Chapter Eight #3
“Are you leaving soon for the restaurant?” Maybe we can have a little time together before she goes… Her reservation at La Caorlina is at eight, and it’s only a fifteen-minute walk.
“Come with me,” she says, caressing my hand. “Jeremy won’t go. He’s not feeling well.”
I raise my eyebrows. Me, in a restaurant with her?
Why not?
“Okay,” I say, smiling. “It will be a good opportunity for us to talk.”
She bites her lower lip and nods. Is she worried I want to discuss something depressing?
“I didn’t get fired,” I say to reassure her. “And I want to keep seeing you.” Until you leave is implicit. I don’t want to say it because what I really mean is for the rest of my life .
And this is not the time to tell her how I feel. She will think I’m too impulsive. She might only see what we have as a temporary fling. I’ll need to tread carefully, get to know her better and learn about her plans for the future before suggesting we make this last beyond her vacation.
“Meet you there, then?” Her face looks a bit more relaxed. “And you’re truly off now, right?”
I laugh a little. “Yes. I am. I’m not working the bar tonight.”
“Perfect. Now go. And see you at eight.”
I get butterflies as she kicks me out with a playful smile. We’ll have dinner together tonight, and then I’ll have three more days to convince her to rip up her plane ticket to LA.
* * *
La Caorlina is the finest restaurant I’ve been to since I worked for the Milano Symphony Orchestra. I was a fancy guy back then, and I gave in to my taste for luxury and fine things.
Since I became a service worker, I have paid extra attention to my peers whenever I’m being served. Tonight, I smile at the receptionist with extra warmth, thank the servers, sneak peeks at the staff working in the open kitchen, and ask several questions of the sommelier.
Daisy notices my behavior and comments on it appreciatively.
She has been on the other side for even longer than me.
We talk about our experiences in the hospitality industry, and time flies by.
We get so lost in our pleasant chat involving hotels, bars, and restaurants that we forget to talk about Luigi, Jeremy, or what happened on the terrace.
Which is great. We’re having a real date. Here and now, we can pretend we met under normal circumstances and might have a future together.
We can build that future if she wants. Us in Venice, exploring the city and enjoying ourselves when she’s off her job as a chef in a fine restaurant like this one and I’m not busy with hotel management duties.
I’ll be responsible and committed, but I won’t work as hard as Luigi.
I’ll set limits for myself and hire more staff if needed so I can keep time for my personal life, which will be even better with Daisy.
I’m done with one-night stands. I want the emotional connection we have. I want only one woman waking up by my side for the rest of my days—Daisy Hogan.
It’s crazy how much I want us to last. My body bubbles with anxiety, and I do a few discreet breathing exercises to calm down. I need to be wise and not scare her off.
We get a menu with seven courses and a wine pairing. It’s very expensive, but I don’t care. I’d spend a million euros with Daisy tonight. The food is tasty, well-prepared, and creatively presented. No wonder they have a Michelin star.
Daisy has visited many restaurants in her life, but only in the US. It’s her first time in Europe, and I can almost not believe she came with only one destination in her itinerary. There is so much more she could see and taste beyond this city.
“Why only Venice?” I ask her, daring to touch on the subject I’m dying to talk about, but should be careful addressing.
“Why not go on a tour around Italy? We have so many beautiful places. Verona, Florence, Rome, Bologna, Lucca, the Italian Riviera, the Amalfi Coast… Not to mention the rest of Europe.”
“I know,” she says, smiling. “I’d love to do that one day. But now…” She takes a sip of her wine. “Now I need to save money.”
“Staying for a week in Hotel Marchesi and eating at fancy restaurants is not exactly saving money.”
She laughs. “Fair enough. But I can’t spend much more. I need to go home and do some hard work so I can enjoy life later.”
“When you’re an old lady,” I provoke her, and she arches an eyebrow at me, smiling. “I want to bring you to so many places… Just tell me you’re ready, and we’ll climb on a Vespa and do all the Italian clichés.”
She smiles wider. I love the way her eyes shine, showing me that my offer tempts her more than she’s willing to admit.
“I mean it,” I say to make clear I’m 100 percent serious. “Please consider it.”
She inclines her head politely. “I will.”
She won’t…yet. But I’ll keep trying.
I raise my glass of wine. “To enjoying life.”
“To Venice.” She toasts with me, and we drink while staring at each other.
