“Radicchio,” I say when the second timer pops. I bring the tray to the island. The leaves have fallen in on themselves, bitter-sweetened by heat, tips charred just enough. She hits them with a small spoon of the good balsamic and a breath of oil. Nothing more.
“Puntarelle,” she says, and I carry the bowl over. She scatters a few salted capers across the top. “For a little bite.”
We stand there for a second and look at the table we’ve made out of my island. It isn’t print-magazine perfect; it’s better. It’shot and alive and smells like the life I should have been living all along. She catches me looking at her instead of the food.
“What?” she asks.
“You,” I say.
A blush rises under the open collar. She reaches for the wine like a shield. “Now?”
“Now.” I touch the stem and wait until she looks up. We lift our glasses and drink at the same time.
The wine shows up like it knows its part. Cherry, orange, that line of savory that made her close her eyes earlier. It doesn’t need help. It wants company.
She swallows and nods once, a small satisfied sound in her throat. “Hello, Primo Raggio,” she murmurs.
My mouth quirks. “I said I’d consider it.”
I won’t. I’d already made up my mind the moment she’d said it.
Her eyes sparkle as if she already knows.
I want to put her on the counter, spread her legs, and feast. I don't. She’s enjoying this meal too much.
I slide a slice of lamb onto her plate, a spoon of beans, a tangle of puntarelle, a wedge of radicchio. I add a little dish of the garlic confit and warm bread I pulled from the oven. She sits on the stool when I say, “Eat.”
She takes a bite of lamb, then closes her eyes. The fork hovers. A soft sound of pleasure leaves her chest, both familiar and new.
“Yes,” she says, and it’s for the food, but I feel it inside me. She follows with beans and a swipe of the confit over bread, and the combination pulls a low, delighted laugh out of her.
I lean against the island and eat standing, watching her chew, watching the way the shirt shifts when she breathes, leans forward, reaches for her wine. Watching the little red mark I put on her skin bloom on the top of her breast, half-hidden by the shirt. I like that I can see it. I like that she hasn’t checked a mirror and decided to hide it. She sees me seeing it, and her mouth curves. She takes a sip of wine to hide that.
“Say it,” she challenges, voice light. “Say everything you’re thinking.”
“No,” I tell her, and lift my glass instead. “You first.”
She chews, swallows, points her knife at the platter. “This is the right lamb for this wine,” she says. “Anchovy keeps it bright. The beans are humble and exactly right. The radicchio adds a little bite to it. The wine…” She sips, eyes on me over the rim. “The wine is the reason you invite anyone at all.”
My smile gets away from me. “Eat,” I say again, because if I tell her what I think—about her, about us—she’ll run, or I will.
We eat. We don’t rush. We steal bites from each other’s plates without asking. She smears a clove of soft garlic on bread and holds it up. I take it from her fingers, and when my mouth brushes the tip of one, she goes very still and then takes her hand back like touching me burned her, and she liked it.
“Bibi,” I say quietly.
Her eyes lift. The pupils are wide. She doesn’t blink. “Gio.”
Something in my spine loosens, and I don’t know why that’s the word that does it, but it is.
I set my glass down and come around the island. She pushes her stool back as if she might stand. I rest my hands on the arms and keep her there, not a trap, a frame. Her knees open just enough that the shirt pulls high. I look once, slowly, because she asked me to be honest, and I always am.
“Tell me to stop,” I say.
“Don’t ask if you don’t want to hear it,” she says back, but her voice isn’t warning.
It’s heat.
I take her mouth again, not like upstairs, not all the way gone, just a deep kiss that melts her into the stool. She tastes like lamband beans and the wine we picked together. Her hands slide under my hair and close. Her thighs press the sides of my hips. I squeeze the back of her neck once, and she sighs into my mouth in surrender.
