9. Claire
CLAIRE
At four forty-seven in the morning, somebody knocks on my door.
I wake convinced I have missed a flight.
That is the first problem.
The second is that I am halfway out of bed before I remember I am in Italy, I have no flight, and the only person rude enough to be standing outside Casa Ginestra before sunrise is probably a murderer or Matteo Bellandi.
I find my phone facedown under a pillow.
One message.
Matteo: Are you awake?
I stare at it.
Me: You knocked.
Three dots appear.
Matteo: So yes.
I pull on shorts, a sweatshirt, and the first pair of sandals I find. My hair is beyond negotiation. I open the door with one hand still dragging it into something resembling a knot.
Matteo is at the gate.
Dark trousers. Pale shirt. Coffee in one hand. Entirely too coherent.
I lean against the doorframe. “This had better be a fire.”
“It is not.”
“A medical emergency?”
“No.”
“Then your position is weak.”
He holds up the second coffee.
My position becomes less secure.
“What are you doing here?”
“I want to show you something.”
Outside, the sky is still black at the edges, the sea beyond the trees only a darker absence.
“At five in the morning.”
“Four fifty-two.”
“Do you want the door closed in your face?”
He looks annoyingly entertained. “Ten minutes. Bring your camera.”
“That is the whole invitation?”
“Yes.”
“No itinerary?”
“No.”
“No estimate of total steps?”
“Claire.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
Then I see the camera bag already hanging from my own shoulder because apparently my body made several decisions before my brain was consulted.
“Fine.”
I lock the door behind me.
Neither of us mentions the gate.
Two nights ago, he kissed me against this gate. Not technically against it, because Matteo managed to leave me enough room to move even while his hand was at my waist and mine was twisted in his shirt. I have replayed that distinction an embarrassing number of times.
Yesterday we saw each other twice. Once across the Bellamare terrace while Luca was carrying bread. Once from opposite ends of the lower path. Both times we behaved like adults who had definitely not spent the previous night finding out what the other tasted like.
Now it is before five and we are alone.
His eyes drop to my mouth for half a second.
Apparently I am awake enough to catch that.
Then he hands me the coffee.
Double espresso. Small bottle of water tucked beneath his fingers.
He says nothing.
Which is worse.
We walk toward the upper drive where a dark car waits beneath the trees. The air is cool enough that I pull my sleeves over my hands. Somewhere downhill, someone is starting a scooter. A kitchen light comes on in the distance and disappears behind the wall as we turn.
I take one sip of espresso and remember.
I said it once.
I had been looking at a photograph on my laptop, complaining that every image I had made of Ravello so far looked like somebody else’s vacation, and I said I had never seen it before sunrise.
Matteo had been standing near the terrace doors arguing with Luca about a delivery.
I thought he was busy with Luca.
Apparently not.
I stop beside the passenger door.
He looks back. “What?”
“You remembered.”
He tips his chin toward the coffee. “You said it.”
“That is becoming a dangerous answer.”
“You can stay home.”
I get into the car.
“Absolutely not.”
For the first fifteen minutes, Matteo drives like a man who has personally approved every curve in the road.
The car smells faintly of leather and the coffee I am holding. There is a folded jacket on the back seat and one charging cable coiled so neatly in the center console that I consider disturbing it on principle.
I drink my coffee and watch the coast appear in pieces through the dark. A strip of water. A stone wall. The pale square of a house with one light on. Lemon trees moving in the wind.
There is almost no traffic.
“This feels illegal,” I say.
“Being awake?”
“Having the road to ourselves.”
“It will not last.”
“Nothing cheerful before sunrise. Got it.”
He glances at me. “You are the one who threatened me for knocking.”
“I had principles then.”
“You had not had coffee.”
“Exactly.”
A few minutes later, Matteo takes a left turn.
Then another.
Then we pass a stone wall with a blue ceramic dog sitting on top of it.
I notice the dog because it is ugly in an ambitious way. Its mouth is open, one ear is missing, and somebody has painted the eyes bright yellow.
Five minutes later, we pass the same dog again.
