5. Claire
CLAIRE
I discover there are very few graceful ways to photograph lemons while Luca Moretti critiques my angle over my shoulder.
“Too serious,” he says.
I lower the camera. “They are fruit.”
“Exactly. They have suffered enough.”
The crate in front of us holds three dozen lemons from the lower terraces, some glossy, some scarred, one with a leaf still attached.
I have been trying to catch the hands of the gardener sorting them instead of the postcard version of the coast. Luca, who came outside carrying a bowl of peaches and apparently decided that made him my creative director, has opinions.
“You know I do this professionally.”
“I know. That is why I am helping.”
“That sentence has probably ruined several businesses.”
He grins and steals one of the lemons from the edge of the crate.
Across the terrace, Sebastian laughs loudly enough to interrupt whatever Adrian is reading. Nico says something I cannot hear, and Matteo looks up from the phone in his hand, directly at me.
When I catch him, he drops his eyes to the phone with suspicious efficiency. He has been doing that all afternoon, then pretending he has not.
I return to the viewfinder before I can make anything of it.
The gardener’s thumb presses into a pale mark on one lemon. Click.
Luca leans closer. “Better.”
“Thank God. I was terrified.”
“You should be.”
By the time the light flattens and I put the lens cap on, the others have started drifting away.
Adrian disappears with his book. Nico takes a call near the house.
Sebastian announces that he is going swimming and receives no volunteers.
Luca carries his bowl toward the kitchen, calling something in Italian to the gardener as he goes.
Matteo remains beside the low terrace wall. Of course he does.
I sling the camera over my shoulder and head toward the path to Casa Ginestra.
“You forgot something,” he says.
I stop. “My dignity? Luca took that twenty minutes ago.”
“Number one.”
I turn around.
He looks exactly as composed as he did yesterday when he asked me at the end of lunch, as if he has not had almost a full day to reconsider asking for number one.
“You remembered.”
His eyebrows lift.
I almost laugh at myself. Of course he remembered.
I have not said the whole list aloud to anyone.
Tessa has heard pieces over the years, usually when one of us was tired and oversharing by text, but the actual note stayed buried in my phone until I deleted it.
It was not a manifesto. It was what happened when I got home from dinner one night, put my keys on the counter, and realized I could not remember the last time the man I loved had asked me a question he did not already think he knew the answer to.
Now Matteo is waiting like I offered him a puzzle.
I should shut the conversation down.
Annoyingly, I want to see what he does with it.
“That might already count,” I say.
“You have not told me what counts.”
“This is why I said you’d be bad at it.”
“You said I would not survive three.”
“Also true.”
He comes away from the wall and falls into step beside me.
The path between Casa Bellamare and the eastern boundary is narrow enough that walking side by side requires occasional negotiation around stone planters and a rosemary bush that has declared war on personal space. Matteo moves around the first planter without breaking stride.
The narrow path makes him harder to ignore than I would prefer.
The clean fold of his sleeves. The faint scent of soap and sun-warmed linen. The fact that he keeps his hands loose at his sides instead of reaching for my camera when the strap slips lower on my shoulder.
“Fine,” I say. “Number one. Remember something small without being reminded.”
He waits.
“That’s it.”
“That is not difficult.”
I laugh. “I knew you were going to say that.”
“It isn’t.”
“It becomes difficult.”
“Remembering?”
“Paying attention long enough to have something to remember.”
His amusement thins.
I keep walking.
“My ex remembered everything when we first started dating,” I say.
“Coffee order. My mother’s birthday. Which side of the bed I liked.
Six years later he could still tell you all of those things, but if I mentioned on Tuesday that I had a terrible meeting on Friday, Friday would arrive and he wouldn’t ask.
The old facts stayed. The new ones stopped getting in. ”
He walks three steps before answering.
“That is different from forgetting.”
“Exactly.”
“He stopped updating.”
I glance at him. “You somehow made that sound like a software problem.”
“I was agreeing with you.”
“In the least romantic language available.”
“You understood it.”
Unfortunately, I did.
