Chapter 19
Luca
Luca is sitting at the table with Fanika’s bread in front of him, butter, the last of the loaf.
He has cut two slices without being asked and left one on the board for Matej.
He is looking out the window at nothing — that expression, the one where something is going in and he hasn’t decided yet what to do with it.
Matej puts the coffee down between them. Sits.
He had a plan for this. It was simple. He had worked it out somewhere between three in the morning and sleep, just a question, barely even that. There’s space under the window. If you needed it.
He looks at the far wall. The window there — the light in the afternoon, the way it comes in low this time of year. And the space beneath it. He has been thinking about the space beneath it for three weeks. There would be room for a desk. Not a large one.
He doesn’t say this.
Luca picks up his bread. Eats. He is not looking at the window. He is looking at the table, at the grain of the wood, at a point somewhere between the bread and his hand. He too has been thinking about what to say, and arrived at the same silence from the other direction.
Matej watches him not say it.
Outside the yard is still.
Luca looks at him.
Matej looks back.
Neither of them says anything. Neither of them needs to. Not yet, not this way.
Matej takes him to the bedroom.
Just the direction of it, the hand at the small of his back as they come through the door, the way Matej moves through his own house: unhurried, certain, no performance.
Luca has slept in this room every night for weeks now.
It feels different now. Afternoon light through the curtain, that low November angle, the whole day still ahead of them.
Matej turns to look at him.
This is the thing about being looked at by Matej: there is nowhere to go. His attention leaves no room for the version of yourself you perform for other people. Luca has stopped trying. He’s not sure when that happened.
Matej crosses to the far wall. A door there, narrow, almost lost in the plaster. Luca has noticed it before and not asked. Matej opens it.
Inside: shelves. Not deep. A jacket on a hook, some folded things, a pair of cycling shoes worn to the shape of the foot that lived in them. And on the middle shelf, arranged without display but not carelessly either — a row of small boxes, a folded jersey, something that catches the light.
Matej reaches in and takes the jersey down.
He holds it before turning. Long enough that he knows what it still weighs. Then he turns.
The jersey is blue and white, a sponsor logo across the chest that Luca doesn’t let himself recognise. National colours on the sleeve. It has been worn — not a display copy, the real thing, the fabric slightly thinned at the shoulders from use.
“2013,” Matej says. “Vuelta a Burgos. Overall.”
He says it plainly, without ornament. Not proud exactly. Something more careful than that. Like he is handing Luca something that has weight and wants to make sure he knows before he takes it.
Luca looks at the jersey. He does not look at Matej’s face.
“Can I,” he says.
Matej holds it out.
Luca takes it. Feels the fabric — lighter than he expected, technical, made for speed and nothing else. He turns it over. The number on the back. The name. KOS.
He has seen this name before — a search in a café in town, not long ago. He has read the results: the wins, the years, the races. A career that stopped. He has not let himself read further than that.
He folds the jersey carefully and hands it back.
“Burgos,” he says. “That’s a hard race.”
“Yes.”
“Cobbles and climbing both.”
Matej’s face shifts — small, almost imperceptible. “You know it.”
“I’m Italian,” Luca says. “We have opinions about bicycles.”
Matej looks at him. Then he sets the jersey back on the shelf and reaches for one of the small boxes. Opens it.
Inside: a medal. Not the largest Luca has ever seen but solid and real. Matej sets it in Luca’s palm without asking.
Luca holds it. Feels the weight.
He thinks: you carried this across three countries and came home and put it in a box in a room you don’t show people. He thinks: you are showing me.
He hands it back.
They stand close in the narrow doorway of the little room.
Close enough that Luca can smell the faint remnant of the morning — whey and work and cold air — underneath whatever is underneath that.
He is aware of the light on the back of Matej’s neck.
The line of his shoulder. The way he puts the medal back with the same care he packs curds into a mold.
“So,” Luca says quietly. “Lord of secret cheese caves and steep mountain roads.”
Matej turns.
The look on his face is private. Gone before it fully arrives.
He reaches out and takes the hem of Luca’s shirt. Not pulling, just holding it, a question in the gesture.
Luca lifts his arms.
The shirt comes off. Matej’s hands stay — one at his waist, one moving up the side of his ribs, slow, like he’s reading something written there.
