Chapter 8 Gentle Crucibles
Gentle Crucibles
LUCA MOVED Allegra in the Friday after that first afternoon with Nonna and Pop Pop. The day had gone so nicely that Luca was already trying to schedule another one, asking apologetically if Isaac could do that once a month.
He’d been warmed by how excited Isaac had gotten—and also a little worried. So easy. Their lives seemed to fit together so easily, the construction worker and the nice widowed teacher. Where was the glitch?
But as Luca and Jimmy Bob, his best worker and best friend, moved Allegra’s furniture into the bottom bedroom—which had been empty of all but a guest bed and an end table—Jimmy Bob’s comments about the house stirred up all the possibilities.
“So, he just invited your sister to move in?” Jimmy Bob said dubiously, looking around. The day was in the low hundreds, and Jimmy Bob’s shaved head gleamed with sweat. Luca would remind the guy to put his hat on when they went outside, but right now he was probably enjoying the air conditioning.
“And he’s not here now?”
“He’s a teacher!” Luca protested. “And today is graduation. He couldn’t get out of it, but I got the key—it’s fine.”
“Are you sure he’s not, uhm, after your sister’s virtue?
” Jimmy Bob wrinkled his nose, and Luca resisted the urge to smack his bald pate.
Yeah, the guy was a good worker—and a genuinely good guy who gave his time and building skills to charity and had started no fewer than three grassroots lawn-care guys into their own businesses by letting them borrow his oldest mower—but he wasn’t particularly educated, and he wasn’t particularly socially conscious.
“Jimmy, he’s as gay as I am,” Luca said, shaking his head. “Probably gayer, if that’s a thing. His husband died, they have this giant house, he’s all alone, and he and my sister get along. Since I don’t hate either of them, I think this is a win.”
Jimmy Bob glanced at him. “Are you sure you and him aren’t…?” He waggled his eyebrows. “I understand widows and widowers can be pretty hot stuff.”
Luca’s eyes were going to dry out. “I’d remember if we were having sex, Jimmy Bob. He’s cute. You don’t want to forget that.”
Jimmy Bob cackled. “Yeah, yeah. But you can—” He waggled his brows again, the gesture particularly noticeable on his shaved head because his entire scalp wrinkled. “—even without the poketa-poketa, you know what I mean?”
Luca forced himself to blink. “Sadly, yes, I do know what that means,” he said and decided if Jimmy Bob wasn’t going to drive him bugnuts, he should come clean. “And we’ve had some nice moments—no poketa-poketa necessary.”
“So?”
“So what?” But Luca knew. For a guy who could pick up girls at a bar with a lazy-eyed glance and a “Hey, darlin’, it’s looking slow tonight, do you wanna?” Jimmy Bob could be surprisingly perceptive.
“So why aren’t you and Mr. Widower a thing yet?”
“Do you want some ice water?” Luca asked.
They’d pretty much moved their last item—a vanity and a bench, as well as a couple of dressers Allegra had finished herself because her useless ex-boyfriend couldn’t be assed to help her—and Allegra and Luca would bring in her bedding and clothes when he dropped her off that evening.
His apartment was already breathing a little easier, and he’d moved his computer desk and weight set back into his guest room with a sigh of relief.
“Am I allowed in the kitchen? This place is pretty choice.”
“Yeah, sure,” Luca said. “Just—and I mean this—don’t touch the good teacups, because his late husband gave them as a gift, and if I ever break one, I have to kill myself. It’s in the rules.”
Jimmy Bob looked properly terrified, which was good. It meant he took Luca seriously and let Luca grab the serviceable sturdy glass tumblers from the cupboard that carried all of Isaac’s everyday glasses and plateware so nothing delicate was at risk.
“Well this is pretty fancy for me,” Jimmy Bob said, taking a swig of simple ice water. “And I’m grateful.”
“Oh….” At that moment, Luca saw the note on the fridge in Isaac’s legible but not meticulous handwriting. “Oh!” He opened the fridge and pulled out a plate with three sandwiches on it, each one cut in half, the whole thing covered with a layer of plastic to keep it fresh. “Oh my God.”
He set the plate on the island and then reached into the fridge again and came out with a small plasticware bowl filled with fruit salad. Then he closed the fridge and grabbed the small bag of potato chips on top of the bread drawer.
“Is all this for us?” Jimmy Bob asked, eyes bulging.
“Well, one of these sandwiches—the one with the extra tomatoes, I bet—we need to take to Allegra,” Luca said, taking the plastic wrap and using it on the one sandwich.
He grabbed a fork from the drawer that he figured he and Jimmy Bob could pass back and forth and put it in the fruit salad, and for a few moments, they settled down to a working man’s feast of amazing Dagwoods, cut peaches, grapes, yogurt, and chips.
