21. Claire
CLAIRE
By breakfast, I have been promoted from photographer to billionaire-adjacent woman with a camera.
Tessa sends the worst headline first.
BELLANDI’S MYSTERY WOMAN STEPS INTO THE SPOTLIGHT
Under it is a photograph of me at the gallery, laughing at something the director said.
Matteo is not even in the frame.
Apparently, that part is optional.
The article mentions Return in paragraph four.
My name appears three times. Matteo’s appears nine.
The gallery becomes “a fashionable Ravello venue that drew unusual attention when Matteo Bellandi arrived.” My showing becomes “an intimate debut for the woman currently linked to the hospitality billionaire.”
I read that sentence twice.
Then I put my phone facedown on Matteo’s kitchen table.
“No.”
Across from me, Matteo has already opened his laptop.
“I have not said anything.”
“You opened the face.”
“What face?”
“The one where somebody is about to receive a professionally devastating phone call.”
His eyes stay on the screen.
“That is not a face.”
“It absolutely is.”
I have been here for twenty minutes.
I slept at Ginestra last night because I had work to finish and because after the article from the gallery started circulating, I wanted my own bed and three hours without another notification. Matteo did not object. He kissed me at the gate, told me coffee at eight, and went home.
Now I am here in yesterday’s shirt, drinking coffee while strangers explain my career to me.
Tessa sends another screenshot.
This one is worse.
A social account has posted two of the gallery photographs beside a picture of Matteo entering the green door.
When a billionaire shows up, the art world notices.
I make a sound I do not recognize.
My phone rings before I can decide whether the sound was a laugh or a threat.
Tessa.
I answer.
“Please tell me you are not reading comments,” she says.
“I am reading journalism, allegedly.”
“Worse.”
“How bad?”
“Mostly stupid. One image editor asked me whether Return has a Bellandi hospitality angle.”
I close my eyes.
“It does not.”
“I know. I told her that.”
“Did she ask about the photographs?”
There is half a second too much silence.
“Eventually.”
That gets me out of the chair.
I walk to the open terrace door and stare at the lemon trees because at least none of them have opinions about my career.
“Anything I need to do?”
“Send me your Minori selects by three like a person with a job. I am handling my side.”
She has known me four years.
When I am furious, she gives me a deadline.
“Three,” I say.
“And do not let a bad headline make you weird about the gallery. The work was good yesterday.”
“That was almost warm.”
“Never repeat it.”
She hangs up.
Matteo looks up.
“What?”
“They think you discovered me.”
“I did not.”
“Thank you for your restraint in not claiming authorship.”
“Claire.”
“I know you didn’t.”
I am not angry he came.
I wanted him there.
I still do.
If the entire internet disappeared in the next thirty seconds, I would still remember turning near the green door and seeing Matteo standing in the back of the room while two strangers argued about my photographs.
I would still be glad he moved his dinner.
I would still be annoyed that he thinks the station bench belongs earlier.
None of that is embarrassing.
The fact that people can look at work I made before Matteo Bellandi knew I existed and decide the interesting part is that he attended one showing makes me want to throw my phone into the sea.
Matteo turns the laptop toward himself.
“We can correct the basic facts.”
“No.”
“I mean your professional history, not us.”
“No.”
“Claire, they are saying the showing happened because I was there.”
“I can read.”
“Elena can contact the site and give them the gallery’s original announcement. No comment about our relationship.”
“No calls.”
His fingers stop over the keyboard.
“Fine.”
I take my coffee.
He closes one window.
Then opens another.
I watch him.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking at pickup.”
“Do not.”
“I did not say I was calling anyone.”
“You are researching who to call.”
“That is different.”
“It is pre-calling.”
“That is not a category.”
“It is now.”
He leans back.
“I am not trying to define you publicly.”
“Good.”
“I am trying to stop people from crediting me for your work.”
“With your communications team. And if Bellamare starts calling editors, this becomes a bigger Bellandi story, not a smaller one.”
Matteo’s eyes narrow.
“They are good at this.”
“I am sure they are excellent.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“Correct.”
He exhales once through his nose.