Luca reaches for Matej’s shirt in return and Matej lets him, ducks slightly to make it easier, and then they are standing in the low light with the little room still open behind them and everything quieter than it was a moment ago.
Matej takes Luca’s hand and presses it flat against his own ribs. Left side.
Luca feels it before he sees it — the raised line of old ink under his fingers. He looks down.
The ram. Clean linework that took patience and intention. Sitting at the ribs, half hidden by the angle of his arm unless you’re this close. Luca traces the edge of it with one finger.
“And this is my crest,” Matej says.
“Your crest,” Luca says.
“This land. What it is.”
Luca looks back down at the tattoo. Lets his hand rest there — over the ink, over the ribs, over the steady unhurried beat underneath.
“And the other one,” he says.
“The other one is where I was,” Matej says. “This one is where I am.”
Luca looks at him. He thinks about the box with the medal. The jersey folded back on the shelf. He had said it — 2013, Vuelta a Burgos, overall — like he was handing over the deed to something.
He thinks about the end of the career. He wants to ask. He doesn’t.
Matej is watching him not ask.
“Later,” Matej says. Quietly. “Another time.”
“Okay.”
“Let’s stay here. In the light.”
Luca looks at him — this man who has just opened a door he keeps closed, who has just said this is where I am and meant it entirely. There is nothing to say to it.
He steps forward instead.
They don’t rush.
That’s the thing about this — about Matej, about what he does with time when he has decided to spend it.
He is not a man who hurries towards things.
Luca has learned this. Has stopped waiting for the urgency that doesn’t come and found instead something he didn’t know he was missing: to be held inside someone’s attention, unhurried, entirely here.
But today the attention moves differently.
Luca feels it before he understands it — a shift in his own hands, his own weight, something that has been sitting quietly in him for weeks and has chosen now to surface. Intention.
He has watched Matej hold things. The medal, his face in the dark. He knows how Matej holds things.
He wants to hold him back.
Matej goes still under his hands.
Not pulling away. Luca feels the stillness for what it is: someone registering something unexpected, the unfamiliar position and the familiar face in it.
Matej looks at him. Luca has been the one held like this, every night until now; he knows the shape of the attention from the inside, and he watches Matej meet it from the other side for the first time.
A moment. Then Matej’s hands drop.
Luca lets his hands stay where they are — at Matej’s bare waist, the warmth of the skin under his palms, the ribs rising and falling with breathing that hasn’t quite settled. Matej’s hands are at his sides now, not helping, not resisting. Just there.
Matej’s shoulders pull in as Luca’s hands move — a small involuntary contraction, the muscles along his back tightening.
His hands lift once towards Luca’s wrists, fingers almost reaching, and Luca catches one of them gently — just a brief press, not holding, just a direction — and sets it back down at Matej’s side.
Matej’s hand stays where Luca put it.
The belt next.
Luca finds the buckle. Brass, worn at the edges where Matej’s thumb has worked it over years. He draws the leather free slowly, feeling each notch release under his fingers. The belt comes out of the loops with a small sound — fabric against leather — and he sets it on the low chest beside them.
Matej’s trousers are work trousers, sturdy, the kind that have been washed enough times to go soft at the knees.
Luca’s fingers find the button. The zipper catches on the second tooth — he eases it back, then forward again, the small sound of metal teeth separating filling the space between them.
It releases. He pulls the trousers down and Matej steps out of them, one foot at a time, steady, his hand briefly on Luca’s shoulder for balance.
Luca gathers the trousers, folds them small and exact, and sets them on the chest.
Matej is standing in his underwear now. The light falls across his shoulders, down the length of his arms, catches on the ink at his ribs. Luca can see the ram clearly from this angle — the clean linework, the way it sits against the muscle as if it grew there.
He places his hand at Matej’s shoulder. Not pressing, just guiding. Matej moves with it — sits on the edge of the bed, the mattress high enough that his feet don’t quite reach the floor. He looks up at Luca once. Not asking. Just looking.
Luca steps back.
He undresses without ceremony. His trousers — the button easier than Matej’s, the zipper smooth. He folds them and sets them on the chest beside Matej’s things, though not as neatly — he can feel the difference in the folding, his own less precise, and doesn’t correct it.