22. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
“You want me to teach you to shoot again.”
Giovanni says it like a statement, but the question is in his eyes - careful, watching for something he’s not sure he’ll find.
“I want you to help me remember,” I correct. “It’s been five years. My hands are rusty.”
We’re in the basement of the Milan house, in the room Giovanni converted into a practice range years ago.
The walls are reinforced, the lighting bright and steady, and the weapons cabinet stands locked in the corner.
I haven’t been down here since before Sicily, since the sessions we used to have when I was newly married and determined to prove I could handle his world.
I couldn’t, in the end. But that doesn’t mean I want to be helpless again.
“You were good,” Giovanni says, unlocking the cabinet. “Before. Your aim was steady.”
“My aim was acceptable. You were being kind.”
“I was being accurate. You hit the target more often than you missed, which is better than most people manage on their first year.”
He pulls out a handgun - unloaded, I notice, the clip removed and set aside - and hands it to me grip-first. The weight is familiar, heavier than I remembered but not uncomfortable.
“Check it,” he says.
I check it automatically, the motions coming back like muscle memory - slide, chamber, safety. Empty. Safe.
“Good.” He moves to stand behind me, and I feel the heat of him before he even touches me. “Stance first. You’re holding too much tension in your shoulders.”
His hands settle on my hips, adjusting my position, and I try very hard to focus on the target at the far end of the range instead of the way his breath ghosts across the back of my neck.
“Relax your grip,” he says, his mouth close to my ear. “You’re strangling it.”
“Hard to relax when you’re standing that close.”
“Would you prefer I keep my distance?”
“No.” The word comes out before I can stop it. “I mean - it’s fine. Just distracting.”
“Mm.” I can hear the smile in his voice. “Focus on the target, Cielo. I’m just helping.”
Right. Helping. With his chest pressed against my back and his hands guiding my arms and his voice doing things to my concentration that have nothing to do with marksmanship.
“Arms up,” he says. “Sight the target. Take a breath.”
I do as he says, trying to find the focus I used to have, the particular stillness that made shooting possible. It’s there, buried under years of disuse, and when I exhale and squeeze the trigger on the empty gun, the click feels right.
“Again.”
We drill like this for an hour - no ammunition, just form and focus and the particular intimacy of someone teaching you to be dangerous. By the end, my arms are tired and my concentration is shot (pun intended), but something in me feels steadier than it has in weeks.
“Better,” Giovanni says, setting the practice weapon back in the cabinet. “Tomorrow we’ll use live rounds.”
“And you’ll keep your distance?”
“Do you want me to?”
I turn to face him, and we’re standing too close now, the space between us charged with something that has nothing to do with guns.
“No,” I admit. “I really don’t.”
* * *
The observatory is Giovanni’s gift to Gio, but I think it might be his gift to himself as well.
He had it built in the east wing of the house, where the light pollution is lowest and the sky is clearest on good nights.
There’s a real telescope - expensive, professional-grade - and a ceiling painted with constellations that glow in the dark, and a collection of star maps and astronomy books that Gio has already started working his way through.
“Papa says if I learn all the constellations, he’ll take me to a real observatory,” Gio announces at dinner, bouncing in his seat with the particular energy of a child who’s been promised something wonderful. “With a telescope as big as a house!”
“That sounds amazing, piccolo.”
“And he said maybe when I’m bigger, I can have a real space suit. Not a costume, a real one. Like astronauts wear.”
“That seems ambitious.”
“Papa says ambitious is good. Ambitious means you want big things.”
I glance at Giovanni across the table, and he has the grace to look slightly sheepish.
“I might have gotten carried away with the promises,” he admits.
“You think?”
“He was very excited about the telescope.”
“He’s four and a half. He’s excited about everything.”
“Almost five,” Gio corrects, because he’s been correcting everyone about his age for weeks now, determined to be as close to five as possible even though his birthday isn’t for months. “Almost five is basically five.”
“That’s not how numbers work, piccolo.”
“Papa says it is.”
“Papa is a terrible influence.”
Giovanni grins, and something warm unfurls in my chest at the sight of it - this family moment, this ordinary dinner, this man who’s trying so hard to be what our son needs.
“Can we look at the stars tonight?” Gio asks. “Please? The sky is clear, I checked.”
“You checked?”
“Beppe helped me look at the… the…” He scrunches his face, trying to remember the word. “The forecast! He said there would be no clouds.”
“Beppe is spoiling you.”
“Beppe says I’m the boss.”
“Beppe is going to get an earful from me about chain of command.”
But I’m smiling as I say it, and when Gio bounces out of his chair to drag both of us toward the observatory, I let myself be dragged.
* * *
The pillow fort happens organically, the way the best things do with children.
We start in the observatory proper, taking turns at the telescope, but Gio decides the floor is too hard and the cushions from the reading corner would be much better, and before I know it, we’ve constructed an elaborate nest of pillows and blankets in the middle of the room, the ceiling stars glowing softly above us.
“This is the best fort ever,” Gio declares, arranging his astronaut toy in a place of honor. “Look, Marco can see all the stars from here.”
“Marco?”
“My astronaut. Papa named him. He says Marco is a good Italian name for an explorer.”
I look at Giovanni, who’s lying on his back with his hands behind his head, looking up at the painted constellations like he’s cataloging them for future reference.
“You named the astronaut.”
“He seemed to need a name.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“I’ve been told.”
Gio crawls between us, settling into the nest of blankets with a satisfied sigh. “Tell me about the stars, Papa. The real ones. Not the ceiling ones.”
Giovanni shifts so he can point up at the painted sky, which is arranged to match the actual constellations visible from Milan in this season.
“That one is Orion,” he says. “The hunter. See the three stars in a row? That’s his belt.”
“I know about Orion. Tell me a new one.”
“Okay. That one there is Cassiopeia. She was a queen who was very vain, and she bragged that she was more beautiful than the sea nymphs. So the gods punished her by putting her in the sky, where she has to spend half the year upside down.”
“That’s mean.”
“The gods weren’t known for being kind.”
“I wouldn’t brag about being beautiful. I would brag about being an astronaut.”
“That seems like a better strategy.”
They continue like this, Giovanni pointing out constellations and Gio asking questions, and I lie there listening, feeling something in my chest expand and crack open all at once.
This is what I wanted.
The thought rises up unbidden, undeniable. This - exactly this. The three of us together, talking about stars, safe and warm and whole.
This is what I ran from because I thought I couldn’t have it. This is what I spent five years mourning without even knowing it existed.
And now it’s here, within reach, and I’m terrified of how much I want to keep it.
“Mamma?” Gio’s voice is sleepy now, the excitement of the evening finally catching up to him. “Are you looking at the stars?”
“I’m looking at you,” I say. “You’re better than stars.”
“That’s silly. Stars are millions of years old. I’m only almost five.”
“And yet you’re still more interesting.”
He giggles, but it turns into a yawn halfway through, and within minutes his eyes are drifting closed, his small body warm between us.
I don’t move. Neither does Giovanni.
We lie there in the pillow fort with our son sleeping between us, the painted stars glowing overhead, and I let myself imagine staying.
For the first time, I don’t run from the thought.