Chapter Eighteen
Roberto
I wake to weight and warmth and the steady push-pull of her breathing against my ribs.
Olivia is half on her stomach, one arm flung across me, fingers lax against my side. Her hair is spread over my pillow, still damp in the thicker sections from the shower I gave her last night when we got in.
The ends curl a little where water held on while we slept. She smells like my soap and her skin and something sweet that is inherently hers.
The room is dim and quiet. It takes a second for my head to sort memory from dream.
Then it all threads back together in a line: the office door, her mouth opening under mine, the drive that felt both seconds and hours long, her silence like a tide receding, my hands gentle in her hair while the warm water rained on us, my mouth at her temple when she finally let go.
The way she climbed into my bed and hooked a thigh over mine, pressed her face to my chest, and clung.
By the time her body softened, she was too tired to cry. I could feel it, though. What happened between us last night was entirely new for her, and that lent itself to feelings that swept in after the haze passed. Feelings of shame and embarrassment, maybe regret.
I let my palm settle on her back now, slow and careful, and draw one pass over the length of her spine. She doesn’t wake. She makes a sound in her sleep that is not quite a sigh.
I lift my head to glance at the clock on the dresser and wince. I lost track of the day and the hour last night. Not a surprise.
It happens when I stop running lists in my head and start listening to my body. It never happens, which is why I didn’t account for this one exception.
Shame is a morning animal. I know that truth too well. It likes the light of day, where everything is on display, and clearer minds prevail.
It likes to crawl into your chest and mind and whisper that you were reckless, that you were foolish, that you’ll feel regret.
I can handle my version of it; I’ve been training for years. I don’t know what hers will look like, or if it will show up at all, and that uncertainty is its own kind of responsibility.
I don’t want her to open her eyes to an empty room. I also don’t want her to wake into a watchman staring at her.
There’s a third option. Be useful.
I ease her arm off my ribs by degrees, sliding my hand under her wrist and setting it on the mattress with the care of a man moving something that matters.
She murmurs, turns her face deeper into the pillow, and gives me a centimeter of space.
I use it. I slip out from beneath the sheet, plant my feet on the rug, and stand.
I pull on sweatpants, skip the shirt, and pad through the dark toward the bathroom to rinse my face and brush the night from my mouth.
When I come back, she hasn’t moved. A lock of hair is stuck to the corner of her mouth. I want to free it with my thumb. I leave it. She’s beautiful like this.
Kitchen. Food. If shame comes knocking, let it find its path blocked by pancakes and chocolate. She’ll need salt, sugar, water. Something bright and fresh.
I take the hallway slowly, careful not to make too much noise. I step into the kitchen, and the habit of order takes over—coffee first because I will be less stupid after two sips, lights on low, exhaust fan off. The kitchen is clean because Clara exists and because I rarely use it.
Chocolate. I promised myself chocolate. I open the pantry and do a quick inventory. Baking chocolate in bars, dark. The good cocoa. A small jar of Nutella that I pretend I stock for Clara’s sake.
I set a small saucepan on the stove and drop in a little milk, a splash of cream, and a square of chocolate to melt. It will take a minute; it gives me something to stir while my head stays quiet.
Juice. Coffee is probably not the best bet this morning. I pull the orange juice and a small bottle of pomegranate from the fridge. Orange, splash of pomegranate. A beautiful swirl of orange and deep red in the glass.
Pancakes or eggs. I stand with the fridge open longer than necessary. What does she eat for breakfast? I know how she takes her coffee in meetings. I know she is capable of giving a twenty-minute briefing without looking down once. I know the sound she makes when she comes.
I do not know if she prefers something savory in the morning, or something sweet.
Make both, idiot.
I set out eggs, butter, flour, baking powder, sugar, salt. I grab the cast-iron skillet and the griddle. I pull blueberries from the fridge, decide against them, and put them back. Cinnamon goes on the counter. Vanilla, too.
I whisk batter without overthinking it, the way my mama beat it into me years ago: don’t chase every lump. Let time smooth them out. While it rests, I start eggs in a separate bowl, crack four, add salt, a little water for steam, whisk to pale yellow. Pan on medium-low. Butter in.
A door in the back hall clicks, followed by light steps. I don’t jump, but my jaw sets.
It’s Friday. How could I forget that it’s Friday and Clara would be coming in to do the things I will absolutely ignore all weekend?
“Madonna,” Clara says, taking in my shirtless chest, the mess I’m making, and the fact that I look like… well, like a man who did exactly what I did last night. “Che succede, eh?”
“Clara.” My voice is lower than I intend. I soften it. “Buongiorno.”
She scans the counters, zeroes in on the chocolate like a heat-seeking missile, and then flicks her gaze toward the hallway to the bedrooms. A smile blooms slow and wide. “Ahh.”
I rub a hand over the back of my neck because I am forty-four years old and apparently still a teenager when it comes to these matters. “Don’t start.”
“Who’s starting?” she says, innocence personified. She glides into the kitchen and picks up the whisk without asking. “You? Making breakfast?” She clucks her tongue. “She must be special.”
