Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty Three
Bianca
The car is silent as it moves through the late-day New Jersey landscape. The window is cool under my temple. I keep my eyes on the smeared reflection there because it’s easier than watching the streets I know slide by.
It’s rush hour, so there’s a constant ebb and flow. Brake lights flare and soften. A deli awning flickers by. A kid on a scooter shoots down a side street like he’s immune to consequence. Somewhere, a siren fills the air, then fades into the distance.
Italy is still in my body like heat after you’ve been in the sun too long. I can still feel the nip of the cool nighttime air on my thighs. I tell myself not to, but memory is a sneaky thief in my mind, opening doors I’m trying to keep shut.
Gio.
I try the word in my head, and it does the same low pull it did on the balcony, in the kitchen, everywhere. A week. That’s all it was. A week and I’m not the same person who hauled a suitcase up Nonna’s steps, hair in a messy knot, jaw set, pretending a tight plan could keep me on track.
That girl measured herself in discipline and debt. This girl—this woman—has other numbers to count now, and none of them are neat and easy.
The car takes the turn past the old post office, the one that still smells like dust and rubber bands. I’m home, technically. The word doesn’t fit right now, and that bothers me more than I care to admit.
“Home” should be simple and unambiguous. It should be cupboards you can open without thinking, and a mattress that knows the shape of your body.
Instead, I have a suitcase I need to unpack, boxes stacked where the entry rug should be, a kitchen that doesn’t smell like lamb or lemon or warm cherries, and a house that has been too quiet for too long.
I told the driver my address when we landed. He didn’t need the reminder; of course he didn’t. Conti drivers don’t get lost. I didn’t look at Gio when I slid into the back seat. I didn’t have to. Awareness has a way of sitting between two people.
He didn’t kiss me at the airport. He didn’t touch me at all.
He said, “I’ll see you in the morning,” then closed the car door, shutting me in.
That helped, and it didn’t. “In the morning” makes tomorrow real: breakfast, his kitchen, my hands on his stove.
It also makes tonight feel like a bridge I’m supposed to cross without looking down.
The car slows for a light. I watch a woman on the corner adjust a bag higher on her shoulder, mouth moving into a phone.
She could be saying anything. She could be telling someone she’s coming home.
She could be saying she changed her mind.
The light goes green; the driver rolls us forward smoothly.
I try to line up my thoughts like knives in a block. None of them wants to stand at attention.
Debt first. Always debt first. It’s still there. Numbers don’t dissolve because I took a tumble in someone else’s bed. I still owe, and I’m going to work, and I’m going to pay, and when it’s done, I will be the one to decide what door I walk through.
That’s the narrative I keep repeating: agency, proof against any future version of me that tries to pretend there aren’t any choices.
Desire next. I can label it clinically if I want to, but it doesn’t change the facts. I want him. I don’t want that to be the same as owing him. Those are parallel tracks, not a tangle or braid. And they will be, if I insist.
Can I insist? Last week says yes. My body says yes. My morning brain—the one that plays the worst-case reel—says be careful. It always says be careful. It has not prevented me from having anything I actually wanted.
The skyline is soft and glowing with the setting sun behind a line of trees.
We’re in my neighborhood now. Familiar roofs, porches that lean a little, cars nosed into narrow driveways.
The driver signals. We pass the bodega where Nonna used to send me for milk when I was little, holding the money tight in my palm like it might fly away if I loosened my grip even just a bit.
Nonna’s house appears to look the same—modest, tidy, stubborn. Just like she was.
The slate steps look the same. The brass doorknob will still catch the light in a small wink.
The window box needs replanting; the geraniums have more brown than bloom.
I picture her in the kitchen, apron tied hard, scolding the stove for boiling too fast or too slow.
The ache that follows is the kind that takes your breath away.
I think about the last time I was here before we left for Italy. I was wound like a spring and pretending like I knew what I was doing. I packed methodically, arguing with myself. I told myself a hundred rules. I repeated them like a mantra.
And then I broke the first one a day later. The biggest one. The one I can’t come back from.
I don’t regret it. I am not sorry for wanting something and taking it with both hands. I am not sorry for the way I came undone.