We reach a break in the wall where the path widens beside a small stone terrace. My cottage is visible through the trees. I stop before a conversation becomes Matteo walking me all the way to my door.
I shift the camera higher on my shoulder and stay where I am.
Matteo leans one hip against the wall.
“Number two.”
“Plan something because it would make me happy, not because he wants credit.”
“Also basic.”
“You are going to say that ten times, aren’t you?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I’m charging admission.”
His mouth shifts.
“What kind of plan?” he asks.
“Any kind. Dinner. A walk. Buying the stupid crackers I like when he doesn’t like them. It isn’t about scale.”
“And no credit means what?”
“It means I don’t want a man standing there waiting for applause because he remembered I exist.”
“That seems reasonable.”
“Careful. You’re getting warmer.”
He ignores that. “Three.”
I give him a look. “Do you ever ask a question you do not expect answered immediately?”
“Frequently.”
“Name one.”
He glances toward Bellamare. “I asked Sebastian at breakfast whether he intended to replace the bottle he dropped off the dock last night.”
“And?”
“He said the sea had accepted a gift.”
I laugh. “That is not an answer.”
“Exactly.”
There is enough satisfaction in his voice that I realize I have wandered into evidence for his defense.
“Fine. One point.”
“There are points?”
“No. And the fact that you perked up proves why.”
I look toward the trees, suddenly embarrassed by how ordinary the next one sounds.
At midnight, alone, the list felt like evidence. Saying it aloud to a man who can probably arrange dinner on a yacht with one phone call makes the items sound small enough to be ridiculous.
“Dance with me when nobody is watching.”
Matteo is quiet.
I look at him. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was a very judgmental nothing.”
“I was thinking.”
“Dangerous.”
“You prefer private gestures.”
“I prefer gestures that still happen without an audience.”
His gaze stays on my face long enough that I become conscious of the camera strap against my collarbone.
“Four,” I say before the silence becomes something else. “Notice when I need rescuing from a room without making me ask.”
“Rescuing.”
“Metaphorically.”
“I assumed.”
“Large events drain me. Work ones, weddings, anything where everybody is talking at the volume of a minor emergency. I can handle them. I just like the idea of someone noticing when I’ve hit the wall.”
“And taking you out of the room.”
“Asking with his face would be enough.”
He nods once without joking or arguing.
I shift my camera to the other shoulder.
“Five. Want me when I do not look perfect.”
Matteo’s gaze dips before he catches himself.
My hair is twisted up with a pencil because I lost the clip I started the day with. There is dust on one knee of my shorts. A thin line of sweat has dried at the edge of my shirt.
His eyes return to mine.
I tug once at the hem of my shirt.
“Don’t,” I say.
“I did not say anything.”
“Your face did.”
He looks down at himself, as if checking whether his own face has become independently disobedient.
That makes it worse.
“I have been outside for three hours,” I say. “There is dirt on me.”
“Yes.”
“You are not helping.”
“I wasn’t aware help was required.”
I hate that I am smiling.
“Apparently faces are enough for item four.”
He looks almost pleased with himself.
“That was obnoxious.”
“Accurate.”
“You really need a second adjective.”
“Why?”
I laugh despite myself and look away.
The sea is visible between the lemon trees, bright enough that I have to narrow my eyes. Somewhere below us, Sebastian shouts from the direction of the beach. A second later Nico shouts back that nobody cares.
The noise gives me something ordinary to listen to while my face cools.
“Six,” Matteo says.
I rub my thumb over the ridged edge of the lens cap.
“Tell me something true that makes him vulnerable.”
The humor leaves his face.
“Define vulnerable,” he says.
“No.”
“You defined rescuing.”
“Because you were about to call emergency services.”
“I was not.”
“The point is that I don’t want only the polished truths. Everybody can admit things that cost them nothing.”
“And you decide what costs enough?”
“No. He does. I just want him to trust me with something he would rather keep protected.”
Matteo glances toward the path behind me, then back toward Bellamare.
For once, he does not have an immediate question.
I let him have the silence.
After a few seconds he says, “Seven.”
