Chapter 17
I’m annoyed with myself for how much I miss Anita once she’s gone.
It’s not like we see each other constantly in New York.
But I blame Emilia and Nico for my newfound softness; in the span of a few fortnights, they’ve cracked me open like one of their beloved fresh hazelnuts, and now elements that used to slide right off me have seeped their way into my open crevices.
It’s like I’ve forgotten why hard shells exist. It’s nagging me that all this openness I’ve been cosplaying at on this temporary sojourn has turned out to also have a downside.
Apparently it’s not all cliffside poetry and bomboloni.
So of course the mature and normal reaction is to skip going to Belpagna for a few mornings.
All of Manciano is now decorated for the Palio, even though the event is over a month away. Flags and neighborhood colors adorn every possible lamppost, doorway, and awning. Here in Cassero, the dark blue and maroon covers everything and somehow feels fitting for my immature emo mood.
While the town is already getting into celebratory mode, I’m avoiding, staying home reading, and shoving pecorino down my throat as much as humanly possible.
It doesn’t help my mood that one of the cats from Belpagna has taken to waiting outside my apartment and follows me to Pasta Fresca every day, as though she’s missed seeing me in my normal routine and she’s going to make me recognize it.
But apparently the cat isn’t the only one who’s not going to let me stay alone.
I arrive at work on Friday to find Emilia and Nico casually sipping espresso on stools in the kitchen. I drop my bags from the market on the counter and give them both a pointed stare.
“The moping is over,” Emilia declares, staring right back.
Nico stays silent, tousling the hair on the back of his head, apparently pulled into this ambush against his better judgment.
“I’m not moping.”
I turn away from them and start unpacking.
“Are you too sick to walk to the bakery?” I hear the smile in her voice, but I’m not giving her the satisfaction of looking to see.
“No.”
“Suddenly allergic to gluten?”
I shudder at even the suggestion. “Nope.”
“Discovered that you can boil water and stick a tea bag in a cup without me?”
“I could always do that,” I scoff.
She sets her espresso cup down hard on the table, which finally jolts me back into looking at her. “No more being a bambina, okay?”
My hands fly to my hips. “Did you just call me a baby?”
“Molto bene! I see we’ve been picking up some Italian.”
“Emilia!”
At that, Nico stands up wordlessly and comes between us, his tall frame blocking Emilia’s attempt to tease me into submission.
All my petty irritation is zapped by his nearness.
He’s closer than he’s been in a long time, as though he’s decided my bad mood is worth breaking the self-imposed frisson of distance we’ve had ever since the almost-kiss in the field.
I appreciate the sentiment, but the gesture comes with the unintended consequence of reminding me what his eyes look like when they’re watching me.
Like how you don’t think about being hydrated until you suddenly find yourself parched.
And I’m not sure I needed to be reminded of that at this stage.
But then he startles me even further. “I’m gonna hug you, okay?” he asks.
What?
I could not have predicted that as the direction he would be taking. “Okay?” I say, confused but undeniably warm at the thought.
He wraps his arms around me, and everything softens.
All that hard shell I’ve been building back up over the last few days doesn’t need to be cracked—he simply melts it.
I breathe him in, and he smells like freshly cut grass and dirt, and the whole effect is more calming than a bottle of wine.
My mind is attempting to remind me friends, friends, friends, while my body is trying its hardest to ignore the rational thought and just lean into his touch.
“Hmm?” I mumble in response to something he must’ve said that I barely heard.
I hear his laugh from against his chest, that depth echoing in my ear, and it makes my heart beat even faster. “I asked if that helped.”
“Helped what?” I respond, my voice muffled because I’m unwilling to move my face when I’m so comfy against him.
“You seem stressed,” he says with a tenderness I know I’m not imagining.
“I’m not stressed,” I reply, even while my clinging to the chance of a hug from him seems to scream the exact opposite.
