“Watch my mouth,” he said, bracing his hands on the counter beside my hips. Once again, he said it perfectly, his accent and deep voice giving me butterflies.
When I failed again, he chuckled and gently gripped my chin in his hand as if it would help me focus. I leaned into his touch, lowering the spoon, and huffing out a laugh as I kept my eyes on his lips.
“Cucchiaio,” he said.
“Cucchiaio.”
His lips twitched as he nodded slowly. “That’s it. Now try it with an accent.”
“You have way too much faith in me being able to do that,” I laughed.
He cocked his head back and looked down at me through hooded eyes, lifting an eyebrow with a knowing smirk on his lips. “Good thing we have all night.”
I shook my head in subtle disbelief, and then brought a hand to his chest and patted the solid muscle through his shirt. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, you’re going to burn the sauce.”
Something mischievous flashed in the smile that came to his face like he was ready to risk the sauce, but he held his tongue instead. He gave my knee a gentle squeeze and moved back to the stovetop where that smile remained a little longer as he served up the spaghetti Bolognese.
When it was time to bring the food to the dining table, I was practically skipping along behind him, following the delicious smells of the herbs in the sauce as I clutched a pair of spoons and forks. The first bite was like a tease. And with every mouthful the flavors only got better, dancing across my tongue in tantalizing waves. To put it simply, his cooking aroused my tastebuds.
When I wasn’t getting lost in enjoying my dinner, we talked about everything and nothing. I didn’t mind if it was more of the latter or not, I enjoyed his company. After what happened today, it was a welcome distraction. To us, the world and everything in it beyond his front door disappeared.
It was toward the end of dinner that I asked about the small, framed photo hanging beside the fridge. It was an image of a middle-aged couple smiling warmly in front of a field of olive trees.
“Who are they?” I asked gently after taking a sip of my water.
Dean glanced back over his shoulder to look at the photo, and then smiled a little as he turned back. “They are my maternal grandparents, Ludovica and Romeo.”
I smiled in realization. “Your fighting name.”
“It was my middle name before that.” He twirled the remainder of his spaghetti around his fork, continuing to smile to himself. “I was almost named after him, but my mother went through a phase of listenin’ to Dean Martin while she was pregnant with me, so they compromised.”
“Do you talk to your grandparents often?”
He cleared his throat. “No, not anymore. We lost contact with them after we left Sicily.”
Put your foot in it, why don’t you?
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he shrugged, offering me a lopsided smile. “It’s just one of those things... I do miss spending summer at their home though.”
He spoke highly of his grandparents, telling me about his childhood adventures spent in their tiny villa, or helping in his Nonna’s garage because she was a car enthusiast too. But I couldn’t help but notice a subtle pattern in each story. Each time he and his mother visited, his father had something else on. Or Dean simply left the details of him out.
It sounded as if his father was rarely in the picture. A picture I was slowly piecing together even though it missed a few parts. His father, Gio Calacoci, was abusive and killed himself three years ago, according to what Dad found. But then there were the other parts of the story that remained unsaid. I could see it in Dean’s eyes when he mentioned his mother or his family. Behind the nostalgic gleam was something painful.
When there was a pause in the conversation, the both of us finishing off our dinner, I took a breath and decided to ask for the truth.
“What, um.” I stammered when he looked up again, trying to think of how to word the question without coming across as insensitive. “What happened to your father, if you don’t mind me asking?”
The room went completely silent apart from the clink of his fork as he lowered it to the plate. He pulled his dark eyebrows together and sat back in his seat, looking at the table instead of me. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to—”
“I want to...” He ran a finger along the embroidered fabric of the tablecloth as he frowned. “I’m guessin’ your father looked into that too?”
“He did...”
“What’d he find?”