I am sorry for waking up this morning with shame snagged like a burr in a sweater, but I also know how to pull burrs free without destruction. You pinch, and you roll. You don’t yank. You look at what it caught on, and you smooth those fibers back down.
The car eases to the curb. The driver puts it in park. He gets out, comes around, and opens my door. We exchange the smallest nod. No words. This is not the time or place for them. I heft my bag with my good knives onto my shoulder and climb out.
He lifts my suitcase like it weighs nothing and sets it by the stoop. The other boxes—the ones that were packed away for me—are already inside. I told myself I’d be grateful for that. Right now, I only feel tired.
“Thank you,” I say, because manners are still important, no matter how you’re feeling. He inclines his head, steps back, waits until I fit the key in the lock. He won’t leave until I’m inside.
The door sticks the way it always does. I lean into it with my hip, and the house gives, the smell of old wood, coffee grounds, and the basil that followed Nonna around like a perfume.
Somebody ran a vacuum in here. Somebody dusted. I should send a text and say thanks. The driver retreats to the car; the street noise doesn’t quite disappear with the shut door.
I stand in the small square of entry like a person who’s walked into the wrong house.
The boxes are stacked two deep by the dining room doorway.
A garment bag hangs off the banister. My favorite pan peeks from the top of a taped carton.
The way the light falls across the floorboards makes the wood look almost golden.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket. Not a call.
A text, soft insistence against my hip. I don’t look yet.
I put the suitcase next to the boxes and toe my shoes off into the row that already has three pairs waiting, all of them mine, all of them telling stories about versions of me I’ve been: the practical pair, the pretty pair I wear when I want to notice the sound my shoes make on tile, the beat-up sneakers for market runs.
Kitchen first. Not because I plan to cook.
But because kitchens are where I find comfort.
Mine looks like it’s been staged to sell: counters clear, dish towel folded with annoying precision, the lemon bowl too symmetrical on the table.
I set one lemon off-center. It helps. A laugh breathes out of me, small and private.
I set my bag on the countertop and tell myself I’ll deal with it after I shower.
The faucet squeaks alive and coughs water into the glass I hold under it. I drink like I’ve been walking a long way. Maybe I have. Maybe a week can be a very long way.
“Tomorrow,” I tell the sink, because saying it out loud makes it a task and not a cloud. I’ll be in his kitchen before the sun is high. Eggs, fruit, coffee—simple, human, grounding.
I’ll move like I know where everything goes and not be precious about the parts of me that still remember his hands. I will not pause over the cutting board thinking about how he likes to be called Gio with his mouth between my legs.
I will not do that. I will rinse berries. I will taste for salt. I will stack plates. I will keep my voice level.
Another buzz from the phone, closer to a purr than a demand. I pull it out, thumb the screen. One text. Two words.
Home yet?
I read it twice. The words aren’t complicated. It’s the quiet inside them that gets me—the soft command. Fingers type before I think about it.
Just walked in.
A bubble appears, then vanishes. Appears again. He’s not the type to over-text. He’s also not the type to leave a line hanging if he has something to say.
Sleep.
I look at the single command like he knows me. I guess he does. I smile into the empty room, and that annoys me a little. Another message chimes in before I can decide how I feel about the first.
You’ll be picked up at 6:00. If you argue, I’ll make it 5:30.
My laugh is louder this time. “Bossy,” I tell the phone, and then I type it.
Bossy.
Another bubble. He doesn’t write back a rebuttal. He doesn’t need to. The lack of argument is its own shrug.
Eat something.
I look at the cupboards like they might miraculously hold the lunch from the hill, the cherries we didn’t finish, the way he watched my mouth and didn’t say a thing because he didn’t have to.
No miracles. Just pantry staples and a leftover packet of dried pasta.
I don’t feel hungry. I know better than to trust that.
The body goes quiet after flights and big feelings; it pretends it doesn’t need anything.
Then it collapses. I make a note to put something easy in my mouth before bed.
A piece of toast. A piece of fruit. Something simple.
I’ll eat something.
The reply is one word.
Good.
The house is quiet in the peculiar way of homes that are waiting to be filled again. I trail my fingers along the edge of the dining table and feel the faint nick where a serving bowl was dropped and made Nonna swear in three languages.