Chapter 36
I buzz through Sunday night’s service.
I’m running on focus and adrenaline to push me.
It’s something I’ve always been able to do—cut through the noise and just do the work.
You need it in rowing so you don’t get distracted by what’s happening around you.
And you need it in cooking to drown out your personal life and get into a flow when you’re having a busy night and can’t afford to get behind for even one step.
There’s a big part of me that wants to zone out, that wants to think about the flight I’m getting on late tonight.
I want to think about what Nico will say when I show up on his doorstep.
I want to think about my pronunciation of the poem I’ve memorized, the one about loving Maremma that I looked at every day from my bench.
I want to think about whether he’ll appreciate my grand romantic gesture, or if he’ll let me down gently.
But there’s a reason I’ve gotten to where I am today in my career. And it’s because I’m methodical. I can block everything out. I can get into a rhythm and get the job done.
So I don’t think about Nico all night. We do over a hundred covers, and I know each and every one is executed flawlessly because my mind is on the dish in front of me.
But after the final order is out, the kitchen has been cleaned up, and I’m the last one standing, I let my mind finally wander as I wash my hands and prepare to leave. I think about Nico’s smile. I think about the straight slope of his nose. I think about wrapping my hands around his waist.
I push open the kitchen door, and now I’m thinking about Nico in New York.
Because Nico’s in front of me.
Nico’s sitting at the bar, nursing a beer, watching my surprise.
Nico is here?
Seeing someone you’ve been imagining for a few weeks is like getting water after wandering in a desert.
You’d binge on it and take in every little detail.
That’s what looking at Nico right now feels like.
It’s not the hazy generalities I’d been focused on minutes ago; it’s the tangible time-specific realities right in front of me.
The fade of the gray T-shirt; the length of his stubble; the way his throat moves as he swallows while he takes me in in all the same ways.
“You’re here,” I croak, needing to state the obvious to make sure it’s actually happening.
“I’m here,” he says with a tentative smile. His stillness and calm, like always, calms me. I take a deep breath and sit down next to him.
“I was about to go to the airport.”
“Oh.” He raises his eyebrows. “I didn’t mean to stop you. I shouldn’t have assumed—”
I put my hand on his arm. Maybe it’s to stop his doubts, but it’s probably more because I’m desperate to touch him.
“I was going to the airport to get on a flight to Rome.”
He closes his eyes and smiles. I can hear the exhale that seems to come from his entire body.
He centers himself, taking a beat, and then finally says, “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
“What wouldn’t?”
He looks me up and down, distracted by my physicality as much as I am with his, and my heart skips a beat.
But after a moment he speaks again. “I ate here tonight—”
“You did?” I beam at the thought. I know he’s here, but it hadn’t occurred to me that he’d had dinner.
“I did.” His mouth curves up at my dopey expression. “I love that you seem to be happier at the idea of me eating at your restaurant than you do at me flying four thousand miles to see you.”
“I like that part too,” I say, and he wraps his hand around mine, a tether after too much time without it.
He rubs his thumb along my fingers. I’ve been so steely the last few weeks, unyielding, trying to be the most singularly focused version of myself.
But in an instant, he takes my calloused, burned, tired fingers and makes them feel gentle again.
The only person who’s ever found the softness on my tough exterior.
“I liked getting to see you through your restaurant,” he continues, his eyes back on me even as his hands keep slowly moving.
“You’re in every bite of the food. All your precision and humor and creativity and boldness.
All summer, I loved everything you made, but it wasn’t this.
Everything that came out of this kitchen is purely you. ”
I squeeze his hand. “Thank you.”
“It’s why you need to be here,” he says quietly. I feel his words in the pit of my stomach. I wonder what it means for us.
He pulls my hand up and kisses my wrist. “But before, when I was trying to say I didn’t think it would be like this, I meant .
. .” He pauses, searching for the words.
“I didn’t think it would be quite so completely impossible when you left.
Not simply hard, but totally impossible.
” He kisses my wrist again. I think we both need to keep confirming that the other is real.
“I don’t want to be away from you. Life without you is just an empty table. ”
I pull him into a hug, relieved, because I know exactly what he means.
I can do it without him—and I always did before and I’ve been doing it the last few weeks—but now that I know what life could be, everything’s been flavorless.
Unsalted. Like the first time I went to a fancy restaurant and was gobsmacked that I’d been missing everything food could be.
“I thought I’d throw myself back into work and it would be okay,” I whisper against him.
“I only had trees to watch growing, so if it was hard for you, can you imagine how torturous it was for me?”
I laugh, and the sound is muffled because my tears are mixed in. I’m so glad I’m the last person out of the restaurant tonight, because I think I’d die if my whole team saw me in some ridiculous hug halfway between weeping and hysterically cracking up.
“Don’t diminish the cows, though,” I finally say, needing to find some lightness. “They’d be offended if they heard you saying you ‘only had trees.’”
He shakes his head. “I did pay attention to the cows. Although actually, that got me in the most trouble because I was sleeping outside again the other night, and Tommaso walked through and I lost it on him.”
My eyes widen. “You did?”
“He wasn’t with a group. I think he wanted to get a sense of where the boars were, if they were still around the area for the season.
So I saw him alone and I just . . . unleashed.
I yelled at him about Gia and his bullying and his lack of consideration for the town.
It actually felt really great. And you know what he said? ”
“What?” I can’t even imagine mild-mannered Nico yelling at anyone, so it must’ve shocked Tommaso.
