‘Bye, Dad.’
He raises his paper to Phoebe as he leaves, giving her a little nod. And then it’s just Phoebe and Luca alone in the deli, Luca standing still but shifting a few dishes and bowls of food about on the counter, not making eye contact with her.
‘You can really dance,’ Phoebe says, not knowing where else to start.
He looks up and she gets another jolt as their eyes meet.
‘Ah. Well, I don’t do it very often. My mum was the one who could really dance. I guess I inherited the gift from her. That and her hair.’ He gestures at his wild curls.
‘You got some of her best bits then,’ she says without thinking.
They don’t look away from one another and there’s something about the way he looks at her that reminds her ofthatnight. It’s the same look that made her step towards him, tilting her face towards his. Surely she can’t be imagining the energy that passes between them? But then she reminds herself of how he reacted then, the way he stepped back so suddenly, creating distance between them.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Her best bit was her smile.’
Your smile is pretty great too, she wants to say but stops herself just in time.
‘When did she pass away?’
He leans back against the counter where his mother’s name runs along the wall behind him.
‘A few months ago. Although she was ill for quite a while; it’s why I moved back to this area, to be closer to my dad.’
‘Where were you living before?’
‘I was in Canary Wharf with my then-girlfriend. We both worked in the City. But when Mum got sick … Well, it didn’t really align with her vision of our future.’
Phoebe thinks back to when she mentioned her bad break-up to Luca earlier when they moved the furniture.I know about those, he’d said.
‘I’m sorry, that’s awful.’
He shrugs lightly. ‘It was tough. All of it – the break-up, Mum’s illness, eventually losing her …’ He drifts off, the pain so visible now in his face that Phoebe can’t believe she hadn’tspotted it before. She’d mistaken it for surliness or perhaps tiredness. And she calls herself a professional … ‘This place and the river have helped me through. I might not make it out to row as much as I’d like, but when I do, it’s like everything else disappears for a bit.’
No wonder he didn’t see or hear them in the water that first time they met. Phoebe had thought he was selfish, focused on recording his time on his fancy watch.
‘And then, when I’m in here, I feel like I’m closer to her. Mum always dreamt of opening a place like this,’ he continues, gesturing around him at the shelves stocked with Italian produce. ‘We used to cook together all the time when I was little. After she died … Well, I thought that if she never got the chance to make her dream a reality …’
‘Then you could,’ she finishes for him.
He nods, silently blinking and biting his bottom lip, as though surprised by all the words that have just come tumbling out.
‘You’ve done a great job. I’m sure she’d love it here.’
‘Thank you.’
She takes the silence that follows as her chance.
‘About the other night,’ she begins, deciding that after everything he’s just shared she has no excuses for not finding the courage to apologise about her drunken misstep, but before she can finish, he interrupts.
‘Have you ever been rowing?’
The question throws her so much that she has no idea how to reply at first.
‘Um … I … No.’
‘Do you want to? With me?’
He looks directly at her now. Everything that she was going to say to him is still right there on her tongue, but his question has completely thrown her. Is he asking her on a date? And if he is, how does she feel about it? She told herself after Max that she wouldn’t date. She’s clearly terrible at it. And it’s Luca, the man who nearly rowed her off the river when they first met. But after hearing him open up about his mum, the noisy neighbour and the man who nearly rowed into them on the river are gone. In their place is a man who uses cooking to remember his mum and rowing to forget.
