“In my head you hated it there. ‘Forced to bloody Sicily every year for our five minutes of summer respite.’” I mimic her Yorkshire accent. “And then I remembered you had a favorite cake shop,and some other nice memories.” I fish through my new makeup bag. “Therewerehappy times here, right?”
My mum laughs. “Well,” she says, her voice tensing a little. “There were happy days there, yes. Very happy. How are things with Leo?”
I know a motherly subject change when I hear one.
“Well. Leo thinks I’m useless. That I abandoned my father. I don’t care about Dad’s restaurant or his cookbook and shouldn’t be here.” My makeup is not going on well, I think, staring at the mirror. I’m like a toddler with a Magic Marker, clumsy hands, heat-induced insomnia, high anxiety, and stress.
“‘I just want to elevate the dishes, probably include some fucking smoked kumquat jerky and pig semen jus,’” I say, mimicking Leo’s deep voice.
“Who cares what he thinks? And anyway, you didnotabandon your father,” my mother chides, without offering an alternative perspective. “I ate fish semen in Nagasaki,” she adds wistfully. “It went down surprisingly easy.”
“Mother!” I shriek, clutching imaginary pearls as she giggles.
I attempt to make the cat-eye flick longer to hide its imperfections, but the makeup just smudges further in the humidity. I use my fingers to try to blend it into a smoky eye and then I pull back from the mirror and examine my face.
“I look like a Goth. I’m now firmly back in my fourteen-year-old My Chemical Romance era. Still. It’s how Rocco probably remembers me.”
“Yourwhatera?”
“Nothing, don’t worry. Mum, do you think Rocco knows I’m selling?”
“How could he?”
I wonder if Leo has told him.
“I just really, really don’t want to tell him. If I thought it was bad telling Leo, imagine having to tell Rocco, who trained and mentored Dad, that I’m cashing out.”
“It’s yours to sell,” she says.
I glance up at the time. Eleven thirty.
“Mum, I have to go face them.”
“Olive, Rocco was like family to your father; he will be thrilled to see you.”
After we hang up, I look hard at myself in the mirror.
“None of this is your fault, Olive,” I say firmly to myself. “Except that eye makeup.”
LEO IS ALREADYin reception when I get down, reading an actual physical newspaper, in Italian, with his legs crossed, an espresso on the glass coffee table alongside his phone and a stylish straw hat. He’d look like a scene out of some 1940s European art house film if it weren’t for his burnt-orange shorts and casual black tee.
“Morning, Olive,” he says, sending an apprehensive smile in my direction as he folds his newspaper and slides it onto the coffee table. Then his brows lower a little as he’s slightly taken aback by the eye makeup.
“I know I look like Robert Smith,” I say before he has a chance.
“I wasn’t going to—”
“It was my thing once upon a time. Didn’t you have a teenage subculture? LARPing or whatever?”
“You look at me and think Dungeons and Dragons?” he says, smirking.
No, Leo Ricci, that is not what I think when I look at you.
Our eyes connect for a split second, and I look away.
“We should get going,” he says, standing, slipping his hat and sunglasses on, so we are both wearing our very intentional physical barriers. “I’ll show you the way.”
“Iknowthe way,” I blurt out, and without a word Leo stops, holding his hand out to let me lead. I brace myself for the furnace-like blast of air that awaits us as we leave the cool reception.
