Ricardo #3
Pride for Dante. For stepping up and being a man when someone needed him the most.
“But when I called, Dante answered. No lecture. No punishment for disappearing. No making me explain everything before he decided whether I deserved help.” Her voice shakes. “I needed him, and he was there.”
I look toward Mario’s closed office door for a second, giving myself somewhere else to put my eyes.
I am proud of my son.
I am also aware, with some discomfort, that I envy him.
Dante had a place in her life before I knew her as anything more than Judge O’Brien’s daughter and the red-haired girl who used to follow my son through Naples with a wide, bright smile.
“He did what he should have done,” I say.
“Yes,” she says softly. “But not everyone does.”
I look back at her then.
Her eyes are bright, and she is trying very hard to make them otherwise. The towel is still twisted in her hands. Her coffee sits beside her, just dregs now, cooling on the floor.
“No,” I say. “They do not.”
I let myself look at her for one second longer than I should. The loosened hair. The bare foot tucked under her. The expensive suit creased from sitting on the floor.
She is composed even now, but the effort is visible. Maybe only because I am looking for it. Maybe because she is too tired to hide all of it.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“About what?”
“Your life.”
Her eyes lift to mine.
The question is too broad. Too intimate. I know it the moment I ask, but I do not take it back. She can refuse. She has refused me before, and I have survived.
Barely.
She looks toward Mario’s closed office door, then down at her cup. “I think I am tired of everyone acting like my life is a piece of property they have a stake in.”
“Then you have to teach yourself to stop being sorry for living it. Though I know it is easier said than done.”
“Perfectly reasonable.”
“People in your life, it seems, benefit from you doubting that,” I say.
Her gaze comes back to me.
I meet it.
This is dangerous ground. I know it. She knows it too.
We are sitting in my brother’s office suite, late at night, with broken glass in the trash and her shoes on the floor.
She is my son’s friend. She is younger than she should be for the way exhaustion sits in her posture.
She has just given me more truth than she likely meant to give.
I should stand.
I should take my coffee and leave her with her dignity.
Instead, I stay.
“My father is not a monster,” she says, quieter. “My mother isn’t either.”
“I did not think they were.”
“They were not cruel to me when I was a child. I had everything. Schools, clothes, vacations, tutors, lessons. I never went without anything.”
“Except warmth.”
She looks away.
I regret the words for half a second, not because they are wrong, but because they are too accurate.
Then she says, “Yes.”
I say nothing.
She takes a breath, slow and controlled. “They love me in the way they know how. I think they do. But the way they know how always comes with instructions. Sit this way. Smile now. Don’t say that. Wear this. Be grateful. Be careful. Think about how it looks. Think about what people will say.
“Last night, I realized I have spent most of my life measuring myself against some invisible ruler that they’ve made up. I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“So start small,” I say.
Her brow creases. “What?”
“Ask for something small.”
“From you?”
“If that suits you.”
She gives me a look that would make a weaker man retreat. “That sounds dangerous.”
“It may be.”
Her lips part slightly, but she says nothing.
I should stop.
I do not move closer. I do not touch her. I do not make this easier or harder by turning it into something physical before she chooses it. I simply sit next to her and wait.
“Teach me how to use the espresso machine.”
For a moment, I only look at her.
Then I laugh.
“Now?” I ask.
“No.” She gives the machine a distrustful glance. “Not tonight. Tonight, I’ve already lost one fight to it.”
“A wise retreat.”
“A strategic retreat,” she corrects.
“Of course.”
The corner of her mouth lifts, and this time the smile stays. It is small, tired, and nothing like the bright one I remember from Naples, but it is a start.
I will take it.
“Tomorrow, then,” I say.
Her brows rise. “You’re agreeing?”
“You asked for something small.”
“I didn’t realize you would take that literally.”
“I am a very literal man when it suits me.”
“That, I believe.”
I stand first and offer her my hand. She looks at it, then at me, and the pause between us is brief but charged.
Then she takes it.
Her fingers slide into my palm, and I close my hand around hers carefully. She rises more slowly this time, the towel still in her other hand and her heels dangling from two fingers. When she is steady, I release her because continuing to hold her would be too easy.
Pulling her in would be easier.
“Head?” I ask.
“Sore. Ego worse.”
“Your ego will recover.”
“I’m less sure about Mario’s carafe.”
“I will replace it.”
Her eyes narrow. “I can manage that.”
“I will take care of it.”
She looks like she’s going to argue, then just sighs. “Fine. Thank you.”
She walks to her desk, slower than usual but with her spine straight, and I follow at a distance that gives her room. She shuts down her computer and stacks the folders in neat order. Even after this kind of night, she cannot leave disorder behind her.
I understand that.
I also wish she would let herself leave one thing unfinished without treating it like a personal failure.
She slips her feet back into her heels and winces slightly.
“You should take something for the headache when you get home,” I say.
“I will.”
“And if you feel dizzy—”
“I’ll call someone.”
I nod. “Good.”
She reaches for her bag, but I take it first and hand it to her.
“Thank you,” she says.
“You have said that often tonight.”
“You keep helping me.”
“I know.”
Her eyes lift to mine, and the office seems even quieter than before.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” she admits.
The honesty is simple, and it lands harder because of it.
I keep my voice low. “You do not have to do anything with it.”
She swallows.
For a second, I think she may say something else. Something that would keep me here with her longer than either of us should allow.
Instead, she nods.
I walk her to the elevator.
Neither of us speaks as we cross the darkened hall. The silence is not uncomfortable. It is careful. There is a difference, and I think she feels it too because she does not rush to fill it.
At the elevator bank, I press the button for her.
The doors open almost immediately.
She steps inside, then turns back to face me with her bag over one shoulder.
“Good night, Ricardo.”
“Good night, Julia.”
The doors begin to close.
Before they meet, she says, “Tomorrow, then.”
“The espresso machine,” I say.
“The espresso machine.”
Then the doors close, and she is gone.
I stand there for a moment, listening to the elevator descend.
When I return to Mario’s sitting area, the floor is clean, the broken glass is in the trash, and the machine sits innocently on the counter. I pick up our empty cups from the floor and rinse them in the sink. Hers still has a faint mark of lipstick on the rim.
I do not let myself look at it for long.
I dry the cups, set them back, and retrieve my jacket from the chair.
The Reeves documents are still waiting in my office. So is the financing proposal, my headache, and the rest of a workday I should have ended hours ago.
But for the first time tonight, I am not thinking about any of that.
I am thinking about Julia sitting on the floor in her designer suit, asking me for something small.
Teach me how to use the espresso machine.
A practical request. A simple one.
Also an agreement to see me again tomorrow.
I button my jacket and turn off the sitting area lamp before I leave.
Tomorrow, then.