21. Kylie
— ? —
Kylie
The sky turned green at four o’clock.
Not the gentle sage of spring storms, this was something else. Something electric and wrong, the color of things about to break.
“Category two, they’re saying now.” Giovanni’s voice came from somewhere behind me, calm and steady, like he wasn’t holding three sheets of plywood that collectively weighed more than I did. “Maybe three by landfall.”
“I know what category means.” I adjusted my grip on the nail gun. “I grew up in Savannah.”
“You grew up in Boston.”
“I summered in Savannah.”
“Summers don’t have hurricanes.” He said it to the plywood he was measuring, not to me, which was somehow more infuriating.
“Are you going to argue with me or help me board up my theater?”
He moved past me, plywood balanced on his shoulder like it weighed nothing, and started positioning the first sheet over the Marlowe’s front window. The historic glass, original, irreplaceable, the kind of thing that kept me up at night, would either survive the next twelve hours or it wouldn’t.
“Higher on the left,” I said.
“I know.”
“And make sure the overlap is-”
“Kylie.” He turned to look at me. The green storm light caught his face, turned his eyes to something unearthly. “I’ve boarded up buildings before.”
“Have you boarded up my building before?”
“No.”
“Then listen to me about the overlap.”
He adjusted the plywood.
We worked in silence after that, the particular silence of people who knew each other’s rhythms, who could anticipate movements and hand off tools without speaking. Like a dance we’d learned years ago and never forgotten.
Like we were still married.
“The corner’s not flush,” I said.
“The corner is fine.”
“It’s not flush, Giovanni. Water will get in.”
“Water will not-” He stopped. Looked at me. “You’re doing that thing again.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you micromanage because you’re anxious about something else entirely.”
I opened my mouth to argue.
Closed it.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
The storm was coming. Nico was at Miss Dot’s, being spoiled rotten by a woman who’d survived worse hurricanes than this.
And Giovanni was here, in my theater, helping me protect the building that had become my whole life, and all I could think about was whether the corner overlap was going to let in water.
“The corner is fine,” I said finally.
“I know.”
“But if it’s not-”
“Then I’ll fix it.” He came down from the ladder. Stood in front of me, plywood dust on his shirt, that serious expression that meant he was about to say something I didn’t want to hear. “I’ll fix whatever breaks. That’s the job now.”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
The first drops of rain started to fall.
***
The power went out at 8:47 p.m.
We’d made it back to the cottage by then, Nico retrieved from Miss Dot’s and settled in his crib with the white noise machine battery-powered and ready.
The wind was picking up, that low moan that sounded like the house was breathing, and the rain had gone from drops to sheets to something that sounded like applause.
“I should go,” Giovanni said.
I looked at him.
He was standing by the door, hand on the knob, clearly preparing to run through a hurricane to his apartment across the square. Like that was a reasonable thing to do.
“The bridge closes at nine,” I said. “If you leave now and something happens-”
“I can handle weather.”
“You can handle weather on a motorcycle in a category two hurricane?”
“I have a truck.”
“Giovanni.” I put my hand on his arm. Felt him go still. “Stay.”
The word hung between us.
“The couch,” he said slowly, “has a broken spring.”
“I know.”
“You never let me fix it.”
“I know.” I took a breath. “But there’s also a bed.”
His entire body changed.
Not movement, nothing that dramatic. Just a shift in the way he was holding himself. A tension that hadn’t been there before.
“Kylie-”
“Just to sleep.” I pulled my hand back. “I’m not - I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying that it’s a category two hurricane and my son’s father shouldn’t have to sleep on a broken spring while we wait it out.”
He studied me.
“The bed,” he said carefully. “With you.”
“With a pillow wall.”
His mouth twitched. “A pillow wall.”
“I have very clear boundaries and excellent pillow-wall architecture skills.” I turned toward the bedroom. “Are you coming or not?”
The pillow wall was a masterpiece.
Four pillows wide, two layers high, constructed with the same attention to structural integrity I’d have given a load-bearing wall. I narrated the whole process while Giovanni watched from the doorway, that expression on his face that said he was trying very hard not to laugh.
“This pillow represents the threshold of acceptable physical contact,” I said, positioning the final layer. “Beyond it lies enemy territory.”
“I’m the enemy?”
“You’re the enemy of my better judgment.” I patted the wall into place. “There. Impenetrable.”
“I feel very safe.”
