Chapter 18 #2
He chose two that were similar in size from the collection and cracked them into the well he’d made in the flour with his fingers. She did the same, perhaps choosing one of the smallest eggs and one of the largest just to needle him.
She tossed the shells into the food scraps bucket under the bench. ‘For our compost.’ Then she pierced her yolks with a confident poke, and with deft figure eight movements, proceeded to pull the wall of flour down into the egg mixture.
Alessio followed suit, feeling completely at ease. He’d made so much pasta across his career, he could’ve done this single-handed and with his eyes closed. But then, the irritation returned.
Watching Francesca’s hands move over the pasta dough, roll around, push it up and over on the bench, his attention was drawn to her nail polish.
‘Those nails wouldn’t pass in my kitchen,’ he said without thinking.
He hadn’t meant it as a jibe, merely a passing comment, but Francesca stopped kneading and looked at him.
‘These beauties?’ She fanned her doughy hands out for him to inspect. ‘I happen to adore my red nails.’
‘I know you do. And you’re allowed to. But at home, you wouldn’t be able to work in a commercial kitchen with the polish.’
Francesca laughed and turned back to her work. ‘Good thing we’re in my kitchen now.’ She continued kneading.
Fuck. You just can’t control yourself, can you? Leave her alone. This is her kitchen. Not yours. Let it go.
Alessio closed his eyes for a moment to focus on his breath, and his psychologist Patrick’s voice returned to his memory.
‘You are programmed this way, Alessio. You have built these patterns not just in the kitchen, but over your lifetime. You’ve absorbed these from your family, your friends, your childhood.
Literally every experience you’ve had has conditioned you this way.
You may never be able to turn off your critical brain.
But you can become friends with it. Acknowledge it.
Learn to discern between being critical at your expense, and critical at the expense of others. ’
Alessio’s hands, still doughy, dropped to his board. ‘I’m sorry. I . . . I shouldn’t have said anything. That was rude and I . . .’
Francesca half turned so that her hands remained connected to the dough. ‘Thank you.’ He was surprised that she held his gaze. ‘I don’t often hear apologies around here.’
Ughh.
‘I’m only just learning how to give them.’ He returned his attention to the dough and his hands found a slower, more cautious rhythm. ‘Being here is a little harder than I thought it would be.’
‘What’s on your mind?’
In the spirit of growth and humility, of finding his roots and connecting to the land under his feet, Alessio allowed himself to be brutally, painfully honest. Because he knew that acknowledging these patterns could help set him free.
‘I’m wanting to judge,’ he said. ‘You. The kitchen. Your cup. Your nails. The fact that I can’t see the proper safety gear in the kitchen – a fire extinguisher, a fire blanket.
And I am frustrated with myself that that’s where my mind goes.
I hate that my mindset is so critical. Because you’re right, this is your kitchen.
It’s not mine. We aren’t in my commercial kitchen in Melbourne.
We’re in Impastino, in Italy, where life is different, standards are different. Not right. Not wrong. Just . . .’
‘Different.’ Alessio wasn’t expecting this, but her dough-webbed fingers reached over and wrapped around his on the bench. ‘You’re not offending me, Alessio. You’re being honest.’
‘It doesn’t come off well, though.’
She stifled a kind smile. ‘I’ll just put that to the side for now, eh?’
‘I appreciate it. This is all very new to me – sharing the kitchen with someone. And having to learn from someone. I haven’t done that for a very long time.’
‘You don’t have control.’
‘And my brain is clearly delighted.’ His sarcastic grin made her laugh into his shoulder, and the warmth of her skin and breath permeated his cotton tee.
Without his hands, all Alessio could do to acknowledge her gesture was to drop the side of his head to rest against her crown. ‘Thank you for understanding.’
‘You’re helping me too, Alessio. I owe you so much. Please, let’s just be gentle with each other.’
Gentle?
It seemed an odd word choice, but the longer he mulled over it, the more he took to it.
Gentleness. The idea of treading slowly and considerately alongside each other.
He liked it. A throwaway line people often say is, Be kind to yourself.
But the notion of being gentle, having consideration for the fragility and softness of others, well, it gelled with him.
Because he had spent so much time being far from gentle.
‘I think you’re the person I can learn to be gentle with.’
She pulled herself from his shoulder and at just a few inches distance, she whispered, ‘You can always be gentle with me. But you need to learn this gentleness with yourself too.’