I turn in my seat.
Matteo keeps his eyes on the road.
“That dog looks familiar.”
“It is a common style.”
“Common.”
“Yes.”
“One ear missing?”
“Wear happens.”
“Yellow eyes?”
He does not answer.
I start laughing.
“We are not lost,” he says.
“Of course not.”
“The road joins farther up.”
“Does it?”
“Yes.”
Three minutes later, the blue dog appears again.
This time I make a sound so undignified I have to put the coffee down before I spill it.
I twist around to look through the back window as we pass. The ceramic animal stares after us with the vindicated expression of something that has been waiting years for Matteo Bellandi specifically.
“I like him,” I say.
“It is ceramic.”
“He has character.”
“He is missing an ear.”
“So is Luca’s table, metaphorically.”
“That sentence means nothing.”
“It means I want a photograph if we pass him a fourth time.”
“We will not.”
Matteo grips the wheel a little higher.
“I would like the record to show,” I say, “that the dog has now welcomed us three times.”
“The turn is badly marked.”
“So we are lost.”
“No.”
“Matteo.”
“We are temporarily using the wrong road.”
I laugh harder.
His expression suggests my happiness is a personal betrayal.
“This is a serious situation.”
“We are five kilometers from your house.”
“Exactly.”
“You counted?”
He gives me a look.
I hold out my hand. “Phone.”
“I know where we are.”
“The ceramic dog knows where we are. You are less convincing.”
“I do not need navigation.”
The car rolls to a stop at a fork where both roads look equally committed to becoming somebody’s driveway.
I wait.
Matteo looks left.
Then right.
Then at the map on the console, which has apparently rotated itself into betrayal.
He exhales through his nose and hands me the phone.
I take it with both hands like a sacred object.
“This is a significant moment.”
“Navigate.”
“I want to enjoy it first.”
“Claire.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
“Say we are lost.”
“We are not lost.”
I zoom the map in. “We are absolutely lost.”
“You have the directions now.”
“That is not the same thing.”
He starts laughing before he can stop himself.
That ruins me.
I laugh too, bent over his phone while he shakes his head, and for the next minute neither of us is useful.
No careful almost-smile this time. No efficient answer either. He is properly laughing because he is lost and I am delighted, and he already knows I will tell this story until we are both sick of it.
“This is going to come up at dinner,” he says.
“I would never.”
“You absolutely would.”
“I might tell Luca privately.”
“That is worse.”
“And Sebastian.”
“Claire.”
I grin at the map. “Now I have leverage.”
“You have directions. Do not confuse the two.”
When I can read the map again, I point toward the right-hand road.
“Turn around.”
“You are enjoying this too much.”
“I have had nine days of evidence that you believe competence is a moral obligation. Let me have this.”
“Eleven.”
“What?”
“Days.”
He counted.
“Drive.”
We reach the viewpoint with the sky beginning to pale behind the hills.
There are no crowds. No tour groups. No line of phones held at the same angle.
Just an old stone edge above the coast, a narrow place to stand, and the water slowly changing color below us.
The camera takes over for several minutes.
I still know Matteo is behind me.
The car door closes behind me, then nothing. He does not ask whether I like it or tell me where to stand. He stays quiet while I find the frame myself.
He lets me work.
The first frames are almost colorless. Gray-blue water, pale sky, the dark shape of the coast. Then light catches one roof farther down and turns it warm for maybe twenty seconds.
I move.
This is the hour I wanted. A broom leaning beside a doorway. One window open while the rest of the building sleeps. A delivery crate left crooked against a wall. By seven, visitors will be pointing cameras at the sea and all of this will be background.
I photograph a strip of light moving across old stone, then wait for it to reach the green edge of a shutter.
A wall. A shutter. The edge of a terrace still wet from last night.
The sea gets brighter by degrees.
Matteo stays out of the frame.
When I finally lower the camera, my hands are cold.
Matteo is sitting on the low wall several feet away with two paper bags beside him.
“No.”
He looks up. “No what?”
“You planned breakfast.”
