Chapter 1 #2
He shrugged. “Nothing changes. The recipes don’t change. And the staff is capable. They can pick up my slack. I’m just here as . . .well, like Carlos is. As a figurehead.”
“You sure that’s all Carlos is?” Marcella questioned.
“Marcella,” Luca said, losing his patience finally, “the man was guzzling Marsala wine. He’s a fucking figurehead. Check on the other restaurants and then go home to your kids, okay?”
“Fine.” Marcella turned and stomped out of the kitchen and Luca had only a minute to regret losing his temper before orders started piling in, and then he couldn’t think of anything at all.
All Luca knew when Elia, one of the line cooks, tossed the last receipt in the trash, officially ending service for the night, was that Carlos had, in fact, not been a figurehead.
In a hard-won battle, Luca stayed on his feet and didn’t immediately slump to the floor in exhaustion.
He’d done this, at one point, working the line for six months straight because his father and Nonna had believed the experience would be a good one.
Of course, as Marcella had reminded him earlier tonight, that had been ten years ago.
Though, probably more like twelve.
Still, he was in shape. The best shape, he’d believed, of his life.
But he was worn down, short-tempered, annoyance spiking at anyone who even glanced in his direction.
No wonder Carlos had resorted to the Marsala.
“Tough night, sir?” Elia asked. He was one of their youngest line cooks, a friend of a cousin, or something or other. Luca remembered hazily he’d argued with Carlos about hiring him, but Carlos had said if he couldn’t hack it, he’d know.
Ironically, it seemed it was Luca who couldn’t hack it.
“I’m just unused to working in the kitchen, behind the line.” Luca managed to put a handful of words together and was proud they were all coherent.
“Too much time behind the desk? I couldn’t do it.” Elia sighed. “I’d go mad in a minute.”
“You’d be surprised how comfortable you can get,” Luca warned. He scrubbed a hand across his face. “Will you handle the cleanup?”
“Of course, sir,” Elia said firmly. “We’ve got it.”
Luca rarely let someone attempt anything without immediate supervision—because what if they failed?
—but tonight he cut a piece of eggplant parm from the leftovers in the pan and headed through the dark, empty dining room to where the big polished walnut bar lay across the back of the room.
Sat down on one of the barstools and Donna, one of the Morettis’ longtime bartenders, took time from her nightly cleanup to pour him a glass of Chianti without him asking, sliding it over to where he sat with a single sympathetic look that spoke volumes.
His shirt was stuck to his back with sweat, dotted with sauce, and absolutely gross. He tugged it off and tossed it to the floor to dispose of later, leaving him in only his white tank.
Maybe burning would take the stench away.
He’d just picked up his fork when he heard a commotion, coming from where the wait staff were closing up the front of the house for the night.
Luca sighed heavily and traded his fork for the glass of wine, taking a long sip, ignoring the irony that earlier he hadn’t understood how or why Carlos could be driven to drink Marsala.
Because only one person—or one couple—could cause that kind of excitement.
Everyone was always full of dread when he showed up. He saw it in their faces, even though they tried hard to hide it. But when his father and mother showed up?
Adulation and excitement like they were the middle-aged versions of Italian rock stars.
He turned, just as Nicoletta walked into the bar.
“Oh, Luca, you looked absolutely terrible,” she said, wrapping an arm around him and smacking a kiss onto his cheek. “Did you work for Carlos tonight?”
“No, I just felt like working myself to the bone on the line cause it had been too long,” Luca said dryly.
“Dario came by the house for dinner and said Carlos was ‘incapacitated,’” Matteo said, appearing next to his wife.
“Are you really feeding him still?” Luca muttered. “He’s a grown ass man—he should be able to feed himself.”
“Or maybe just wants to see his parents,” Nicoletta said firmly. “What happened?”
“Carlos got dumped. Carlos got drunk. I subbed. End of story.”
Nicoletta’s expression immediately morphed into sympathy.
But it wasn’t for him.
Of course not.
“Poor Carlos,” Nicoletta said.
“Must be grave for him to turn to drink,” Matteo echoed.
“Or it was just handy,” Luca observed. “The wine was right there.”
“As always, great work, son,” Matteo said, patting him on the shoulder. “You do the most for our family.”
He did. He knew he did.
It had always been his goal, but did that mean it was right?
He wasn’t sure he knew anymore.
Certainty was no longer his constant companion and that was worrisome.
“So true,” Nicoletta agreed. “And that is what we came here for, actually, because I have had a really . . .panicked email from Giana.”
Luca had picked up his fork again and had a mouthful of eggplant and cheese halfway to his mouth. “Your sister Giana?”
“Yes, you know we invested in the deli she and her son started?”
“You mean the deli the Morettis invested in?” Luca asked archly.
It had been five years ago, right when he’d first been getting his feet under him as the de facto leader and Nicoletta had, Luca was not ashamed to admit, bulldozed right over the half a dozen serious concerns he’d had.
Starting with the fact that Giana was flighty as hell, and her son was a waste of space.
He’d never believed they could make a go of the family business, but they were starting it across the country, and maybe good Italian food was so scarce in the wilds of South Carolina it wouldn’t matter how poorly the business was run.
Their loan payments had always come in. Sometimes late, but always eventually showing up, and he’d put them out of his mind.
But now that worry cropped up again.
“Yes, yes, that deli, of course,” Nicoletta said, waving her hand.
She took a long pause, for dramatic effect, but it was completely lost on Luca because he already was ninety-nine point nine percent sure what she was going to say.
“Giana says the deli is in trouble. They need help, Luca, darling. Can you help them?”
