Chapter 23
On Monday, I stand in front of the mirror too long, but it’s better than pacing my apartment as time ticks by slowly and the sun finally starts to get lower in the sky.
It’s only been a day since Nico and I were alone together, but considering we woke up in a field with cows yesterday, it wasn’t exactly sexy. I worked late last night and then only saw him at Belpagna with Emilia this morning.
He said he’d pick me up at six, so after getting dressed in a T-shirt and shorts early, I’ve been fidgeting with eyeliner for at least thirty minutes.
I’m not good at it, and I’m not even sure I need it since my eyes already bug out enough.
There’s a voice in my head that’s mocking the low effort I’m putting in while simultaneously running in circles, ringing alarm bells that I’m trying too hard.
It’s like my mirror is the edge of a diving board, and I’m staring at it, wondering when someone’s just going to push me already. Maybe I’ve got to be like the kids at the beach who jumped off the rock, even though they were a little bit scared.
But their water was clear. I have no idea what I’m jumping into.
My fingers tap rhythmically in front of the mirror, unable to stop their nervous dancing. This is so unlike me. I don’t know if it’s because we were friends first or because the attraction had so long to build up or what. Fidgeting isn’t something I’m used to.
But before I can delve too far into that, there’s a knock at my door.
I swing it open to Nico, standing in a shirt I’ve never seen him wear—an actual ironed button-down that isn’t made of flannel. He looks hot, and it makes a smoky pressure build in my chest.
He’s holding out a bouquet of wildflowers that look like a burst of harnessed sunshine.
“They’re from my fields,” he says, a hint of a blush rising, and I let myself watch and drink it in.
“They’re perfect.” I wrap my hand around the stems gently, like they’re too beautiful to manhandle even if they’re made to survive out in the open, rain or shine.
I grab a vase and pour some water in, taking the moment to not let myself get overheated from the arrival of a seemingly game-on Nico. I arrange the flowers on the coffee table in the center of the room. Everything seems brighter with them here, like an effortless but purposeful addition.
He hands me my helmet. He must’ve grabbed it from my scooter downstairs.
“You’re riding with me tonight. If that’s okay,” he says.
I nod, sort of stunned into silence at this version of Nico.
I think about what he said on Saturday: When I ask you out on a date, you’ll know it.
I thought he’d just meant the asking, but date-Nico is apparently lethal.
I might not’ve noticed the difference if I hadn’t already spent so much time with friend-Nico, but date-Nico puts in efforts that simultaneously have no pressure.
He’s not grandstanding or trying to overtly impress me.
But he’s done all these small things. Ironed a shirt.
Gathered wildflowers. Made a plan. Picked me up at my door instead of having me meet him outside. Grabbed my helmet even before I asked.
And now he’s fiddling with the clasp after I put the helmet on, an excuse to touch me again, I think. It softens all my nerves away.
We head downstairs, and his Vespa is right out front.
It’s such a different sensation, riding with him than going on my own.
I don’t have to pay attention; I can let him lead and allow myself to go along for the literal ride.
I have no idea where we’re going, which normally would cause my inner control freak to stand at attention.
But with Nico, she’s able to stand down.
And instead I’m able to lean into the moment. My arms are around his waist, my head nestled onto his back; the trees I’m now so familiar with line the road like they’re waving in the sunset. I don’t want to miss the scenery, but I also can’t help but close my eyes and breathe it all in.
So I’m surprised, then, when we pull up to his house. Luce runs out the door and bounces around us as though he hasn’t seen Nico in years, even if he probably saw him half an hour ago.
“Did you forget something?” I ask as he hops off the bike.
He holds out his hand for mine, indicating I should get off too. “Nope,” he says, keeping my hand and leading me toward the house.
“Awfully presumptuous of you to bring me to your house,” I flirt. “Buy a girl dinner first at least.”
But when he opens the door, all my smart-aleck comments are silenced.
He’s set his table for two, with a blue-checkered tablecloth and more of those wildflowers in a small vase at the center.
Gentle music permeates the air as much as the smell of garlic, caramelized onions, and a meaty sauce of some kind.
It’s the date equivalent of everything I’ve been learning from Gia—simplicity as the root of perfection.
There’s no rose petals or abundance of candlelight.