Those deeply magnetic brown eyes of hers lured him in. It was as if they had locked his vulnerability in place and peeled back the bandage that exposed some of his deepest wounds. The ones that were taking their time to heal.
Francesca’s energy suddenly shifted. Her eyes flicked for a moment down to his mouth and he detected the slightest parting of her lips. Did she want him to say something? To do something? To kiss her?
At that last thought, the desire he’d been trying to deny bubbled up within him, and Alessio let his mind wander to her mouth, down her neck, across her breasts . . . Suddenly the ache in his chest morphed into the thrum of want, and what he wanted was her.
Just as he was about to test the water, to dip lower and read her reaction, she pulled from his hold.
‘Sorry,’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘The dough is drying . . .’
Is that it? Nothing more? But what just—?
Francesca silently berated herself as she returned her attention to her dough.
She’d let herself be drawn in by that sweet tender side of Alessio he was letting her see more of.
It was the side that made her chest swell and her hands fidget.
And no matter how difficult he seemed to think he was being, it was nothing she couldn’t forgive him for.
It was his openness that allowed her in, it was his transparency that allowed them to share in his challenges. And she was grateful for all of it.
‘Keep your dough moving, quickly now. It’s drying.
’ She gestured with a nod to his board. He listened and within a few minutes the dough had changed.
They had kneaded for just long enough to allow the gluten to relax, and the tension in the air to dissipate.
‘Once it no longer feels angry, and the egg accepts the flour, you step away. They need time to become one.’
Alessio had gone quiet since that moment, and Francesca now worried she had perhaps gone too far being so physically affectionate with him.
She tried to act as if nothing had happened as she reached for some tools – a rolling pin, a butter knife, a serrated knife, a crimped-edged dough-cutting wheel, and a fine wooden dowel rod.
Then she offered Alessio a matching set.
‘Our tools of the pasta trade,’ she said, keeping her voice light. ‘Shall we play a little game?’
Alessio’s lips curled into a sheepish smile. ‘Sure. Why not?’
‘You. Me. Our respective doughs. Sixty seconds. As many free-form pasta shapes as we can make.’
He nodded, feigning formality. ‘I accept your challenge of a pasta duel.’
‘No pasta machine. Just hands. Whoever can make the most shapes wins.’
‘You’re on, but please be gentle with me. I’m not a sfoglino. I think we’ve established that already.’
‘And I thought we’d just established that we will always be gentle with each other?’
‘Touché.’
Francesca slapped her floury hands together over the kitchen trough to clean them a little, then reached for the manual eggtimer on the bench. She cranked it to sixty seconds, then counted, ‘Tre. Due. Uno . . . Via!’
Alessio grabbed his dough and immediately quartered it, rolling each portion into a ball.
But that was as far as Francesca’s initial observations of Alessio went.
Turning her attention to her own ball she cut it in half, grabbed one portion, rolled it thin, then folded it over and over itself.
Taking her knife she announced a new name with each cut.
And, within seconds, ‘Tagliatelle. Linguine. Fettuccine. Capellini. Tagliolini. Pappardelle.’ Then with the crimped-edged cutter, she worked for a moment, then announced, ‘Reginette!’ Taking the leftover dough in her hand she rolled it back into a ball, then flattened the mass to three-millimetre thickness with the rolling pin.
‘Lasagne.’ She cut off a three-inch-wide square of dough. ‘Fazzoletti.’
‘What?’ Alessio breathed. ‘I’m only on three! I thought we said gentle.’
‘I am being gentle!’ She dropped the rolling pin and grabbed her last piece of dough, working it into a long sausage shape.
She rolled and elongated it until she was able to work with such confidence that her hands simply knew what to do, and she could watch Alessio.
She grabbed her butter knife and began, ‘Orecchiette. Lumaconi. Conchiglie.’ Then, out came the dowel rod, which she rolled through the pasta.
It wrapped together. ‘Gemelli. Casarecce. Fusilli al ferretto!’
‘Francesca!’
‘What? I am going slower than normal for you!’
‘I’m on seven and you’re on—’
‘Quindici!’
‘Take your fifteen and—’
‘Now, now, that’s not in the spirit of the game, Alessio!’
‘Neither is the demolition of your opponent!’
‘Cavatelli! Sixteen! And we have ten seconds!’
‘Shit!’ Alessio lurched to grab more dough and the rolling pin, moving with turbulent speed.