He ignores me and keeps talking. “When mammals are stressed, it causes a physical response, and tight squeezes activate the body’s parasympathetic nervous system. It helps.”
I finally peel myself off of him because I need to look at his face, skepticism now lining mine. “When you say ‘mammals’ . . .” I start. He doesn’t seem to follow. “Is this a strategy you employ on animals?”
Emilia snickers next to me, but Nico still doesn’t seem to see what the problem is.
I snap my fingers in his face to get him to focus. “I’m asking if you’re treating me like one of your cows?”
Emilia is now howling, and I can see things finally registering for Nico.
“Well, Temple Grandin—” he starts.
“Temple Grandin!” I shout. “You’re trying to make me feel better by using a tactic that was actually developed for cows?”
“To be fair,” he says, his soft voice incapable of not sounding soothing even when he’s being unwittingly patronizing, “she developed a pressure device for neurodivergent people because she saw how much cows were soothed by being squeezed before being slaughtered.”
Emilia is doubled over, tears coming out of her eyes, while Nico stands there with his hands on his hips.
“What? It helped, didn’t it? It was just a thought that came to me in the moment when you and Emilia were bickering!”
He stares over at her pointedly, like this entire course of action is her fault.
“You really need to spend less time around machines, trees, and animals,” Emilia chokes out, still unable to control her laughter.
“I just hate seeing you sad,” he mumbles to me, ignoring Emilia.
That wipes the smirk off my face, squeezing my heart from knowing he was doing the best he could. Even if he did it without thinking and tortured me (and probably himself) by coming so close.
But Emilia hasn’t clocked any of it because she’s now standing there explaining to poor Nico why he shouldn’t compare women to cows. He’s not listening, though, and is instead focused on something on the table.
“Does Gia have bugs in the kitchen?” he asks me without looking up.
Well, that wasn’t where I thought this already-confusing conversation was going. “Why?”
He holds up the bottle of bug spray I unpacked on the counter, along with the rest of the items I picked up, before finally catching my eye.
“Oh,” I say, waving him off. “No, that’s not for here. I’m just getting some mosquitos on my patio at night.” His brow furrows. “What?”
“You’re going to spray this where?” he asks, his face not betraying his thoughts.
“On me?”
I’m feeling less sure by the minute, and the small grin that twitches across his face is confirmation that I’m not absorbing Italian by osmosis as much as I’d hoped I was.
“This is . . .” I can tell he’s trying not to laugh. “You bought an insecticide, like if you wanted to murder an infestation. So sure, I guess that would get rid of the mosquitos if you wanted to. But probably also burn your skin off.”
“Saying ‘murder’ is pretty dramatic,” I huff, swiping the bottle out of his hands and then looking at it. First he has to discombobulate me with hugs, and now he’s laughing at me? What has this morning turned into. “This has mosquitos on it!” I finally exclaim.
“Those are ants.”
“Flying ants?!” I squeak.
He tilts his head, considering.
“You’ve been sleeping on the ground in an olive grove, Kit.” He gingerly picks the bottle up out of my hand. I’m a little disarmed by how much he’s willing to touch me today. “I’d be more afraid of this than any of the bugs you’ve probably already ingested in your sleep.”
I shiver at the thought, which was clearly his intention, and now he’s laughing, full-throated.
“Okay how about this,” I say, “I’ll forget you compared me to a cow if you forget I bought chemical insecticide instead of bug spray.”
He grins wide, his amusement the sunshine that’s now instantly pushed away all the darkness I’ve let seep in during the last few days. “Deal.”
He holds out his hand, and I wrap mine around his, so confused by all these touches yet unable to contain myself now that I’ve had a hit.
It doesn’t help that I can’t stop staring at his mouth.
That freckle above his lip always gets me, but the joy stretched across his face makes him so eminently kissable.
We both hold on a beat too long, and I’m not sure I would’ve been able to let go, but we’re interrupted by a new voice behind us.
“Ciao a tutti!”
