Chapter 5 #3
Will looked surprised. “You really don’t like it. I think you’re the only person I’ve met who feels that way. Even Luca enjoys it.”
“Luca enjoys the business it brings,” Enzo said. And yes, maybe that was a very prosaic way to see it, but that was his cousin through and through.
“I don’t believe that’s all,” Will said slowly. “It’s a story about hope, about never giving up. A beautiful love story. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in love?”
Enzo didn’t not believe in love. “I just don’t believe that real life works out that way.”
“What about your cousin and Oliver?”
He waved a hand. “I guess sometimes it does. But for most of us? Not so much.”
Will smiled. “That’s a pretty depressing way to look at things. I like to see the opportunities, not the disappointments.” He paused. “Don’t you dare say of course you do.”
The laugh was startled right out of Enzo. “Unfair,” he claimed. But it was very fair.
“Have you ever listened to Joy tell the story?”
Joy was not only the woman who ran the biggest B he only smiled. “True,” he admitted. “You’re not going to show me, are you?”
“Uh.” Enzo hesitated, but Rocco nudged him.
“Listen, he married him,” Rocco pointed out. “Oliver knows what he’s really like. Better than either of us.”
Oliver’s smile deepened. “Also true.” But he didn’t ask again. Instead, he changed the subject. “What’s this about you drinking three cappuccinos today?”
“Rocco gave me this last one,” Enzo squawked.
“He just looked so lonely out here,” Rocco pointed out, all innocence. “With his sketchbook and no coffee.”
“Luca has three cappuccinos all the time,” Enzo pointed out.
“And Luca shouldn’t, because then he stays up way too late,” Oliver said, the corner of his mouth quirking up. “You Morettis always believe you can handle your caffeine, but the truth is, you come from the womb pre-caffeinated, already.”
This time both he and Rocco laughed, nodding in agreement.
“That’s my way of saying you’re cut off for the day,” Oliver teased gently. “Now show me this picture of Luca.”
Enzo hesitated again. But then Oliver plucked the sketchbook off the table before he could stop him. He flipped pages until he found what he was looking for.
For a second, he looked at the quick drawing Enzo had made of Luca, Enzo bracing for every reaction he could think of.
Then Oliver’s face cracked into a wide smile, and then he was straight up cackling, head thrown back with the force of his laughter. “Oh, oh,” he gasped, “you’re good.”
“Told you,” Rocco said knowingly.
“Just don’t let him see it,” Oliver said, returning the sketchbook to his table.
“Yeah, it would piss him off,” Enzo agreed, feeling a little pulse of shame for doing it, because he liked Luca. At least he did now.
“No, no,” Oliver corrected gently, “he’d never let me hear the end of it. He’d love it that much.”
“Really? He wouldn’t be insulted?”
“Are you kidding?” Oliver shook his head. “You really don’t know how proud he is of you, do you?”
That was not what Enzo had expected Oliver to say.
“Uh, no?”
“Are you kidding me?” Rocco chimed in. “He won’t shut up about your latest mural. That galaxy one in Seattle? He talked about it nonstop, even to customers, for days.”
“Oh. Oh.”
Oliver shot him a gentle smile. “He’s a complicated guy,” he admitted. “I tell him all the time that he should tell you, but you know your cousin. He’s so contained.”
“Not as much as he used to be, before you convinced him to be a real boy,” Enzo joked.
It was funny, because back when that had actually happened, he’d been so pissed off. And now it was impossible to be angry about it, because Luca and Oliver made each other better.
It was the kind of relationship Enzo measured his own by, and when every single one had come up short, he’d begun to think that maybe the kind of white-picket-fence forever love that his cousin and Oliver shared wasn’t for him.
He’d meant what he told Will earlier; maybe real life was full of disappointing love.
And it had been easier, too, to give up on relationships because sometimes it felt like he spent every month in a different city.
“Yeah, I was really surprised when I came here,” Rocco agreed. “I only knew him, a few years back, when he lived in Napa. And then I showed up a month or so back and imagine my shock when he was laughing and joking and teasing.”
“The miracle of love,” Oliver said mysteriously. He turned to Enzo. “I’ve got bread rising. But you’re good out here, minus the cappuccinos?”
“Can I just hang out here? Do you mind?”
He realized that maybe Oliver wouldn’t want him spending his morning—and maybe even his afternoon—taking one of his handful of tables.
“No, no,” Oliver waved. “Feel free to stay. You’re always welcome here, you know? Besides . . .” He shot him a knowing grin. “It’s a small town, isn’t it? Not a whole lot of choices.”
Ilaria was always telling him, whenever his feelings about Indigo Bay had come up, that he needed to remember that he’d changed. You, more than anyone else, need to remember that, she’d added. ’Cause it’s like you go back there and the minute you cross the town line, you forget, too.
“Definitely smaller than I’m used to, now,” he admitted.
“I bet, and God knows, when I first came home, it was an adjustment,” Oliver said, and Enzo believed that he really understood. “Come on,” he said to Rocco, “let’s work on some of your pastry skills and leave your cousin to his artistic endeavors.”