“If someone wrote that I bought the gallery, would you want it corrected?”
“Yes.”
“This is not that different.”
“It is very different to me.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody is questioning whether you had a career before I walked into your life.”
He looks away first.
I wish I had said it better.
I still mean it.
I laugh once, and there is nothing funny in it.
“That does not bother you even a little?”
“Of course it bothers me.”
“No. The other part.”
“What other part?”
“That the solution to people treating my career like an extension of you is to have your people explain my career correctly.”
Matteo goes quiet.
I keep going.
“It is still you in the middle.”
“That is not what I am trying to do.”
“I know what you are trying to do.”
“Then why are you talking like I arranged the article?”
My coffee hits the table harder than I mean it to.
“I did not say that.”
“You are angry at the story, and now every option I give you sounds like another offense.”
“Because I said no.”
“You said no to a statement.”
“I said no calls.”
“Two minutes ago.”
“And you are already looking for a version that does not technically count.”
His expression tightens.
“That is unfair.”
“Probably.”
The answer comes too fast.
Matteo blinks.
I rub both hands over my face.
“Fine. It is unfair.”
“Thank you.”
“Do not enjoy it.”
“I am not enjoying any part of this.”
“Good, because you are being incredibly irritating.”
“That appears to be mutual.”
I stand and start gathering my phone, notebook, and the lens cap I somehow brought over without the lens attached.
Matteo closes the laptop.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“Because of me?”
“Because I have six hundred images to sort and if I stay here I am going to argue with you until one of us becomes unbearable.”
“You crossed that line several minutes ago.”
He almost looks sorry.
“See?”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“Claire.”
“Do not tell me to sit down.”
“I am asking you to stop leaving in the middle of the conversation.”
“And I am asking you to stop trying to control the shape of it.”
“I am trying to fix something that is hurting you.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
His eyes narrow.
“No, it is not.”
“Yes, Matteo. Sometimes you decide help is happening and then the only choice you leave me is which version of it I will tolerate.”
“That is not what I did.”
“You gave me a statement, then a correction, then Elena, then whatever you were about to research.”
“I was looking at the site.”
“Why?”
“To understand what they respond to.”
“So you could do what?”
He does not answer.
I tap the closed laptop with one finger.
“That.”
His hand closes over the edge of the laptop.
For one second I think he is going to argue again.
He starts to.
“I could have them remove the implication without mentioning...”
He stops.
The sentence stays unfinished.
Matteo looks down at the closed laptop.
Then at me.
“What do you want?”
My hand stops on the notebook.
I put it back on the table.
“I don’t know.”
“All right.”
“No, that is not helpful either.”
A tiny line appears between his eyebrows.
I hate that I almost laugh.
I sit again.
“I want...” I pick at the corner of the notebook. “I want nobody from Bellamare calling anyone for me.”
“Okay.”
“I want the story to be stupid without turning it into a project.”
He nods.
“I want to finish my selects.”
“Here?”
The question catches me.
I look around his kitchen.
My coffee. His water. My notebook. His laptop. One sandal under my chair because apparently I have stopped believing in pairs.
“Maybe.”
“Okay.”
“And I want a normal day.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. Lunch. Work. You being annoying about the coffee getting cold. Something that does not involve my professional identity being debated by men in offices.”
He looks at my cup.
“It is already cold.”
I lift the cold cup between us.
“That.”
He nearly smiles.
“Anything else?”
“Silence for a while.”
He closes the laptop completely.
“Done.”
“You hate this.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“That seems unnecessarily punitive.”
“I am not at my best.”
“I noticed.”
I should be offended.
I laugh once.
It sounds rough, but at least it is a laugh.
Matteo gets up.
“Where are you going?”
“You requested silence.”
“That does not require another room.”
He pauses.
“No?”
“No.”
He comes back and sits.
For the next forty minutes, Matteo does nothing useful.
I know this because I keep checking.
He reads three pages of a report without touching his phone. I sort photographs from a family restaurant in Minori. A delivery truck backs somewhere near Casa Bellamare and beeps six times. Luca shouts at someone about peaches. My phone vibrates twice and I leave it facedown.
Matteo leaves his alone too.
