8. Matteo
MATTEO
Rain hits Casa Bellamare hard enough to erase the sea.
It starts while Luca is carrying a bowl of roasted peppers to the table and Sebastian is insisting the weather app said ten percent. By the time Nico looks through the open terrace doors, the stone outside is silver with water and one of the linen napkins has blown into a lemon tree.
Nico closes the doors.
“Ten percent,” he says.
Sebastian looks at his phone. “Locally inaccurate.”
“Globally useless,” I say.
Claire laughs from the far side of the table.
I look at her first.
Irritatingly, that is becoming a habit.
She arrived earlier with damp hair, her camera sealed in a weather cover, and a bottle of wine Luca immediately rejected because he had already opened something “better for rain.” Claire asked what rain tastes like. Luca told her she had been here a week and still had much to learn.
She is wearing a soft blue shirt with the sleeves pushed to her elbows and no shoes because Luca made everyone leave wet sandals near the kitchen door.
One of her feet is tucked beneath her chair.
She has been listening to Sebastian explain why the forecast failed as if there might eventually be a useful conclusion.
There will not be.
Thunder rolls close enough to make the glass doors vibrate.
Claire glances toward them. “Do storms here always arrive like they’re angry about being late?”
“This one is being dramatic for Sebastian,” Luca says.
“Everything is dramatic for Sebastian,” Nico says.
Sebastian puts a hand over his heart. “I create atmosphere.”
Adrian, who has not looked up from serving himself pasta, says, “You create volume.”
Claire lowers her head over her wine, smiling.
The dinner lasts longer because nobody can leave without getting soaked and because Luca treats bad weather as permission to produce additional food.
There is pasta, fish, bread, two salads, the rejected bottle Claire brought, then a cake no one knew existed until he sets it in the middle of the table.
“You made that today?” Claire asks.
“Yesterday.”
“For what?”
Luca looks confused by the question. “Cake.”
She laughs again.
I know this laugh now. Not all of them, which is an absurd distinction to have noticed, but this one. It is the laugh she gives when something catches her before she can decide whether to be polite about it.
I reach for my water.
Across the table, Sebastian catches me.
I give him a warning.
He smiles and, for once, says nothing.
It lasts thirty seconds.
“Cards,” he announces when Luca clears the cake plates.
Nico groans. “No.”
“You say that every time.”
“Because every time you cheat.”
Claire looks between them. “What kind of cards?”
“The kind where Nico accuses innocent people,” Sebastian says.
“The kind where Sebastian has never won legally,” I say.
“Allegedly.”
Adrian stands and goes to the cabinet beside the fireplace without asking what game. That answers Claire’s question better than any of us do.
“How long has this been happening?” she asks.
“Too long,” Nico says.
“Since the first summer,” Luca says, carrying glasses into the sitting room. “Same deck.”
“Not the same deck,” I correct.
Luca turns. “Spiritually the same deck.”
“That is not a category.”
“It is in this house.”
Claire passes me on the way to the sitting room. “You walked directly into that one.”
“He changed the definition after I answered.”
“You say that like it surprises you.”
It should not.
The old card game has rules that were once simple and have been altered by fifteen years of argument, memory, selective memory, and Luca declaring new traditions whenever the existing ones inconvenience him.
Claire pauses beside the fireplace while Luca and Sebastian argue about whether the blue-backed deck is unlucky. She looks at me.
“Do I want the explanation?”
“No.”
“That sounded immediate.”
“Because the explanation begins with Sebastian losing a rental-car deposit and ends with Luca setting a tablecloth on fire.”
From across the room Luca says, “The tablecloth was already damaged.”
“I have questions,” Claire says.
“You will regret them.”
“I regret most of my questions here.”
She says it easily, but she does not pretend she knows the story. I like that about her. She does not laugh half a second early to prove she belongs. If a reference is ours, she lets it be ours until someone explains it. Then she decides for herself whether it is funny.
Sebastian points at the rug. “Sit near Matteo. He hates coaching.”
“That sounds like terrible coaching.”
“Exactly.”
Claire sits on the rug between the low table and the sofa because Sebastian has taken up more space than one person requires. I take the chair beside her. Adrian deals.
“I need to warn you,” Claire says quietly, looking at the cards in her hand. “I have no idea what’s happening.”
“Neither does Luca.”
“I invented half the rules,” Luca says from the sofa.
“That is the problem.”
Nico points at Claire’s cards. “Do not let Sebastian see those.”
Sebastian looks offended. “Do you think so little of me?”
“Yes.”
“Immediately,” Adrian adds.
Claire presses her cards to her chest. “This is a very welcoming family game.”
No one corrects the word family, but she seems to hear it after she says it. Her expression shifts for half a beat.
Luca saves her from having to do anything with the moment by pointing at Sebastian. “You cannot trade before the second round.”
“New rule.”
“Old rule.”
“You changed it after the ferry argument.”
“I changed it back.”
I look at Luca. “When?”
He thinks. “Recently.”
Nico closes his eyes.
Claire starts laughing so hard she has to put her cards facedown.
“No,” Nico says. “You cannot do that either.”
“I need a minute.”
“Take the cards with you.”
“You’re all insane.”
“Correct,” Adrian says, and takes the first round while everyone else is arguing.
That part has not changed.
Two rounds later, Sebastian tries to convince Claire that a card in his hand belongs to her because she “emotionally selected it.” She refuses. Nico counts the discard pile twice, catches a missing card under Sebastian’s thigh, and threatens to throw him onto the terrace.
“In the rain?” Sebastian asks.
“Especially in the rain.”
Luca changes the scoring because he is losing.
I object.
Luca tells Claire this is why nobody lets me control the game.
“You let him control hotels,” she says.
“Hotels have standards,” I say.
“So should friendship.”