I do not point out that he is still here.
“Choose me when choosing me is inconvenient.”
“Inconvenient how?”
“You really do want footnotes.”
“Context.”
“Anything real. A bad time. A conflict. A plan he has to move. Not destroying his life to prove devotion. I don’t need a man canceling surgery because I want gelato.”
“Good.”
“But I want to matter when there is a cost. Everybody matters when it is easy.”
He considers that.
“That one is not basic,” he says.
I blink.
“Progress.”
He looks mildly offended by the word.
“It is possible to understand a standard without being converted by it.”
“Converted? This is not a religion.”
“You are the one keeping track of my progress.”
“I gave you one imaginary point and immediately revoked the system.”
“Convenient.”
“You are exhausting.”
“You are still here.”
That shuts me up briefly, which he absolutely notices.
“Choosing someone when it is inconvenient requires judgment,” he says.
“And there he is.”
“Eight.”
I smile because I know this one is going to bother him.
“Fight for us without fighting against me.”
He frowns. “That is deliberately vague.”
“It is beautifully precise.”
“Those are not opposites.”
“You can want to fix a problem and still make your partner the problem. You can push so hard for the relationship that you stop hearing the person inside it.”
He straightens from the wall.
“So what do you want instead?”
“Someone who can disagree with me without trying to win me into submission. Someone who asks what I need before deciding he already knows.”
Matteo says nothing.
I regret the wording immediately, not because it is wrong but because it sounds aimed at him.
Maybe it is, a little.
We have known each other four days and he has already given me directions with the authority of municipal law.
“That one definitely eliminates you,” I add.
His gaze meets mine. “You have not seen me fight.”
The joke I was about to make dies before it reaches my mouth.
Neither of us moves.
He is close enough now that I can see the faint darker ring around his irises. I do not remember him stepping closer. Maybe I did.
My camera rests between us, not exactly a barrier and not exactly not one.
Matteo’s eyes drop to my mouth and stay there a second, maybe two, before he looks back up.
“Nine,” he says, and his voice is lower.
I tighten my grip on the camera strap.
“Know me well enough that the gesture does not need explanation.”
“That sounds like mind reading.”
“It isn’t. It’s history.”
“Explain.”
If you know someone long enough, certain things become obvious. The tea she wants when she’s sick. The song that will make her laugh after a terrible day. When to talk and when to stop talking. You were there for enough ordinary days to learn her; you don’t need an instruction manual.
He watches me while I say it.
I have to look away first.
“Ten,” he says.
My answer takes longer this time.
I pick at a loose edge on the camera strap.
“Stay when I give him every reason to leave.”
Matteo does not answer immediately.
“That contradicts several things you have said.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You want independence. You want someone who does not fight against you. You want him to stay when you tell him not to?”
“I didn’t say when I tell him to leave.”
His eyes narrow.
“I mean when I am difficult. Scared. Busy. Not charming. When loving me stops being rewarding every minute. Stay because we are worth the bad day too.”
I swallow.
“And if I actually ask someone to leave, he should leave. That’s not a test.”
The line between his eyebrows disappears.
“Better,” he says.
“I’m relieved you approve of my emotional requirements.”
“I did not say I approved.”
“You said better.”
“It was clearer.”
“God forbid anything remain unclassified.”
Then he smiles, wide enough that I lose the sarcastic answer I was about to give him.
I stare a fraction too long, know he catches it, and give him nothing else.
I push away from the wall and start toward the cottage.
“There. All ten. You can now spend the rest of the summer being smug about how easy they are.”
“I said several were basic.”
“Same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
I walk backward for two steps so I can look at him. “You’re going to forget half of them by dinner.”
“Claire.”
I stop.
Matteo waits beside the wall, one hand in his pocket, the other resting against the warm stone.
“Item three was dance with me when nobody is watching,” he says. “Not dance with me when we’re alone. Those are different.”
He gives me the smallest possible nod, as if correcting language is a public service.
Then he turns toward Bellamare.
I stand on the path with my camera against my hip. He did not just remember item three.
He remembered the exact way I said it.