“You should.” I climbed into my side of the bed. The candles I’d lit sent shadows wavering across the ceiling, turning the room into something softer than daylight ever allowed. “The rules of engagement are simple: stay on your side, keep your hands to yourself, and no-”
“Breathing in your direction?”
“No making this weird.”
He got into bed.
The mattress dipped under his weight. Even with the pillow wall between us, I could feel his warmth, the particular way his body displaced space. The storm howled outside, wind rattling the windows, but inside the cocoon of candlelight and blankets, everything felt strangely still.
“This is already weird,” Giovanni said.
“Shut up and go to sleep.”
We didn’t go to sleep.
“Tell me about the theater,” he said, somewhere around eleven. “The real version. Not the pitch you give donors.”
I stared at the ceiling. The candle flames danced in my peripheral vision, casting moving shadows that looked almost like figures.
“I found it the week after I left you.”
Silence.
“I was driving around Savannah. Didn’t know where I was going. Just… driving. And I saw it - this building that had been abandoned for years, falling apart, everyone saying it couldn’t be saved.” I took a breath. “It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“Because it was broken?”
“Because it was still standing.” I turned my head to look at him through the pillow wall.
His face was partially visible, candlelight catching the line of his jaw, the shadows under his eyes.
“Thirty years of neglect, and it was still standing. The bones were good. Everything else could be rebuilt.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“You’ve always been able to see that,” he said finally. “The potential in broken things. I never understood how.”
“Practice.” I smiled, though he couldn’t see it. “Growing up with a family like mine, you learn to look past the damage.”
“Your family isn’t damaged.”
“My family is chaos held together by stubbornness and Irish guilt.” The wind picked up outside, a particularly violent gust that made the whole house creak. “But they show up. That’s what a Jordan is. We fight and we yell and we hold grudges for generations, but when it matters, we show up.”
“And I never did.”
The words were soft. Almost swallowed by the storm.
“For three years,” he continued. “You were rebuilding our marriage with your bare hands, and I was too busy rebuilding everything else to notice.”
“Giovanni-”
“Don’t. Don’t make it easier.” I heard him shift on his side of the bed. “I need to say this. I need you to hear it, really hear it, without letting me off the hook.”
I waited.
“I told myself the work was for you. For our future. For the family we’d have someday. But that was a lie.” His voice was rough now. Unpolished in a way I’d rarely heard. “The work was for me. It was easier than being present. Easier than learning how to be a husband instead of just playing one.”
“You weren’t playing.”
“I was performing.” I heard him exhale. “The flowers. The surprises. The gestures that looked like love but didn’t cost me anything real. I performed the husband role instead of living it, and by the time I realized the difference, you were already gone.”
The storm raged outside.
Inside, the only sound was breathing.
“I need to show you something,” Giovanni said.
***
He sat up.
Pulled his shirt over his head in one motion, the candlelight catching the planes of his back, the ink that decorated his skin.
I’d seen his tattoos before, had traced them with my fingers during our marriage, had learned the stories behind some of them.
The family crest on his shoulder. The dates on his forearm.
The Latin phrase across his collar that he’d never fully explained.
But there was something new.
On his left side, over his ribs, where I’d never seen ink before.
“Turn toward me,” I said.
He turned.
The candlelight fell across his chest, illuminating the design I’d never seen.
A recipe card. Hand-written, the script familiar in a way that made my breath catch, loops and curves I recognized from Sunday dinners, from the kitchen where his grandmother had taught me to make sauce while Giovanni pretended not to watch.
Nonna Peppina’s recipe card.
The Sunday sugo.
Needled permanently into his skin, over his heart’s blind side.
“When?” My voice came out strange. Strangled.
“Month two.” He wasn’t looking at me. Was looking at the candle flame instead, his jaw tight.
“After you left. After I realized I’d never deserved any of it - the Sundays, the family, you.
I wanted it somewhere I couldn’t give it away.
Somewhere it would always be mine, even if I never earned the right to make it again. ”
I reached out.
My fingers found the edge of the tattoo. Traced the familiar handwriting, olive oil, garlic, wait until it sings, and felt something give way in my chest that I’d been bracing shut for a year.
“Giovanni.”
“You don’t have to-” His voice barely held. “I’m not asking for anything. I just wanted you to know-”
“What’s in your bag?”
He blinked. “What?”
“Your go-bag. The one you brought in. What’s in it?”