At eleven, I get up to refill my water.
When I come back, there is a plate beside my laptop.
Bread. Tomatoes. Two pieces of cheese. Half a peach.
I look at him.
“You said lunch.”
“It is not lunch.”
“It is eleven.”
“You skipped breakfast.”
“I had coffee.”
“That is not breakfast.”
“We are fighting.”
“I am aware.”
“You fed me during a fight.”
“I put food near you. Those are different things.”
I take the peach.
“Manipulative.”
“You asked for normal.”
I bite into it.
It is annoyingly good.
We go back to work.
Ten minutes later, Matteo’s phone lights up beside his elbow.
He reads the name and answers.
The call is about a roof terrace in Milan. I know this only because he says the words drainage plan and no, not decorative gravel with the particular patience of a man being punished by architecture.
He never mentions me.
He never mentions the article.
When he hangs up, he turns his phone facedown and goes back to the report.
Only then do I realize I was waiting to see whether he would use the call as a route around my no.
By one, the article has been copied by three more accounts.
I do not read them.
Tessa sends one message.
Ignore it. Gallery director says the room was full before Bellandi arrived. Your actual work remains your actual work. Also send me selects.
I read it, then send her a photograph of my middle finger beside the laptop.
She hearts it.
Matteo does not ask.
At two thirty, I finish the first round of selects.
My shoulders hurt.
I lean back and find Matteo watching me.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is Adrian’s line.”
“He uses it better.”
I rub the back of my neck.
“Are you still angry?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
“At me?”
“Partly.”
“Fair.”
He turns the pen in his fingers.
“I did hear no.”
“Eventually.”
“Yes.”
“That was mean.”
“It was accurate.”
“Still mean.”
“Yes.”
I look at the photographs on my screen.
“I wasn’t angry you came to the gallery.”
“I know.”
“No, I need you to hear this part.”
He puts the pen down.
“I wanted you there.”
He does not answer right away.
“I liked seeing you in the back row. I liked that you stayed. I even liked that you had opinions about the station bench, although they were wrong.”
“They were not.”
“Do not ruin this.”
He closes his mouth.
“I am angry that they made you the reason the room mattered. That is not the same as wishing you were not in it.”
Matteo drops his eyes to his hands.
“I thought for a minute you regretted me being there.”
“I know.”
“You said, ‘It is still you in the middle.’”
I wince.
“That was badly said.”
“Yes.”
“I meant the machinery. Your name. Your team. Not you sitting in a terrible folding chair.”
“That chair was adequate.”
“Also badly said.”
He reaches across the table, stops halfway, and leaves his hand there.
Palm up.
I stare at it.
“You are being very literal.”
“I am trying not to guess.”
I put my hand in his.
His fingers close around mine.
We stay like that for a minute.
His thumb moves once over my knuckle while my laptop screen slowly dims.
At four, I take my work back to Ginestra.
At four ten, my phone buzzes.
Matteo: I’m at your gate. Laptop. Can I come in?
I open the door.
“You lasted ten minutes.”
“You said normal day.”
“You decided normal means my house?”
“No.”
He holds up his laptop.
“I am asking.”
I move aside.
“Fine.”
He comes in.
For the next two hours I edit at the kitchen table while Matteo works from the sofa because the chair opposite me has disappeared under camera bags.
The story cycle moves on without our assistance.
A football transfer starts trending. An actor announces an engagement. Somewhere, somebody richer than Matteo gets photographed doing something more interesting than attending a small gallery.
I mostly feel tired.
At seven, Matteo closes his laptop.
I am still staring at a portrait I have adjusted three times.
“Stop moving the crop,” he says.
I turn.
“You said silence.”
“That expired hours ago.”
“Convenient.”
“You are moving it back and forth.”
“You were watching.”
“I have eyes.”
I smile.
He gets up and comes toward the table.
My water glass is beside a memory-card case.
His hand lifts toward the glass, then stops.
He points at the glass.
“Can I move that?”
I look from the water to him.
“Yes.”
Matteo moves it five inches to the left.
“Five?” I ask.
“Six.”
“Of course.”
He sits back down.