Luca barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “Sure, I’d be happy to look over their accounting, if they’d like to send it over. Make sure they copy Dario, too.”
“Luca,” Nicoletta chastised. “If it was a matter of numbers, you know I would ask Dario, but this is bigger than that. It needs . . .” She paused and again he knew exactly what was coming, but that didn’t mean it felt any better to hear it.
“It needs your touch, Luca. Your personal attention. Please. For Giana. For Enzo.”
“Mama, I can’t go to South Carolina. There’s way too many things that need my attention.” It was a last-ditch effort. He knew it would be in vain but he tried it anyway.
The pull of helping Morettis was too strong. The ingrained need in him to do everything he could. Even if Giana was an idiot and her son even worse.
“I know you do, Luca, darling, but you can take a few weeks, maybe even make a little vacation of it. The town is very sweet, very relaxing, right on the water, or so Giana says. Maybe we will go there this summer for a vacation of our own.”
Luca didn’t hold back his eye roll this time. “If it’s so fucking picturesque, why can’t they run a successful business there?”
Nicoletta slapped him on the side of the head. “Language, Luca.”
He stared at his plate. He did not want to go to wherever it was that Giana and her stupid son were running a Moretti business into the ground.
But this was family.
He’d done so much worse for family.
“Maybe this will even give you a new perspective,” Matteo added, probably trying to be helpful, but not realizing he was sinking further into the black hole his wife had already vigorously dug.
“A new perspective on what?” Luca asked. Even though he already knew what that was.
Italian goal number one: to support the family, and more importantly the family’s business, and help it become as successful as possible.
Italian goal number two: to make even more family to benefit from number one.
Luca was always going to be fucking fantastic at number one, and terrible at number two.
It wasn’t like there weren’t possibilities for children for gay men, but Luca had never been interested in having kids of his own. He’d never even had a real relationship. Not ever dated a guy for long enough who he felt like introducing to the insanity that was the Moretti family.
In this particular vein, he was an absolute disappointment. He knew it. Nicoletta knew it. Matteo knew it. And his parents were too relentless to ever stop alluding to his one failure: meet a nice Italian boy and make a nice Italian family together.
“You know what he means,” Nicoletta chided. “You are so lonely.”
“No, I am so busy,” Luca argued. “So busy trying to keep Nonna’s in one piece.”
“Nonna’s is fine. You work hard. Dario works hard. Marco and Marcella work hard. Gabe and Lorenzo work all the time. Even Chiara and Ilaria are trying to do something. But they all have lives, Luca. You do not.”
Luca finished eating his eggplant. Took a long sip of wine.
He didn’t really want to bring this up because he rarely talked about his personal life.
Not that his parents weren’t accepting. They were.
But they always wanted the next date to be the man he was going to marry.
And Luca didn’t even know if he wanted to marry anyone at all.
So it was just easier to keep quiet about it.
But this was too much.
He couldn’t swallow it down any longer.
He stood, his exhausted legs screaming. But he stayed steady, because that was Luca.
He always stayed steady. He looked his mother right in the eye.
“Fine. I will go to Indigo Cove or Geranium Bay or whatever it’s called.
I will go there and tell Giana and her idiot son exactly what they are doing wrong.
Because I’m sure the list is long. But I want you to know, before I was called in tonight, I did have a date.
A life, as you so pleasantly put it. But I had to put it aside for Nonna’s.
I don’t mind doing that, but what I do mind,” Luca said, lowering his voice, “are the lectures.”
Nicoletta stared at him.
He rarely worried he was too harsh. His exacting standards often lent themselves to a kind of ruthlessness.
It was just something that came with the territory, and something he’d come to terms with ages ago.
It was how Nonna’s continued to flourish and prosper.
Every time he thought of how Gabe’s face shut down, how he’d rejected both Luca and his assistance, he reminded himself of all the good he’d done.
How he’d shepherded the Moretti business through every tough situation they had encountered.
But today, he worried.
“Mama,” he said, knowing he should apologize, but instead she held up a hand.
“No,” she said firmly. “No. I know we expect much of you, Luca. You are the eldest. You run everything, and you do it brilliantly. Nobody could argue with that. But I wish you had gone on the date tonight. We could’ve handled it.
I could have worked the line—Elia is coming along so much better.
We could have done something. We could’ve gotten Marco to come over from the other restaurant.
You deserve to have good things too.” She paused.
“Do you like this boy a lot? Have you been on many dates?”
No, and no.
Luca was regretting ever bringing the date up, because now her eyes were gleaming with all the possibilities. “Mama, no, no. He’s just a guy from the gym. I didn’t even want to . . .”
“But.” Nicoletta grasped his arm. “How will you ever find anyone if you don’t try, Luca?”
She was so heartfelt, so earnest, he couldn’t even roll his eyes. It felt wrong to do it.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. And he didn’t know. That was the truth.
Wasn’t he happy the way things were, with his work and his family? Well, maybe he wasn’t happy, but at least he was satisfied with how things were, and wasn’t that really the most you could hope for?
Why couldn’t other people see that?
“Promise me,” Matteo chimed in, holding his shoulder again. “Promise me you will take a few weeks to sort out this problem of Giana’s and then take another week, just for you. Relax. Go to the beach. Don’t worry about us. We will be fine.”
Luca thought his father’s confidence in their fineness without him was misplaced, but he knew he couldn’t keep arguing about it.
Some disaster would happen and he would have to come home to deal with it, and that was fine. He wouldn’t even be disappointed.
The last thing he wanted was to go to South Carolina at all. The last thing he was going to want to do was stay.