper towel. “Whose wine though?” Her head tilted as she waited for my answer.

“You know, I actually thought about that before we left. I was a little stressed out about it.”

She laughed out loud. “You were? I thought about it, too, and figured I’d just do the opposite of whatever you suggested.”

“Why are you so hell-bent on messing with me?” I sat down on the couch but positioned myself against the opposite corner. The last thing I wanted was to frighten her off.

“’Cause it’s fun,” she said before taking another bite, kicking her foot against mine like we’d done this a hundred times before instead of it being the first. “Now, about the bet.”

This woman loved to maneuver the topic away from us the first chance she got.

“You really don’t know?”

“Uh-uh. I mean, all I know is that your family accused us of stealing and being thieves and that, apparently, you tried to ruin our name before we even had one?” she said it all like a question before offering a small shrug.

Jesus. That was the only part of the story she knew?

“First of all, I didn’t try to do anything.”

“I didn’t mean you as in you, James Russo. I meant you as in your family.” She forked another bite of food into her mouth and watched me, waiting for me to fill in all the gaps.

“I just want to be clear that whatever happened between our great-granddads all those years ago had nothing to do with you or me. If my great-grandfather did something to yours, I didn’t do it. I wasn’t there. You weren’t there. I think this whole thing is ridiculous and has gone on for way too long. Don’t you?”

She stopped chewing, as if she was carefully contemplating her words before saying them out loud to me. “I’ve always thought it was stupid, but then again, I don’t even know what the hell we’re supposed to be so mad about, aside from what I just told you. Anytime I ask my dad, he just yells and snaps at me but never gives me any more information. Sometimes, I wonder if he even knows what really went down. Why else wouldn’t he just tell me?”

I shook my head. The weight of her words made me feel like I was trapped in a bad movie with no way out. How, in this century, could things still be so backward and illogical? Why were our dads so hell-bent on staying stuck in the past?

“What are you thinking?” Julia’s question snapped me out of my own head.