Chapter Eight #2
Calamarata with squid, white wine, chilli and pistachio follows, and for dessert we share a cremosa al cioccolato that has such an intense hit of dark chocolate, it makes my hands shake.
‘How is this place not more famous?’
Renzo shrugs. ‘Emanuele isn’t a trophy hunter. He likes to cook for people who love food, not for food critics. I share his view.’
‘It’s lucky your paths crossed.’ My eyes dance over his beautiful, sculpted face. It’s lucky for anyone to cross paths with Renzo.
‘Luck didn’t have anything to do with it.’ He hesitates, as if he is weighing something up. ‘We went to the same scuola materna. My mum was friends with his mum. Our dads played bocce—you know, bowls?—together.’ He frowns. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Why? Because this is not a side of Renzo I’ve seen before. When I was younger, he was Antony’s dismissive older brother and my unrequited crush. After I got Antony expelled, he acted like judge, jury and would-be executioner. Then there was Vegas.
All different sides of the same man, but he’s always been so intense, mythic almost, in his extremes. This is the first time I can imagine him as having any kind of normal life, and frankly I am fascinated.
‘So that’s why you bought the restaurant here? This is where you grew up? But Antony never said anything about living in Italy.’
‘Because he didn’t. I did. We moved to New York when I was six years old.’
‘Why did you move?’
‘My parents wanted a better life and my father’s cousin ran a bakery in New Jersey. When he offered my father a job as a delivery driver, they thought it would be a new start.’
‘Like being a pioneer.’
‘I suppose so.’
I suck the spoon into my mouth, relishing the smoothness of the chocolate. ‘Did you miss Italy?’
‘I did. We didn’t have much money, but everyone knows everyone here, so you feel like you matter. It was a big adjustment.’
‘You did a good job of adjusting.’
‘In the end,’ he says cryptically. I want to ask him what that means, but before I can ask, Renzo does one of those tiny tilts of his head that has the waitress cantering to his side.
‘One double espresso, please. And could we have another cremosa?’ he says, ignoring my protests. ‘Enjoy it. It’s the only time I’ve seen you eat properly.’
The blue of his eyes is like a wave lapping over my skin. This sounds stupid coming from someone whose face is plastered all over the Internet, but I feel seen for the first time.
‘Eating is a bit of a challenge,’ I admit after a moment. ‘I know it sounds crazy, but it’s taken me a long time to get used to eating without alcohol.’
‘Not crazy at all. Eating is a social activity. For a lot of people, that means having a drink.’
‘It’s the restaurants too. They’re always sneaking Bloody Marys into their brunch menus.
It just makes it hard sometimes to stay focused, to stay sober.
It doesn’t help that most of the people I used to know are not that thoughtful.
’ I glance at the water glass in his hand.
‘I’m guessing you’re not drinking on my account. ’
He blinks as if he has forgotten we are in the middle of a conversation.
‘I’m not going to put temptation in your path.’
Not true, I think, gazing across the table. But then I remember the mess I made of last night, and I blank my mind to how tempting he is.
‘Thank you. It’s a bit of a bore for you, though. I mean, this is your day off too, and you can’t even have a drink to relax. You have been programmed to relax, haven’t you?’
His mouth pulls infinitesimally at the corners into a shape that makes me feel as if gravity has failed. ‘I do relax. And no time spent with you is boring, Hennessy.’
‘But you like boring.’
‘When I choose suits or cars. But I enjoy being stimulated.’ As he puts down his glass, it catches the side plate, and it must be that I can feel resonating through my body.
‘Take it from me, it’s overrated. But at least chocolate is still on the menu.’ I tap the spoon against my teeth and his blue gaze flicks to my lips and stays there for a beat too long.
Given that we have nothing in common but work and Antony, I expect our conversation to lull at some point into an awkward silence, but it doesn’t.
We talk about food, films and the history of Italy.
Renzo is intelligent and informed but not opinionated or overbearing.
He also makes me laugh. I can’t remember the last time I properly laughed.
After lunch is over, we drive back along the twisting coastal road and fall silent, but that’s fine too, because it is my first experience of a comfortable silence.
Renzo focuses on the road, and I stare at the sea. It’s easy to imagine sailors losing their heart to the Tyrrhenian but, despite its coruscating beauty, I find my gaze keeps returning to my left and, more specifically, to Renzo’s brooding profile.