It’s all himself, not overwrought, polished with the shine of subtle effort.
“This is—” I say, not even knowing where to begin.
“I thought, maybe . . . you’d like it if someone else cooked you dinner for once.” He shrugs.
It’s so earnest. It’s so romantic. Fuck. I don’t think I’ve ever had a man be romantic. I don’t think I’ve ever given any man the impression that I’d want him to be romantic.
And that trips something beyond typical butterflies.
It’s as though he’s reached me below where the butterflies would normally live, dug into the soil, deep inside where I’d thought my senses ended and didn’t realize they tunneled deeper than I’d ever known.
That sense of being delicate is surfacing again.
I never understood the concept of living rent-free in someone’s head, but that’s what it feels like Nico is doing to me. It’s like I haven’t just been thinking about him; he’s already in there and at home.
I reach out and touch the pad of my finger to his freckle at the top of his lip, tracing the way the skin curves. I lean in and bite it, gently, the way I’ve been dying to, and he murmurs a sigh.
“I swear the goal of bringing you here was to cook you dinner,” he says, “not an excuse to get you in my house.”
“I know.” I nod, wrapping my arms around his neck. He kisses me slowly but then pulls back.
“Don’t distract me,” he says, kissing my forehead with finality while I fight the urge to pout. He pours me a glass of wine and then hands it over while he heads back into the kitchen.
“What’d you make?” I ask, leaning over to try and get a look.
“Don’t expect too much of me,” he says with a small smile. “I roasted some eggplants, made a salad, and did a ragù for pasta.”
“Please tell me it’s not—”
“It is boar ragù,” he says with a chuckle. “But it’s because that’s what the butcher had and recommended today!”
I can’t help but laugh right along with him. “I’m glad you and Gia both trust the butcher, as it should be. But come on.”
He raises his hands in mock defeat.
“I am but a creature of the town I’m wedded to,” he says, a mock sigh added in for emphasis. But then he goes back to cooking, Luce parking himself at Nico’s feet, and I decide to take the opportunity to wander around his little home.
The walls are sturdy brick, with decorative arches over the windows and wooden beams on the ceiling.
It’s rustic in a lived-in way, and the whole house is basically one giant room, with the bedroom raised a bit to delineate the space.
As he described, his bathroom does only have a curtain.
And I can count seven dream catchers on the walls without even looking for them.
His bed looks like a typical man’s: He attempted to make it, but the covers are lumpy and a bit askew.
“Why are all men completely incompetent at making a bed?” I muse.
“I blame duvet covers,” he shouts from the kitchen.
I wander back over, wineglass still in hand. “What did duvet covers ever do to you?”
“They’re ridiculous,” he says, tasting a salad dressing he’s been mixing. “Why don’t they have a zipper down the middle or something? They’re impossible to put on.”
I snort a laugh. “A zipper down the middle? You’d be so uncomfortable!”
“But I’m already uncomfortable because I can never do the duvet right. It’s always more on one side, or I start buttoning wrong and then it’s one button off. It’s like it’s designed to flummox you. Why can we have, like, automatic heated toilets but not an easy duvet cover?”
“Sounds like a project for a man who’s already done with the engineering marvel of a new olive oil filtration system.”
He shakes his head as he pours the dressing over the salad. “No way. I’m not cut out for the complexity of duvets. Way above my pay grade.”
“We wouldn’t want scratchy center-zipped duvet covers becoming a thing anyway.” I grab the wooden spoons next to him and automatically start tossing the salad.
“Hey,” he says, pulling the spoons out of my hands. “No cooking for you today!”
I grab them back. “It’s not cooking to stir up a salad.”
“Kiiiit,” he whines in mock annoyance. “Let someone do something for you for once.”
“I let Emilia make me tea every single morning!”
I straighten the cutlery he’s placed on the table, unable to stand still.
“That doesn’t count! You pay her to make the tea.”
“Nah, she never charges me for the tea.” I grin, loving that I got him on that one.
“You’re tossing the salad before I even put the olive oil in anyway,” he says, reaching for an unmarked bottle and drizzling it on.
When he sets it back down, I reach out to catch a drip from the side with my finger.
I’m about to taste it, but I get the impulse to rub it on Nico’s lips instead, and then press my mouth to his.