“I brought food.”
“That is breakfast planning.”
He opens one bag.
Two plain cornetti. A peach. Another bottle of water. Nothing arranged on china. No waiter appearing from behind a hedge. No champagne trying to turn five thirty in the morning into an event.
I sit beside him.
The wall is cold through my shorts. Matteo has already opened his own black coffee. No china, linen, or evidence that anyone was asked to build a billionaire version of breakfast before dawn.
“This is suspiciously normal.”
“You dislike elaborate mornings.”
I turn toward him slowly.
He takes a bite of pastry.
“You remembered that too.”
“You complain with useful specificity.”
“I do not complain.”
He looks at me.
“Fine. I complain beautifully.”
“That is closer.”
I take a cornetto.
It is still warm.
“Item two,” I say.
He stops chewing.
I point the pastry at him. “Plan something because it would make me happy, not because he wants credit.”
“I remember the wording.”
“I know you do.”
“This is breakfast.”
“This is Ravello before sunrise.”
“You said you wanted to see it.”
“And you arranged it.”
“I drove here.”
“Badly.”
His eyes narrow.
I smile into the cornetto.
I lower the cornetto. “Are you doing list things on purpose?”
Matteo chews once before answering.
“I planned a morning because you said you wanted to see it.”
“That was not my question.”
Matteo looks toward the water.
“There is no formal project.”
Formal is doing a lot of work there.
I could ask why he chose it, whether there is an informal project, whether this is still about proving he can survive three items.
Normally I would keep tugging until the whole morning came apart. It is useful when I am working. Less useful when I am sitting beside a man who woke me before dawn because I once said I wanted to see Ravello empty.
I bite into the pastry instead.
It is still warm. The sun is climbing over the roofs. For once, I let the question sit.
I take another bite before I can change my mind.
“This is good,” I say.
“The breakfast?”
“The morning.”
He looks down at his coffee, but not before I catch the smile.
I leave the camera where it is.
“Good,” he says.
We eat for a while without talking.
At some point our knees touch. Neither of us moves.
It is barely anything, and still one square inch of contact becomes the most important location in Europe.
Matteo finishes his coffee and looks toward my camera.
“Did you get what you wanted?”
“I got several things I did not know I wanted.”
His eyes come back to mine.
I immediately regret the sentence.
“The light,” I add.
“Of course.”
“Do not.”
“I said nothing.”
“You became smug at me.”
“That phrase is not improving with repetition.”
“It remains accurate.”
By the time we start back, the road has filled with scooters, delivery vans, and people who have apparently made the healthier decision to wake after six.
I make it twenty minutes before the early hour catches me.
My head touches the window once.
Then again.
“Sleep,” Matteo says.
“I am awake.”
“You just apologized to the glass.”
“I was being polite.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I do not sleep in cars.”
The next thing I know, Matteo’s hand rests lightly on my shoulder.
The touch lasts just long enough to bring me back.
“Claire.”
I open my eyes.
For one terrible second I have no idea where I am.
Then the coast fills the passenger window.
We are moving slowly along a road above the water. The sun is higher now, breaking through thin cloud in long strips that turn sections of sea silver while others stay dark.
I sit up so fast the seat belt catches.
“Oh.”
“You wanted this road.”
My brain is still half asleep. “What?”
“You said you wanted to photograph the coastal route when the light changed.”
I look at him.
“We could have taken the faster road back,” he says. “This one was slower.”
He keeps his eyes on the road.
I reach for the camera at my feet.
“Can you pull over?”
“There is a turnout ahead.”
“Of course there is.”
Two minutes later he stops where the road widens beside a low wall. I get out with sleep still stuck to one side of my face and my hair doing something I refuse to inspect.
Matteo stays by the car while I cross to the wall. He does not mention that I drooled, which means either I did not or he has chosen life.
The first frame is crooked.
The second catches the light the way I wanted it.
Behind me, Matteo leans against the car with his hands in his pockets.
I grin into the viewfinder.
The coast is exactly where I wanted it.
And Matteo Bellandi got lost.