When they came up for air, Luca put the lid back on the fruit salad and started to load the dishwasher and wipe the counters while Jimmy Bob formulated a thought.
“That was amazing.”
“I know it,” Luca said with a sigh.
“This guy left you a feast in the fridge, an extra sandwich for your sister, and leftovers.”
“He asked nicely that we return the plasticware,” Luca said, his lips twitching. It was sweet.
“And you’ve only had moments? What—and I ask this nicely, with all the respect in the world—the fuck, sincerely, are you waiting for?”
Luca gave him a smile even he knew was a little dreamy. “This guy’s a keeper,” he said simply. “You don’t one-and-done a guy like this. His last relationship—it wasn’t so great. And it ended when the guy died, so, you know….”
“Ouch,” Jimmy Bob said. “It didn’t really end.”
“No, it didn’t.” Luca sighed. “He’s got to get all those ‘My late husband used to do this…’ moments out of his bloodstream before he can look at me and think ‘Luca,’ not just ‘Not Todd.’”
“Todd? As in ‘Why is the floor wet, Todd?’”
Luca snorted at the line from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. That movie was forever old, and still any poor schmuck named Todd had to deal with that line.
“This guy would not have appreciated that, believe you me,” Luca said.
“How bad was he?” Jimmy Bob, for all the roughness around the edges, hadn’t been born in a barn. He took over where Luca left off, making sure they left the kitchen cleaner than they’d found it and that his tumbler wasn’t going into the dishwasher with big greasy fingerprints on it.
Luca suddenly needed someone to talk to who wouldn’t talk to Isaac. He’d lost Allegra, he knew—she was now firmly Team Isaac, no matter what, because the guy had pretty much offered her free rent in a nice place.
“Here,” he said. “Follow me.”
He took Jimmy Bob past Allegra’s room and opened the door to the yarn room. His friend glanced around and whistled lowly. “Pretty,” he said, taking in the colors, the art, the stained glass, and the rug.
Luca nodded. “You saw the living room, right?”
“Yeah. It’s nice. A little bland, but your guy did some stuff to spice it up.”
“Yeah—see, all that oatmeal, cream, and tan?”
“Yeah?”
“That was Todd. Isaac—and I mean, in the last five weeks—he actually remembered that Todd doesn’t live here anymore. And wait….”
He went to the downstairs bathroom, knowing what he’d find when he opened the door.
Euclid burst out like the Kool-Aid Man, crashing against the door as Luca opened it, giving an imperious “Meow!” and hauling ass down the hallway, probably in search of the bed in the living room and all his toys.
“Oh wow!” Jimmy Bob loved creatures—dogs, cats—he had five of each, and they all had an uneasy truce under Jimmy Bob’s roof.
Luca surmised they were the reason Jimmy Bob was still picking up women in bars, because very few sane women would jump into his furry mess like that, but it did make him a sucker for a friend with a cat. “Kitty!”
Like a five-year-old, Luca’s forty-year-old drywall specialist trotted through the house, looking for a new friend.
By the time Luca got to the living room, Jimmy Bob was on his knees, playing zoomies with Euclid, and Euclid had absolutely bought in.
“And a right!” Jimmy Bob said, going right, “And a left! And a right! And a left! And a mouse! And a ball! And a go!”
With that he threw the little ball with the bell inside across the floor and Euclid went running right past it, up the stairs, and they could hear his claws ripping a new path in the upstairs hallway as Jimmy Bob laughed himself silly.
“Wow!” he hooted. “What an awesome cat!” He paused. “Also new?” It wasn’t a hard guess. The cat was young, and the house was—relatively—unscathed.
“Yes,” Luca said, listening to make sure he didn’t hear dressers toppling or mirrors breaking or anything untoward happening. Isaac had asked him to let the cat out after they were done moving stuff in, but Luca hadn’t anticipated Jimmy Bob’s absolute weakness for all things furry.
Jimmy Bob rocked back on his heels, like Luca being careful to keep his work boots on the hardwood and not mark up the nice new area rug.
“So your guy is… sort of trying new things,” he said carefully.
“Yes,” Luca agreed.
“And you think he’s the one.”
Luca sighed. He’d always known Jimmy Bob wasn’t stupid. He knew with every animal rescue—or loyalty to gay bosses—that he made himself potentially less attractive to available mates, but he made that choice anyway. “Yes.”
“So you gotta wait,” Jimmy Bob said in understanding.
“Yes,” Luca sighed, his lunch sitting heavily in his stomach.
“But still….” Jimmy Bob grinned as the cat raced down the stairs again, heading directly for the ball, which had stilled in the corner on the hardwood. With a happy “Meep!” Euclid leapt on the ball and started batting it around the floor, obviously intent on being his own best friend.