I pull the sheer curtain aside and come back in, toes already cold from the tile. There’s a bathroom through a pocket door. Marble sink, big shower, towels rolled in a basket, a small vase with two sprigs of olive. The mirror shows a face that’s been up too long, hair in a quick bun that didn’t survive the flight, skin a shade paler from airplane air. I head to the shower and turn it on before walking back out to the room for my bag.
Twenty minutes later, I walk out wearing pajamas and feeling more human.
The house is quiet in a way hotels never are. No elevators dinging. No neighbors fighting through a wall. No kids running up and down the hall, laughing maniacally.
Just the sound of an old house settling in the night. The silence is deafening. It makes me more aware than ever of Giovanni in another room somewhere nearby.
I sit on the bench and open my bag. Charger, a pair of socks, the little zip with moisturizer and lip balm, and the tiny vial of perfume that goes back and forth with me. I set my phone on the nightstand.
A message to my mother is already drafted: “Landed. Fine. Will talk to you tomorrow.” I almost write that I’m staying at Giovanni’s house, but stop. That will invite questions I don’t have the energy to answer. Instead, I send: “Buonanotte, Mamma.”
I hate that my brain pictures him without permission. Is he sleeping? Or is he awake and thinking of me? Or other things? Is he in bed? His throat bare where he leaves his shirt open—maybe no shirt at all—sheets low, the lines of him defined. The way his hand felt braced on my waist when he caught me before I tipped off a stool. The thumb on my cheek in the kitchen last week. The kiss I keep refusing to think about and keep thinking about anyway.
No. I shut that drawer hard.
Plan. Tomorrow I go speak to Chef Sorrentino, then to my apartment. I open, I air out, I pack what I can in the short time I have. I collect my knives. I keep my head down in a house full of temptation and wine.
I walk to the balcony, close the doors, and latch them. Then I round back to the door leading to the hallway and double-check that lock too.
I climb into a bed that is exactly the right kind of firm and smells faintly like sun-dried cotton. The pillow is cool. My body sighs into it immediately.
I turn the lamp off and listen to the night.
Nothing but my own breath and the wind.
“Goodnight,” I tell the empty room, and then I let the jet lag take me.
Chapter Twenty
Giovanni
I wake up before dawn. A habit despite the travel and jet lag. No point fighting it. I dress quietly, pull on boots at the door, and step out into the kind of cold that cleans out your lungs.
The vineyard is slate-blue at this hour. Rows run like ruled lines down the hill; posts damp with night. Dew beads on the wires, and the first birds test the air with thin sounds.
Somewhere far off, a tractor coughs to life and then gives up. I take the lower path, gravel underfoot, hands in my pockets, breath puffing out.
I walk until the house is a pale shape on the rise. It looks older from here. Tile roof, thick walls, the tower that’s more charm these days than defense. The vines on either side are still asleep. Buds tight. Work ahead. Vineyard time keeps you honest; it doesn’t care what you want, it cares what you do every day.
I’ve worked these fields and have the scars to prove it. Discipline, my mother called it. Torture is what I called it at the time.
It took years after she was gone to realize she was right all along.
I try not to think about last night and fail. Bringing Bianca here instead of dropping her in the city. My house. I told myself it was late, the drive long, the address a mess at night. All true. Also true: I wanted her under my roof.
I snort.So much for discipline, huh, Mama?
I follow the lowest row to the end, touch the corner post with my palm like I always do, and turn back up. The path climbs. Rosemary and sage border the kitchen garden, still scenting the air, even in the cold.
I think about the kiss and then refuse to think about the kiss.
I think about discipline instead. Boundaries. She asked for time, I said yes, then made it more complicated by saying we’d fly together. I don’t regret the yes. I might regret the together part. If regret is the word for wanting the thing and knowing it makes your life harder, all at the same time.
Up near the house, the gravel widens into a circle. Olive trees stand with their silver leaves turned in the wind. The stone is still holding some of the night. I slow without meaning to; the habit of walking with your head up doesn’t die just because you’re not in your city.
I look up.
She’s on the balcony off the guest room. Barefoot. A sweater big enough to swallow her hands. Hair down to the middle of her back, dark and heavy and a little wild from sleep. I can’t see the green of her eyes from here, but I imagine them clear and alert, like they were when she woke up on the plane yesterday.