The cooking is briefly forgotten as he leans into it, an herbaceous kiss that neither of us can bring ourselves to stop.
But eventually he reluctantly pulls back. “What did I say about distracting me?”
“I didn’t want to waste any of your olive oil,” I joke.
He chuckles and pours a little more oil on his finger, then drags it across my collarbone.
“What are you doing?” I squeal.
But his tongue is already on me, licking it off. “Now who’s distracting!” I pant. I’ve lost the battle of sounding indignant to the realities of shallow breathing.
His smirk is downright lethal. And instead of answering, he just winks and turns back to his pasta, leaving me stunned and wondering if it’s worth burning dinner in exchange for our own version of skipping to dessert.
But his competence wins out over my lusting. He’s not deterred the way I am, which frankly makes him even more attractive as he strains pasta and combines it with the sauce that’s been simmering on the stove.
Watching him work is hypnotizing. He’s so at ease.
Not only in the kitchen but in his whole demeanor.
My twitchiness about our new status seems to be the opposite of how he’s feeling.
For weeks there’s been some unspoken tension between us, and now, for him, it appears to have completely melted away.
A force field turned off, all his stillness back in order.
I envy that. It’s how I should be. It’s how I normally would be.
I don’t get riled up, and I don’t ever sweat the small stuff.
But I think about what Emilia said on Saturday.
Don’t you go letting that man come in and hurt you either.
There’s no world where Nico would hurt me intentionally.
But maybe it’s me who’s getting too invested.
Maybe Nico has figured out the ease of letting a summer fling happen, and I’m the one who’s letting it make me all swoony in a way I’ve never been before.
I’m so unfamiliar with this state of being that I decide to wander around the room again.
I brush my hand along his run-down chair with its matching ottoman. Above it is the photo Nico mentioned, of him as a child on a ladder raking olives. He’s so much smaller, but that same quiet confidence is apparent, even as a gangly boy.
I step closer, and my foot brushes a basket sitting against the chair. I look closer and notice it’s filled with knitting needles and yarn.
“You knit?” I ask.
“Crochet!” he calls back, and I giggle at him pointing out the difference (What . . . is the difference?). I pick up the nearest item that he’s been working on.
“What are you making?” I ask, unable to suppress the glee at discovering this large man’s secret knitting habit (Sorry . . . crochet, I internally chide).
“A little rabbit for Marna’s baby,” he says, and my heart squeezes.
I pick it up, a soft turquoise rabbit in front of me, and can’t help bringing it to my nose.
It already smells like him, his warm hands and woodsy permanent glow.
Here’s a man spending his free time hand-making a gift for a friend’s baby.
And I’m just a chump preoccupied with making myself into more of an upgraded cooking robot.
No wonder Emilia’s more worried about me becoming obsessed than she’s worried about Nico.
I put the unfinished rabbit down, knowing that I need to not go deeper into this weird rising neediness that Nico is bringing out of me. I shake off the sensation and grab my wineglass again, taking a big sip and squaring my shoulders back.
I hop up onto the counter next to where Nico is working. I love watching him clock the movement, his eyes roaming down the expanse of my legs that are now dangling in front of him.
“I know I deserve this distraction, but you’re killing me,” he huffs, and it’s adorable.
“This is not payback for your olive oil deviance!” I chide. “You told me I couldn’t do anything! So this is me waiting!”
“It’s still distracting,” he mumbles, pressing a kiss to my shoulder like he can’t help himself.
I watch as he finishes up. He puts the eggplant and the pasta into handcrafted ceramic bowls that I recognize as coming from a particular local purveyor, and lays all the food out on his beautifully set table. We sit down and eat, and that ease comes back to me now that food is in the equation.
It’s actually good—he’s a better-than-average cook, and everything he’s made has that innate Tuscan simplicity baked in.
I have to admit that the boar, cooked down with local peak tomatoes, is the perfect gamy acidic combination with the eggy pasta he’s procured.
The red wine flows, we get second helpings of the food, and we laugh our way through dinner the way we always have with good conversation and a never-ending enjoyment of each other’s company.
He was right before, although apparently I didn’t understand when he said it. I definitely know what being asked on a date looks like now.