“She’s sleeping,” I say. “Keep your voice down.”
“Sleeping,” Clara repeats in a tone that communicates volumes. She opens the oven, checks nothing, nods like something passed inspection, and closes it. “Bene. Then we will make breakfast quietly, yes? You burn things when you are distracted.”
“I don’t burn things.”
“You burn pancakes.”
“I have literally never burned pancakes.”
“You burn pancakes, Roberto,” she insists, tapping my temple with the whisk. “Too many thoughts. The pancakes suffer. Step aside.”
I step aside because there are fights worth having, and fights you might as well give up on before they even start.
Clara is not family by blood, but she’s been crossing my kitchen like this since before Maria died.
She came twice a week then; she started coming more in the months afterward without me asking.
She never stayed long. She never asked questions.
She just replaced chaos with order and made sure I ate.
She pours ladles of batter on the griddle with the confidence of a woman who has done it a thousand times. She sprinkles a pinch of cinnamon I forgot to add, tilts her head at the smell, and approves.
“You have eggs. Good. Scrambled?”
“Soft,” I say. “She—” I stop. I don’t finish that sentence because I don’t have the data to back it up. “Soft is easier.”
“Soft is gentle,” Clara says, like that decides something beyond eggs. She moves to the fridge and grabs strawberries, a handful of mint, the good yogurt. “Chocolate, fruit, eggs, bread. Juice.”
“Orange and pomegranate.”
“Mm.” She eyes the bottle. “You will kill her with kindness. Brava.”
I slide the eggs into the pan and work them with a silicone spatula, slow sweeps that push curds into themselves until they’re barely set. The chocolate in the small pot has melted, glossy and thick. I cut it with a little more milk until it flows like a ribbon.
The smell folds into the room and tugs a memory out of me that I wasn’t expecting or looking for: Maria’s laugh in our first apartment when I tried to make crêpes and turned out something that looked like a mountain range. I shelve it. Not now. Not this morning.
“I don’t want you to be here when she wakes,” I say and wince at the way it came out.
Clara lifts an eyebrow. “Ah.”
“She’s… shy,” I add, and I hate that word because it’s not right, but I need something to convey the nuance. “I don’t want it to be awkward.”
Clara turns a pancake with one practiced flick and gives me a sidelong look that says she’s fifty percent amused, fifty percent pleased. “Shy,” she repeats, tasting the word for any lie in it. “Or private.”
“Private,” I agree. “And last night was… a lot.”
“For both of you,” she says, not a question.
“For both of us.”
She nods. “Okay, okay. I will not be the dragon guarding the kitchen, eh?”
She flips another pancake, then lowers the flame under the griddle and kills the heat under the eggs with a twist that annoys me only because it’s correct. I was going to do it. “But I will feed her before I go.”
She’s already moving toward the cabinet with the good china.
She comes back with plates, silverware, then detours to another cabinet.
The porcelain mug with the blue rim appears, the small teapot I bought because she told me to buy it, and the linen napkins I forget I own until she presses them into my hand.
“Use the tray,” she says, not looking, already spooning eggs into a bowl and smoothing the top as if it matters. It does to her.
I pull the big walnut tray from the pantry and set it on the counter.
I line it with a folded runner because Clara would want it that way.
She arranges plates like a general setting troop lines—eggs front and center, pancakes stacked but not high enough to tip over, syrup in the small pitcher, butter in a ramekin with a curl carved into the top, strawberries sliced and fanned.
She tucks mint onto the rim of the juice glass.
She sets up the tea along the side, a small pot and little cups.
All in a fraction of the time it would’ve taken me.
“You forgot water,” she says, and pushes a glass at me. I fill it with filtered, set it left of the eggs. “And salt,” she adds. I put the little dish of flaky salt on the tray.
Clara fusses with the napkin for a second, lifts it, lays it back down, nods to herself, and steps away. “There,” she says. “Even if she wakes with the devil on her shoulder, he will have to wait while she eats.”
“Grazie,” I say. The word is small for what I mean. I mean: thank you for being the kind of woman who knows what a morning like this needs. Thank you for teasing me instead of judging me. Thank you for making my house feel human.
“Go, vai. I will clean this and go.”
“You can just leave it. I’ll get to it later.”
She flicks her towel at my hip the way she does when she wants me to get out of her space. “Go!”
Knowing better than to argue, I reach for the tray.
“And Roberto?”
I pause with my hands under the tray handles. “Sì?”
“Today is today,” she says, eyes on mine. “Tomorrow comes later.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s her way of saying, take it one day at a time.
She knows me well.
I nod and pick up the tray.
The good dishes on the tray catch the morning light as I cross the room. She went to the china cabinet for these. Not the everyday stuff.
The little things matter to her. The things I would never have thought of, she does.
This is breakfast, yes. But to Clara, it’s more than that. It’s care and love, dressed like breakfast.
I remind myself I need to give her a raise and buy her something special.