Epilogue
“Luca!” Oliver yelled, “do you have the shrimp appetizer?”
Luca ran a hand through his hair, frustrated, overwhelmed, and happier than he’d ever been in his whole goddamn life.
“What shrimp appetizer? We don’t have a shrimp appetizer!“ he called back through the pass-through.
It was their third night of dinner service in the expanded cafe, and things were . . .well, Luca could say they were a work in progress.
Oliver would probably say they were a garbage fire.
But still, it was their garbage fire.
“I added it last night, after service,” Oliver said, his face appearing now in the window gap between the heat lamps and the stainless steel countertop where the rest of the table’s appetizers sat.
“You just added an appetizer,“ Luca ground out. Swore under his breath. Fumbled for the copy of the menu he kept by the pass-through. Glanced at it, and sure enough, there was the shrimp appetizer, listed right there in black and white on the page.
“Shit,” Luca muttered. The good news was from the description, it looked like the dish was already basically prepped, cold poached shrimp salad with preserved lemon and diced chilies.
It was a dish he remembered well, because they’d shared it during their last vacation to Italy, on the coast, sitting high above the ocean, at this little family owned restaurant that had reminded him so much of Nonna’s.
Then later that night, they’d made love with the windows wide open, the sea breeze cooling them down just as the heat became too much to bear.
Of course, Oliver had to add it to the menu, and last-minute too.
The fucking sentimentalist.
He leaned down and poked around in the fridge they’d had installed under the pass-through for the salads and the cold dishes they could prep ahead of time—one of the ways they’d figured out how to juggle this new venture, along with their others.
Six months ago, he’d officially bought Nonna’s Deli from Giana. She still worked part-time for him, and even part-time for Oliver sometimes. Right now, she was probably somewhere behind him, tossing pasta into sauce, getting the rest of this table’s meals ready for service.
She said it was good for her, kept her busy while Enzo was out on the west coast, going to art school and living with Chiara and Ilaria.
“I got it,” Luca called out, pulling out the dish he recognized from the fridge.
He set it on the counter, added the wedge of lemon he thought it needed, even though Oliver’s expression made it clear he thought it was overkill.
Was everything easy? No, it was not. Owning, now, a bakery, a cafe adding more services to their schedule, and also a deli, was a challenge.
Add to that their personal rule that they went to bed and got up at the same time, and nothing was easy.
But what had Nonna always told him?
Easy isn’t worth doing.
Everything about their new life together in Indigo Bay suited Luca down to the ground.
He’d really started to grow and thrive, without the constant need to supervise a whole passel of Morettis.
And the Morettis, too, had grown. Dario was coming into his own.
Gabe was closer to them than he’d been in ages—even closer to Luca, which was the most shocking part.
Even Marco had stopped trying to be such an island.
Change was never simple, but, Luca thought, as he slid the rest of the appetizers over to Oliver, it was an integral part of life.
“Did you get the clam sauce?” Giana asked, from someplace behind him, and he realized he’d forgotten to grab it from the walk-in.
“No,” Luca grumbled and went to fetch the pre-prepped sauce he’d made this afternoon from fresh clams brought in by the fisherman down at the wharf.
He was just finding the pan on the shelf when the door popped open again.
Glancing up, he saw Oliver haloed in the light from above the doorway.
He shut it closed behind him.
“Is everything okay?” Luca asked.
Their wait staff was new—well, everything was new, wasn’t it? They’d only been open for dinner for two and a half days now—and Oliver was supposed to be supervising them.
“Yes,” Oliver said and leaned in and kissed him, his lips surprisingly warm against his own and surprisingly much more determined.
For half a second, Luca forgot about the clam sauce, forgot about the ten tickets currently printing out in the kitchen, forgot about the Nonna’s supplier who’d just emailed him about a price increase, forgot about everything.
Wrapped his arms around his boyfriend and kissed him like he was the happiest guy in the world, a guy with no worries, no cares, and certainly not a shit ton of work waiting for him.
It turned out that both of those things could be true, at the very same time.
Oliver’s tongue flicked out and tasted his bottom lip as he pulled away. “That,” he said in a low, rough voice, “was for the way you looked at me when you saw the shrimp appetizer.”
Luca raised an eyebrow. “We gonna go make out in the walk-in every time someone orders it? Because I can’t say I hate that idea.”
Oliver laughed. “Can you imagine?”
The thing was, Luca could now.
Oliver had raised the curtain, giving him the briefest glimpse of a kind of life he’d never dreamed of having for himself, but now, every day, worked his ass off to own.
To be worthy of having.
“Yes,” Luca said. “Fuck them all. They can wait.” And he pulled Oliver back and kissed him again.
“Tonight,” Luca said, when they finally broke apart, and Oliver’s eyes were glazed, nearly dazed with arousal, “we have something we need to do.”
“Sex?”
Luca had never laughed as much as he did now.
Like the joy simply couldn’t be contained anymore, it just exploded out of him, without any hope of control whatsoever.
At first he’d been surprised, then confused, then he’d learned to embrace it.
Maybe he was the new King of Feelings. “That, definitely that, but also . . .we need to talk about the menu.”
“The shrimp appetizer?” Oliver looked momentarily disappointed, like it hadn’t been the best kind of surprise. And yeah, it had definitely been a surprise.
“That, and a few other things.” Luca tried to sound stern, and no big surprise, mostly failed at the attempt.
Oliver pecked him on the cheek. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I promise not to add anything else without checking with you first.”
“You swear?”
Oliver laughed, skirting away from Luca’s attempts to reel him back into his arms. “Come on, we have dinner to serve,” he teased.
Like Oliver hadn’t come in here with the express purpose of kissing him.
Luca would be totally pissed off if he wasn’t so fucking charmed.
At the last moment, right before ducking out of the walk-in, he spotted the clam sauce and grabbed it.
At least Giana would think he hadn’t totally lost his train of thought.
She eyed him when he returned to the big stove.
“You get lost?” she questioned as he handed over the pan of clam sauce.
“Yeah,” Luca said. Meeting Oliver’s gaze as he peered through the pass-through—no doubt, about to launch some complaint about why the clam pasta was behind, even though he knew perfectly well why that was the case—and exchanging a hot look, tempered with love.
He’d known, of course, that when he committed, it would be for life. There would be no half-measures for Luca Moretti, but it was something else to experience what forever really meant, every single day.
Easy isn’t worth doing, Nonna whispered in his ear, and this time he sent her a message back.
Love isn’t either, and it’s worth even more.
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