"I can't accept this. It's too much." Malia pushes the paper bag back to me, her brows tightly knitted.
I push it back to her. "It's a gift. You can't return gifts. It's bad luck."
"Yeah, I don't believe in luck and I don't accept expensive gifts." She pushes it back.
I do the same again. "Babe, it's just a few hundred bucks. It's no big deal. You need it." We're inside my Dodge in the parking lot of a department store near Manhattan Bridge. Instead of taking her inside with me earlier, I made her wait in the car while I got her a new cell phone. I was in and out in just under ten minutes. And now we're doing this back-and-forth thing because she doesn't want to accept it—which I sort of knew she wouldn't; it's the reason why I didn't take her with me.
"Just a few hundred—" Her face goes red, her eyes now glaring at me, I sense the urge to gulp. "I don't have dispensable cash like that lying around, Gio. If I did, I wouldn't be working double jobs!"