I instantly remember myself and let go of Nico’s hand. I turn around and see Beppe, Sofia’s son, whom I met the other night at the Palio dinner. He’s looking more casual today, and I can’t help but smile when I see him beaming back at me.
“Nice to see you again, Beppe,” I say. “Gia’s not here yet—she’s grabbing something at the butcher.”
But he waves the sentiment away. “Actually, I wanted to stop in to see you.”
“Oh?” I shift on my heels, unsure now, and keenly aware of both Nico and Emilia watching this unfold.
“I’m back in town for the weekend, and I was wondering if you’d like to go out for a drink with me tonight?”
“I’m working tonight,” I say automatically, unsure why that’s stumbled out so fast.
“No, I know,” he chuckles. “I wouldn’t dare do anything that could get me a scolding from Gia.
” He smiles conspiratorially, as though as a kid that’s exactly what he was constantly doing.
It’s hard not to let my lips curve back up at the thought.
“But I meant after work,” he continues. “Don’t you usually close up by ten?
We could grab a drink next door, just casual. ”
Beppe can’t see Emilia, so she gives me an unsubtle thumbs-up.
I can feel Nico behind me. I wish I could see his face, but I don’t dare turn around.
I hate that my entire brain is focused entirely on wondering what Nico’s reaction is.
I think about Anita’s enthusiasm for just this scenario.
The only way to get over someone is to get under someone else, you know?
I know she meant John, but . . . maybe that is what I need right now, if I’m more focused on Nico’s reaction than the actual cute, available man asking me out.
And especially a cute man who doesn’t even live here, so he couldn’t care less that I’m leaving at the end of the summer.
He’s asking me out. Just casual. The easiest drink I should ever say yes to.
“That sounds really nice, actually,” I blurt out, not allowing myself to overthink it now that Anita’s voice is back in my head.
I feel Nico still behind me, as though his breathing was a metronome that’s been suddenly stopped.
I can see Emilia’s eyes on him, but they don’t betray her thoughts—I’d definitely never play Emilia in a game of poker.
She might look cute with her aprons and hair wraps, but she can be stone cold when she needs to be.
And if I had to bet all my money on what she was thinking when she looked at Nico right now, I wouldn’t have a clue what to say.
I certainly can’t turn around and look at him.
But that’s also for the best because this is not about Nico.
A nice man asked me out, and I accepted.
And now he’s asking me what time I get off work while simultaneously pulling out his phone and handing it to me, in order for me to give him my number.
He’s all movement and confidence and fluidity and no cares in the world.
And I’ve got to get my mind off the stone statue standing behind me.
I input my number into his phone and hand it back. He immediately starts texting something, and a moment later my phone buzzes.
See you tonight! it says, a silent missive from Beppe.
“Okay, well, now I really do need to work,” I say, shooing everyone away before finally turning back to Nico, who seems to have schooled his face enough to have no discernible expression.
Apparently he’s off my poker list too. “Emilia and Nico, thank you for cheering me up. Beppe, I’ll see you later.
I need to make some gnocchi now, that Gia probably won’t let me sell. ”
Emilia and Beppe both wave and then turn and start chatting to each other as they walk out the door. Nico stands there for a moment, his eyes catching mine, the melancholy that flickers almost too fast to miss. But he doesn’t say anything—of course he doesn’t say anything.
I want to shake him. He’s the person who made the rules, and now we’re stuck in this torturous loop.
We like each other too much to avoid hanging out together, but we like each other too much to keep letting this not hurt.
The hug made that painfully obvious to me, even if he’s still living in some land of denial.
But I can force my feelings down too. I’m a chef, for crying out loud. We’re conditioned to ignore pain, ignore problems, ignore exhaustion. I’ve got to mentally deglaze my pan and pour some wine over the fire to get everything unstuck. I turn back to my station and pull out my cutting board.
I don’t look up again as I start to chop onions, but I hear Nico wordlessly leave.