Sebastian lifts his glass to her. “Finally.”
Claire is good at the game once she stops trying to understand why any of the rules exist. She watches first. She catches the way Nico counts, the way Adrian never reacts when he has a good hand, the way Luca forgets his own inventions.
She loses twice and does not care. On the third round she realizes Sebastian is lying about a trade and traps him with his own argument.
“That is not what you said ten minutes ago,” she tells him.
Sebastian puts a hand to his chest. “You remembered?”
“I work with images. Unfortunately, I can also hear.”
Nico points at her. “You’re on my side next round.”
Claire lifts both hands. “I haven’t agreed to a next round.”
“You caught Sebastian lying. You’re qualified.”
Luca laughs into his hand. Adrian looks down at his cards, which means he is also amused.
Claire glances at me. “Your friends are subtle.”
“No one has ever accused them of that.”
She smiles and turns back to Sebastian instead of making the moment larger. I am grateful for that.
Sebastian objects loudly enough to start everyone again.
Claire laughs with them, then gradually stops adding to the noise.
The storm moves farther out over the water. Thunder becomes a low sound behind the conversation. Luca opens one door a few inches and damp air comes into the room, cooler now, carrying wet stone and rosemary.
Claire still smiles when Sebastian starts another story, but she does not ask a question at the end of it.
She shifts from the rug to the edge of the sofa.
Her fingers rub once over the place where the camera strap usually sits against her neck, although she did not bring the camera into the room.
When Luca offers another glass of wine, she covers hers with her hand.
A minute later, she checks the terrace doors.
I wait until Adrian finishes destroying Sebastian in the final round.
“I can walk you home,” I say.
She looks at me. “Are you leaving too?”
“I am now.”
Her mouth twitches. “Very spontaneous.”
“Do not make it strange.”
“Too late.”
The rain has stopped, mostly.
I stand. Claire rises with me.
Luca glances at me once as Claire retrieves her sandals from the kitchen. If he has an opinion, he keeps it, which may be the most generous thing he has done all evening.
Outside, Bellamare looks rinsed clean and slightly offended about it.
Water runs from the terrace edges in thin streams. The path lamps catch drops on the rosemary and make them look brighter than they are. Somewhere below, the sea is still rough enough to hear but impossible to see through the dark.
Claire carries her sandals in one hand instead of putting them on.
“You know there are stones,” I say.
“I have feet.”
“That is not the concern.”
“You worry beautifully.”
“I am informing you.”
“Even better.”
We walk past the eastern wall. Her shoulder brushes mine once where the path narrows.
Neither of us apologizes.
At the cottage gate, Claire stops beneath the small overhang and turns toward me.
The last time we stood close enough for this, a delivery driver arrived at the wrong entrance and saved both of us from finding out what happened next.
There is no van tonight, no horn, no Luca shouting down a path.
Claire looks at me, and I know she is thinking about it too because her mouth curves slightly.
“Your logistics are quiet,” she says.
“For once.”
“Must be difficult.”
“I’m adapting.”
She looks down at the sandals in her hand, then back at me.
I could ask whether she is tired. I could tell her I noticed. Either would make her answer a question she never asked.
So I say, “Good night, Claire.”
Her eyebrows rise.
“That’s it?”
I am suddenly very aware of the rainwater running from the roof a foot to my left.
“Were you expecting something else?”
“I don’t know.”
She says it lightly, but she does not move toward the door.
Neither do I.
The space between us is smaller now. I am not certain which of us moved.
I put one hand against the stone beside the gate, giving myself something to do with it.
“Claire.”
“Yes?”
“If I kiss you, are you going to blame the weather?”
Her smile comes slowly. “No.”
“The wine?”
“One glass three hours ago. Try again.”
“The card game.”
“Deeply erotic.”
I laugh under my breath.
She steps closer.
I touch her jaw lightly and wait, leaving the next inch to her.
She closes it.
I kiss her.
The first kiss is careful, which surprises me. I have been thinking about her mouth since the path two days ago, so I expected patience to be harder. Instead I notice the shape of her mouth under mine and the loose curl of her fingers around my wrist.
Then Claire makes a small sound that is half laugh, half impatience and kisses me back harder.
Her sandals hit the stone near our feet.
Her free hand slides into the front of my shirt and closes in the fabric. I move closer before I decide to, my other hand finding her waist. She tastes faintly of wine and the mint Luca put beside the cake. Her hair is still a little damp near her temple.
Claire changes the angle and I move with her, closer.
I manage not to press her into the gate, though not by much.
Barely.
When she pulls back, I follow for an inch before I stop.
Her breathing is uneven.
Mine is worse.
Her eyes drop to my mouth, and she laughs once, softly, like she has surprised herself.
“Well,” she says.
I have several answers. None of them are intelligent.
“That was not the weather,” I manage.
“Strong analysis.”
“I am known for it.”
She is still holding my shirt.
I look down at her hand.
She releases me slowly and smooths the fabric once, which does nothing useful to either the shirt or me.
“Good night, Matteo.”
Good night is clear enough.
I step back.
Claire picks up her sandals, opens the gate, and walks the few steps to her door. She turns before going inside.
I think she might say something else.
She does not.
She smiles at me, disappears into Casa Ginestra, and closes the door.
I remain where I am longer than necessary.
I give the closed door another few seconds, then the path, then the door again as if one of them might provide instructions.
A drop of water lands on my cheek.
I look up.
The clouds have returned over the ridge.
Another drop hits my collar.
Then three more.
By the time I start toward Bellamare, the drizzle has become actual rain again.
I reach the terrace and look down at myself.
My shirt, which survived dinner, Sebastian, Luca’s wine, and an entire storm perfectly dry, is soaked through from shoulders to cuffs.
I start laughing before I get the door open.