He exhaled once. Then he walked toward me and set the bag on the console table. “You should know,” he said, “that Camille has already told three people she thinks you should move here.”
“What did you tell her?”
He reached out for a hug. “I told her you have an apartment in Washington Heights with a room that looks out toward a river.”
“And?”
“She said New Orleans has a river. That’s not an argument with any structural integrity, but she’s not wrong.”
“It’s a different river.”
“You could have two.”
I looked at him. “That is a very Luca answer.”
“Thank you.”
He picked up the bag and walked back through the house toward the courtyard. “Come with me,” he said.
He reached for my hand and pulled me toward him, mindful of the sling, and pressed his lips to my cheek. He wrapped a hand around the back of my head, holding on for a moment.
“I want to check the shoulder,” he said.
I followed him to the bathroom. There, Luca checked the bandage without being asked. He peeled the edge of the medical tape back, pressed it smooth again, and ran his thumb once along the brace before releasing it. His hands were warm and steady.
“Still healing clean,” he said.
“Was there a question?”
“There is always a question until I check it.”
He was standing close enough that I could smell the citrus from his soap. I reached up with my right hand and touched his jaw. He turned his face slightly into my hand.
“I want to take your shirt off,” he said. “We’re going to have to be slow about it.”
“Yes.”
“It’s so I can check the shoulder more closely.”
“I assumed.”
“And you’re going to stop making that face.”
“What face?”
“The one that says I’m terribly inconveniencing you, but you’re enduring it in silence.”
“That’s my regular face. You know, resting—“
Luca laughed softly. “And sometimes you’re impossible.” He reached for the top button of my shirt. “So very stoic. Sometimes, I find it maddening.”
“Being maddening is one of my finer talents.”
He worked the buttons slowly, from the collar down. The sling required slipping the shirt carefully off my right shoulder first, then freeing the fabric from around the brace without catching the tape. He folded the shirt over the back of the chair without looking away from me.
The sling came off last, after he’d walked me through the sequence the doctor had outlined. The shoulder moved without resistance. He pressed two fingers lightly against the deltoid, watching my face.
“Tell me.”