In the end. His words echo inside my head. They don’t make sense. He is only thirty-four now and he is one of the richest people on the planet. How could he have done anything sooner or better?
‘So, random question.’ I turn towards him. ‘Why didn’t you want to go into the family business—the bakery?’ I add after a moment when he doesn’t reply. ‘The hat is a bit of an ask, but I can really see you kneading bread. That’s kind of your thing, isn’t it—knocking things into shape?’
After our new easiness over lunch, I glance over, expecting to find Renzo fighting a smile, or better still smiling. Instead, he is staring at the road, his face expressionless, and there is a tension to his shoulders that wasn’t there before, as if something is weighing heavily.
‘It closed. My father’s cousin retired, and my father died. And then my mother died six months later.’
My face is stiff, and I know I must look as shocked as I feel.
But I didn’t even know his parents were dead.
Antony and I never talk about our families.
I thought he was being sensitive, because he could see how unhappy I was, and I was so grateful it never occurred to me that there might be another, darker reason for his reticence.
‘I’m so sorry. That must have been awful. When was that? I mean, how old were you?’
‘Eleven. Antony was two. We ended up in care. We had eight foster homes together. When I left the children’s home, Antony was fostered with another family for nearly three years until I became his guardian when I was nineteen.’
‘I thought you went to university.’
‘I did. As a mature student. Before that, I worked multiple jobs. I wanted Antony to go to a good school. That isn’t a dig, by the way, it’s just how I felt. I can see now that it wasn’t the best place for him, but I needed him to board so that I could get my degree.’
I stare at his profile. In other words, when he said that everything he’d done was for Antony, he was telling the truth. My words echo inside my head, the accusations jarring and shaming and, biting my lip, I meet his gaze. ‘I’m so sorry—for what I said before about you not listening.’
‘I said plenty myself. Most of which was inaccurate. All of which I regret.’
‘I was not unprovoking,’ I say carefully.
He laughs, a proper laugh that rumbles across the car and through my body. ‘You were. But I enjoyed not being unprovoked.’
The improbability of this conversation occupies my mind for several more twists of the road. That and watching Renzo drive. Like everything else he does, he drives with focus and care, shifting through the gears as we follow the winding road that hugs the curving cliffs.
For a moment I follow his hands as they slide minutely over the steering wheel, remembering the way they moved over my body to such devastating effect.
I want to feel his hands on me again but it’s not that simple.
I’ve tried. In the past, with my previous two boyfriends, I persevered unsuccessfully, and I can’t go there with Renzo.
I just have to accept that first time with him was a one-off, sublime, singular conflation of delayed gratification and explosive need.
It was sensual, powerful and unbelievably erotic, and I don’t want to turn the memory of that into something ugly.
Not when he has given me this day of such sweet normality.
‘Thank you for dragging me out of the villa. You were right; I would have just sat around brooding. It was kind of you to distract me.’
‘Careful, Hennessy. That sounds almost like a compliment.’
It’s on the tip of my tongue to make a joke but for some reason I say instead, ‘It is a compliment. You are kind. You looked out for me, even though you hate me.’
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Okay, not hate, just dislike.’
‘I don’t dislike you.’ His voice is suddenly hoarse, and his hands tighten around the wheel.
‘I don’t dislike you either.’
There is a silence full of something that feels both meaningful and confusing, and I glance away from his profile towards the sea and the most unbearably romantic sunset I have ever seen.
‘Oh, look at that…’
Renzo turns to look at the sky, and I look over at him so that I can watch his reaction, and that’s when it happens.
One moment there is a moped puttering along on the other side of the road, the next a car is overtaking it, sliding inexorably across the white lines and onto our side of the carriageway.
For a few seconds, it feels as if there will be no escape.
We must hit the other car. My seatbelt is taut across my chest, and I catch a glimpse of the driver’s face: young, male and petrified.
Then Renzo is turning the wheel, and we are on the side of the road, just inches from the crash barrier, the car shuddering around us.
It’s only then that I realise it’s not my seatbelt that is gripping me fast but Renzo’s arm. His fingers are splayed around my shoulder, and I can feel the muscles in his arm flexing against my collarbone.
‘Sorry.’