It wasn’t a good idea. Luis had ignored Dante’s text, and there’d been no others, but the sense of borrowed time was so strong, Luis woke each day feeling like it was the end of the world. Paolo’s arms around him helped, but too soon, it was always time to get up and face the day.
He hadn’t cooked for days either. Paolo never asked him why or forced him away from the dishwasher, but on the fourth Saturday since Luis’s release, it was time for him to learn the way of the pasta pot.
“You don’t have to,” Paolo said. “I’m thinking of jacking it in anyway. I need more days off in my life.”
Luis couldn’t argue with that, but he also knew Paolo needed the money to pay the constant stream of care-home bills that were piling up on his coffee table. “Teach me how to do it,” he said. “Then maybe you’ll get those days off.”
Arguing was Paolo’s baseline, but for once, he didn’t. He shrugged and went back to piling tomatoes onto the kitchen counter. Huge sacks of pasta joined them. Olive oil. Basil. The Italian bacon Luis couldn’t pronounce no matter how many times Paolo tried to teach him.
Paolo said something about cheese.
Luis frowned. “What?”
“Mozzarella,” Paolo repeated. “I couldn’t get enough, so I’m gonna whack some cheddar in. Don’t tell Toni.”
“I won’t.”
“Sure about that? You two get on pretty well. If you were a woman, he’d have married us off by now.”
“You think he knows we’re...” Luis couldn’t think of a word to describe what he and Paolo were currently doing. Did one even exist for two blokes who worked together by day, played dick tennis at night, but kept almost one hundred per cent of their feelings to their separate selves?
Probably not. Luis settled for a vague hand gesture.
Paolo smirked. “He knows.”
“You told him?”
“No. He’s just Italian.”
Like that explained it. “So he doesn’t want to marry you off to a bloke?”
“It’s not that. He’s just too old and catholic to think outside that particular box. It wouldn’t occur to him that queer couples can do all that these days, and I don’t have the spoons to explain it to him.”
“But he’s cool with you being extra-sexual?”
Paolo’s smirk morphed into Luis’s favourite smile. “If that’s what you want to call it, yeah, he’s cool. I’ve never had to worry about shit like that.”
The conversation moved on. Paolo taught Luis how to make a huge pot of tomato sauce and layer it with trays and trays of penne pasta. When it was done and stacked up in Paolo’s emptied out fridge, they watched Al Pacino films on the couch until they began to doze off.
They went to bed. It was the first night they’d slept together without rolling around for three hours first, but Luis didn’t mind. Wrapped around Paolo, listening to him breathe and mutter in his sleep, was almost as good as him being awake.
* * *
“So, you just stick them in the oven for a bit and that’s it?”
Paolo nodded. “That’s it. Told you it was easy.”
“It’s easy today. You spent four hours cooking yesterday,afterwork.”
“Wespent four hours cooking.”
“For the first time ever. You’re usually on your own.”
“Lucky me,” Paolo deadpanned around a wide yawn. “Put the salad out and slice the bread if you want to make yourself useful.”
Luis did as he was told. When he came back, Paolo was sitting on the kitchen counter, poking at his phone. Luis frowned. At work, Paolo was rarely still, and the trend of being glued to a phone screen seemed to have passed him by. “Everything okay?”
Paolo glanced up with heavy eyes. “Hmm?”
