18. Ariah
— ? —
Ariah
“You’re sure about this?”
Piper looks at me with an expression that manages to be both supportive and deeply skeptical.
She’s got Luca in one arm and Lucy hanging off her leg, both twins dressed for an evening at her place - the small rental she took when she decided to stay in Naples indefinitely, close enough to help but far enough to give me space when I need it.
“I’m not sure about anything,” I admit. “But he asked, and I…” I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I want to see what he’ll do. I want to give him a chance to prove he’s changed. I want to spend an evening with my husband without my children as buffers between us.
“You want to,” Piper finishes for me. “Which is fine. That’s allowed. You’re allowed to want things, Ari.”
“I’m also allowed to be an idiot, apparently.”
“Also allowed.” She grins and hoists Luca higher on her hip. “Come on, monsters. Let’s go watch that movie about the talking dog and leave your mother to make her questionable decisions in peace.”
“It’s just dinner,” I call after her as she herds the twins toward the door. “I’m not - it’s just dinner.”
“Sure,” she calls back. “Just dinner. That’s why you changed your outfit three times.”
The door closes behind them, and I’m alone in my apartment for the first time in weeks, waiting for my husband to arrive and cook me a meal.
When Pietro proposed this - dinner, just the two of us, no children, no interruptions - I almost said no.
I should have said no. Every piece of advice I’ve ever gotten about separation says to maintain boundaries, to keep things businesslike, to avoid situations that might blur the lines I’ve drawn.
But then he said he wanted to make the anniversary dinner. The one he missed. The one that started all of this.
And I couldn’t say no to that.
The knock comes at exactly seven. I open the door to find Pietro holding grocery bags, looking more nervous than I’ve ever seen him look at any business meeting or family function or high-stakes negotiation.
“I brought supplies,” he says unnecessarily.
“I can see that.”
“I might need guidance. I’ve never actually…” He pauses, recalibrating. “I want to do this myself, but I might need you to talk me through some things.”
“Pietro, have you ever cooked a meal? An actual meal, not reheating leftovers?”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
I should find this concerning. Instead, I find myself stepping back to let him in, watching him navigate my small kitchen like a man entering foreign territory.
“Okay,” he says, spreading the groceries across the counter. “I have pasta. I have ingredients for the sauce - tomatoes, garlic, basil. I have wine.” He holds up a bottle, and I recognize the label immediately. “Not Marchetti. I thought that might be…”
“Too much.”
“Too much,” he agrees. “This is a different vineyard. But it’s good. I checked.”
I settle onto one of the kitchen stools and watch him work, offering guidance when he asks but mostly staying out of his way.
He’s clumsy with the knife - I have to remind him twice to curl his fingers under - and he adds twice the garlic the recipe calls for because he’s convinced more is better, but he’s trying.
He’s really, genuinely trying, and that means more than a perfectly executed meal ever could.
“The pasta goes in when the water boils,” I remind him.
“I know that.”
“You were about to put it in now.”
“I was testing you.”
“Sure you were.”
He almost smiles, catching himself at the last second like he’s not sure he’s allowed. We’ve been so careful with each other these past weeks, so formal, and the informality of this evening feels dangerous. Like standing too close to a flame.
“Tell me about the commission,” he says, stirring the sauce with more enthusiasm than technique. “The Marchetti piece. How’s it coming?”
“It’s almost done. I’m happy with it.” I pause. “She’s happy with it, which is more important.”
“Your happiness is important too.”
“That’s a new perspective.”
He flinches, and I feel a small stab of guilt for the jab. But I don’t take it back. We’re trying to rebuild something, but that doesn’t mean pretending the damage didn’t happen.
“You’re right,” he says quietly. “I didn’t prioritize your happiness. I didn’t even think about it most of the time. I just assumed you were fine because you never complained.”
“I complained.”
“Not loud enough for me to hear.” He turns to face me, sauce spoon still in hand. “I know that’s not your fault. I know you tried. But I was so caught up in my own world that your voice just… didn’t register. And that’s on me. That’s entirely on me.”
I don’t know what to say to that. For years I wanted him to acknowledge what he’d done, to see the ways he’d failed me, and now that he’s saying the words, I don’t know how to receive them.