I realize I don’t know where she currently works. All I know is that it’s not at her father’s restaurant anymore.
“What is keeping you in LA?” I ask.
She is eating the primo piatto , bigoli in salsa , one of the signature dishes of Venice.
I love it, and I’ve eaten my small portion more quickly than I should.
It wasn’t made the way Nonna would cook it, of course.
We are in a Michelin restaurant, after all.
The presentation is impeccable—a small, curled spaghetti mountain adorned with parsley and sardines—and the flavors are so pure, so accented, I tasted all the ingredients individually even as they blended on my tongue with just the right texture.
I wait until Daisy finishes chewing. She takes her time with every bite, savoring, thinking, attentive to each part of her gastronomic experience. She’s letting the food teach, satiate, and transform her palate.
“Sorry,” she says once she finally swallows. “I’ll have to add this dish to the menu of my restaurant.”
Her restaurant? She’s the owner?
My stomach sinks, and I take a generous sip of wine. She’s too rooted to her home country then. My fantasy of her quitting her job and finding another position as a chef in one of the many restaurants in Venice has been shattered. Fuck.
“So, you own a restaurant in Los Angeles?” I lean back and stare into her eyes, disillusioned. Was I really dreaming too much when I thought we could have a future together—and I wouldn’t have to be the one to leave everything behind?
If I can’t, why would I think she could? One week can’t be enough to make such an important life decision. Right?
We’re consumed by passion. It isn’t for real. It can’t be… It’s just fun.
But my heart disagrees. Its beats are earnest. Devoted. Painful.
“I don’t own the restaurant yet, but I’m going to buy it,” she says. “It’s in Venice Beach.”
Her statement gets me quivering with sudden hope. It isn’t a done deal.
I exhale slowly, aware of myself. I shouldn’t be rooting against her plans. It’s her life. Her happiness. Her decisions can’t revolve around me, a guy she’s just met.
I have no good arguments to support a change of plans on her end. And if I found any, I’d be using them selfishly because of feelings I didn’t know existed until a couple of days—maybe hours—ago.
I should focus on enjoying the time we have left without too many thoughts of the future, like I usually pride myself on doing.
We both have career expectations. Dropping them to be together wouldn’t be right.
We’ve both fought for what we wanted. No matter how hard I’ve fallen for Daisy, I must face reality and get back to being the man who said yes to a stable job in a wonderful city and found contentment.
“Why do you want to buy the restaurant?” I ask, wanting to understand her. Maybe knowing her reasons will help me accept she is heading toward happiness.
“It’s my dad’s old restaurant,” she says, rolling the pasta around her fork. “La Veneziana.”
Venice Beach. That explains it all. A Venice trip. Food research.
“So he sold the restaurant long ago, and now you want to buy it back?”
Daisy nods. It makes sense, I guess. From what she told me the other day, her decision to get an education and then become a chef emerged because of her father and her wish to help him in his business. He had been a good dad, and she loved him.
I suddenly think of Luigi and identify with her. If he had to sell his hotel and I had the money, I would buy it and preserve his legacy. But it won’t come to that. He doesn’t have to sell it just because he wants to retire. I will stay and take good care of the Marchesi family business.
“I grew up in that restaurant,” Daisy says.
“It meant everything to him…to our little family. My brother wasn’t as involved, but I worked closely with my dad, helping him in the kitchen and with the financial part.
” Her smile fades as the memories of hardship and grief take over.
“Three years ago, he had to sell it. The buyers were a young couple. They’re now divorcing and decided they don’t want to run the place anymore. ”
She finally eats the pasta spun around her fork, and I wait until she finishes chewing to ask, “Why did he have to sell it?”
“Things weren’t going well financially,” she replies, looking down.
“My dad had some promising ideas to save the restaurant, but he’d need to invest a lot, and the only way to obtain that much money would be selling his house in Santa Monica.
” She sighs. “I thought it would be too risky, and my brother agreed. We wanted Dad to stay in his home, where we’d always be together, safe, the way it should be.
” She scratches her forehead, avoiding my gaze.
“He quickly found a job as a chef elsewhere, but his dreams died.”
“And you feel guilty about that?” The words come out without much thought, and I realize I might have sounded insensitive. It wasn’t my intention. I just want to make sure I understand her motivations. “I’m sorry, I just—”
She gives me a humorless smile. “I guess you’re right. I do.”