The skyline is soft and glowing with the setting sun behind a line of trees. We’re in my neighborhood now. Familiar roofs, porches that lean a little, cars nosed into narrow driveways. The driver signals. We pass the bodega where Nonna used to send me for milk when I was little, holding the money tight in my palm like it might fly away if I loosened my grip even just a bit.
Nonna’s house appears to look the same—modest, tidy, stubborn. Just like she was.
The slate steps look the same. The brass doorknob will still catch the light in a small wink. The window box needs replanting; the geraniums have more brown than bloom. I picture her in the kitchen, apron tied hard, scolding the stove for boiling too fast or too slow. The ache that follows is the kind that takes your breath away.
I think about the last time I was here before we left for Italy. I was wound like a spring and pretending like I knew what I was doing. I packed methodically, arguing with myself. I told myself a hundred rules. I repeated them like a mantra.
And then I broke the first one a day later. The biggest one. The one I can’t come back from.
I don’t regret it. I am not sorry for wanting something and taking it with both hands. I am not sorry for the way I came undone.
I am sorry for waking up this morning with shame snagged like a burr in a sweater, but I also know how to pull burrs free without destruction. You pinch, and you roll. You don’t yank. You look at what it caught on, and you smooth those fibers back down.
The car eases to the curb. The driver puts it in park. He gets out, comes around, and opens my door. We exchange the smallest nod. No words. This is not the time or place for them. I heft my bag with my good knives onto my shoulder and climb out.
He lifts my suitcase like it weighs nothing and sets it by the stoop. The other boxes—the ones that were packed away for me—are already inside. I told myself I’d be grateful for that. Right now, I only feel tired.
“Thank you,” I say, because manners are still important, no matter how you’re feeling. He inclines his head, steps back, waits until I fit the key in the lock. He won’t leave until I’m inside.
The door sticks the way it always does. I lean into it with my hip, and the house gives, the smell of old wood, coffee grounds, and the basil that followed Nonna around like a perfume.
Somebody ran a vacuum in here. Somebody dusted. I should send a text and say thanks. The driver retreats to the car; the street noise doesn’t quite disappear with the shut door.
I stand in the small square of entry like a person who’s walked into the wrong house. The boxes are stacked two deep by the dining room doorway. A garment bag hangs off the banister. My favorite pan peeks from the top of a taped carton. The way the light falls across the floorboards makes the wood look almost golden.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket. Not a call. A text, soft insistence against my hip. I don’t look yet. I put the suitcase next to the boxes and toe my shoes off into the row that already has three pairs waiting, all of them mine, all of them telling stories about versions of me I’ve been: the practical pair, the pretty pair I wear when I want to notice the sound my shoes make on tile, the beat-up sneakers for market runs.
Kitchen first. Not because I plan to cook. But because kitchens are where I find comfort. Mine looks like it’s been staged to sell: counters clear, dish towel folded with annoying precision, the lemon bowl too symmetrical on the table. I set one lemon off-center. It helps. A laugh breathes out of me, small and private.
I set my bag on the countertop and tell myself I’ll deal with it after I shower.
The faucet squeaks alive and coughs water into the glass I hold under it. I drink like I’ve been walking a long way. Maybe I have. Maybe a week can be a very long way.
“Tomorrow,” I tell the sink, because saying it out loud makes it a task and not a cloud. I’ll be in his kitchen before the sun is high. Eggs, fruit, coffee—simple, human, grounding.
I’ll move like I know where everything goes and not be precious about the parts of me that still remember his hands. I will not pause over the cutting board thinking about how he likes to be called Gio with his mouth between my legs.
I will not do that. I will rinse berries. I will taste for salt. I will stack plates. I will keep my voice level.
Another buzz from the phone, closer to a purr than a demand. I pull it out, thumb the screen. One text. Two words.
Home yet?
I read it twice. The words aren’t complicated. It’s the quiet inside them that gets me—the soft command. Fingers type before I think about it.
Just walked in.
A bubble appears, then vanishes. Appears again. He’s not the type to over-text. He’s also not the type to leave a line hanging if he has something to say.
Sleep.
I look at the single command like he knows me. I guess he does. I smile into the empty room, and that annoys me a little. Another message chimes in before I can decide how I feel about the first.
You’ll be picked up at 6:00. If you argue, I’ll make it 5:30.
My laugh is louder this time. “Bossy,” I tell the phone, and then I type it.
Bossy.