“The pasta,” I say instead. “It’s boiling over.”
He swears and turns back to the stove, and the moment passes, and we return to the careful dance of two people learning to share space again.
* * *
The meal looks… questionable.
The pasta is slightly overcooked, the sauce is an alarming shade of orange, and he forgot to salt the water, which I didn’t notice until it was too late.
He plates it anyway - arranging the basil leaves just so, pouring the wine with ceremony - and when he sets it in front of me with an expression of nervous hope, I brace myself for the worst.
It’s actually not bad.
The sauce has more flavor than I expected. The pasta, while soft, isn’t mush. Somehow, against all odds, it works.
“This is…” I take another bite, genuinely surprised. “This is edible. More than edible.”
“You don’t have to sound so shocked.”
“I watched you nearly set the garlic on fire. I’m allowed to be shocked.”
“To second chances,” he says, raising his glass.
“To trying,” I counter, because second chances feels like too much to promise.
“To trying.” He accepts the amendment without protest.
We eat. We talk. Not about the separation or the lawyers or Rosaria’s machinations, but about other things - books we’ve read, places we want to go, memories from the early days of our marriage when everything still felt possible.
It’s the conversation we should have been having all along, the connection we let wither through years of neglect.
“I forgot,” he says at one point, “how much I like talking to you. Just… talking. Not about logistics or schedules or who’s picking up the kids. Just talking.”
“Me too.”
“We used to stay up until three in the morning sometimes, do you remember? When we first got married? We’d start a conversation at dinner and just… keep going.”
“I remember.” I remember everything about those early days.
The way he looked at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to spend his whole life solving.
The way he listened when I talked about my work like my ideas were precious.
The way we fit together, even though we’d started as strangers thrown together by business interests.
“When did we stop?” he asks. “When did we start going to bed at ten and not talking about anything that mattered?”
“I don’t know. It happened so gradually I didn’t notice until it was already done.”
“I should have noticed.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand - carefully, giving me time to pull away. I don’t pull away. “I should have fought harder to keep that. To keep us.”
“You’re fighting now.”
“I’m trying to.” His thumb traces patterns on my palm. “I don’t know if it’s enough. I don’t know if anything I do will ever be enough to fix what I broke. But I’m trying, Ariah. I swear I’m trying.”
I don’t know who moves first.
One moment we’re sitting across from each other, his hand in mine, the remnants of a surprisingly good dinner between us. The next moment I’m standing, and he’s standing, and then we’re colliding in my small kitchen like two people who’ve been holding themselves back for too long.
His mouth finds mine, and it’s nothing like the careful distance we’ve been maintaining.
It’s hungry, desperate, six years of marriage and six weeks of separation compressed into a single point of contact.
I grab fistfuls of his shirt and pull him closer, and his hands are in my hair, on my waist, tracing the geography of my body like he’s trying to memorize me before I change my mind.
“Ariah,” he breathes against my lips. “I…”
“Don’t talk.”
I don’t want words right now. Words complicate things. Words make me think about all the reasons this is a bad idea, all the ways he’s hurt me, all the walls I built specifically to keep this from happening. Words are for later, when I’m alone and cruel to myself about what I’m about to do.
He kisses me harder instead - obedient, frantic - and backs me into the counter until the edge digs into my lower back. The taste of wine is still on his tongue. The smell of basil and too much garlic hangs in the air around us like a joke the evening is telling at our expense.
I hitch myself up onto the counter. He steps between my thighs like he belongs there, and maybe he does, and maybe that’s the problem.
My dress rides up. Cool air hits the insides of my thighs.
His hands find bare skin underneath - I wore the nice underwear, the black lace one I told myself was for me and not for this, the lie so transparent even I don’t believe it - and he makes a sound against my throat when his fingers brush the damp fabric.
“Fuck. You’re soaked.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m not complaining.” His mouth finds the pulse under my jaw, open and hot.
He rubs me through the lace in slow, deliberate strokes that make my hips jerk.
“I’m fucking grateful. Christ, Ariah. You’ve been sitting there all night like this?
Watching me butcher pasta with this pretty cunt wet under your dress? ”
“I said shut up…”
“Make me.”