“He sat down next to me and asked for a beer.” My eyes widen and he nods with a grin, enjoying seeing my surprise. “And we talked about you. He told me if I was losing my temper, I must be going nuts missing you, and when I asked how he guessed, I found out that his wife died a few years ago—”
“Finally a spouse who actually died!”
He quirks a confused look at me, and I make a zipping motion with my lips. Clearly not the time to share that particular observation.
“Anyway, we started chatting about what it’s been like since he lost her, and apparently the hunting trips have been his saving grace. They’ve given him purpose in his loneliness. And with sort of a truce on hand, we were able to actually get into the hunting stuff and hash some things out.”
I never thought I’d find the emotional intricacies of a small-town hunting dispute hot, but apparently here we are.
“But that’s not what’s important,” he continues, not privy to the depraved direction my mind seems to always take.
Instead he squeezes my hand again, another tactile reminder of my presence, which immediately makes me focus.
“By the time we were talking, I’d been thinking about you nonstop for days, obviously.
But I’d been trying to make myself accept the reality of the situation because so many of the details I love about you are so directly tied to why you needed to leave.
Your relentlessness, your desire to learn, your ambition. ”
He sighs, moving his hand up from mine and onto my elbow, like he needs more contact to get all of this out.
“I love you, Kit. And I didn’t try to stop you leaving because I thought it was what loving you meant.
In the past, it was what I thought it meant to love my ex-wife, because she needed to leave, and that was the right choice in the long run for both of us.
So I just assumed this, with us, would be the same.
It would hurt, but I’d move on. Except right from the moment you left, it didn’t feel the same.
It was so wrong. And talking to Tommaso, every story he told of missing his wife was all about the specificity of her .
. . And it made everything so clear. I wasn’t sad that a relationship had ended or that I was alone—it was you. ”
He pulls back and wipes the tears off my eyes. His words make me ache because they’re exactly the same kinds of realizations I’ve come to. We’re in each other’s DNA, and it’s not meant to go away.
Although I feel way luckier to have had Anita as my sounding board than Tommaso, but I guess beggars can’t be choosers.
“So after that night with Tommaso, what happened?” I ask, knowing that it all led up to him flying to New York, but I’m still totally in the dark about how he got here.
He chuckles. “Well, after not sleeping much that night, I spent the next day doing a lot of pacing around the grove. Luce seemed to think I’d lost it. But the trees have always given me peace, and this time of year everything is looking gorgeous, so I thought it would be helpful.”
“Did it work?”
He shakes his head. “I hadn’t had peace since the moment you’d left, and it wasn’t coming back.
I’d really always thought Manciano gave it to me.
I was happy enough taking over for my grandfather and building on the technology and hanging around with Emilia and Gia and the rest of the nutty people I love there.
” I’m so grateful to see a smile on him for a moment, completely understanding why that thought is what brings it out in him.
But then he shifts again. “After my wife left, I’d had to rebuild what was lost using the things I loved that had stayed.
I associated that contentedness with something I couldn’t lose.
My peace in Manciano felt so hard-won, and after finding balance again, I was terrified of losing it.
” He sighs again, and it’s bone deep. “But with you gone, it became increasingly clear that my life in Manciano wasn’t everything—I’d been happy enough, but you seeped into my life in a completely different way. ”
My heart squeezes at his words—he has no idea yet how much his realizations have paralleled mine. I grip him tighter, encouraging him to keep going, to keep letting out whatever he needs to say.
“I don’t need a couch or a sunset or my hands on groves to ground myself,” he continues.
“You being in front of me gives me that. Manciano is community and support, but you’re my home.
And I hadn’t realized that earlier because it all seemed to fit until you weren’t there, until I realized that my table was empty without you.
And after hearing Tommaso’s grief over not having his home anymore, I kept thinking what a waste it is to love someone that much who’s still here and not be with them. ”
He wipes away his own tears, but I stay silent, wanting to let him finish.
“I thought maybe . . . I don’t have a good answer and I don’t know what life looks like, but in whatever iteration, I need my table to include you.
I need you. I need to be where you are.” I inhale sharply at his words, because they’re almost the exact same ones I said to Anita.
But he doesn’t notice and keeps going. “I don’t want you to change, I don’t want you to give up anything, I just need you exactly as you are, and we’ll work the rest of it out. ”
Need. That’s really all it comes down to, isn’t it?
Loving him isn’t a choice. It wasn’t ever a choice.
I’ve always only relied on myself, and I’ve had other people supporting me and cheering for me, but I didn’t need them.
I wasn’t flour and water with anyone else, essential to the entire structure of a dough.
Nico intertwined with me and made me into something new. And I can’t go back now.
“I was coming to Rome to tell you the same thing.”
“Yeah?” he breathes, sounding more relieved than I’ve ever heard him.
“Well, obviously not the exact same thing, since I didn’t have revelations with Tommaso or a grove to wander around.
” He chuckles and I adore the small sound.
“And it was different because, unlike your very rational action to come and have a conversation like an adult, I had a very cringeworthy grand gesture at the ready. I was gonna show up and make you a dinner and recite some Italian poetry and maybe make Luce wear a bow tie . . . It was a whole thing. Anita made me come up with a whole plan.”
He shakes his head and laughs that perfect sonorous laugh of his. “I don’t need any of that.”
“I see that now,” I say with a smile.
“Just you.”
Just me.
And unlike everything else I’ve achieved in my life, this outcome has nothing to do with how hard I’ve worked, how much I’ve pushed, how far I’ve tested my limits. It’s simply as true as knowing the olives will grow on the tree with or without Nico there to watch them.
He pulls me into a kiss, in the middle of my restaurant, and now I have everything I need.