I turn to him. “Tenants?”
“You know the blue building with the white shutters next to thepanetteria?” he asks. I nod. “I own it.”
“Wow,” I say. “You own a building?”
He blushes a little, looking down. “I do.”
“Cool,” I say, trying to parse out why he seems so embarrassed to own a 600-year-old building. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head. “It’s just. . . my father gifted it to me. I always intended to sell. There were interested entities, but I never pulled the trigger.”
“Your dad bought you a building?” I ask.
“I wanted a Bop It! but that wasn’t really his style.”
I gasp. “Oh my god, I forgot about Bop It! It was kind of sad to play as an only child. When it said ‘pass it’ and I would keep playing by myself, I felt like I was cheating.” He glances at me rambling with mild amusement. I scoot my chair a little bit closer to him, the squeak of the wooden leg on the tile floor making the moment way less nonchalant than I was hoping. “Sorry. Your dad.”
“My dad. His family is in the real estate business, so I think it was his way of trying to give me a taste for it. I would help him with maintenance calls whenever I was home as a kid, so I’ve grown to be somewhat handy, but there’s still a lot for me to learn.”
The Damsel in Distress fantasies re-emerge but I quickly shove them down. “When you said your fatherwas mayor of La Musa for so many years, I assumed he gave up the family business.”
He shakes his head. “He tried to have it both ways, surely to impress his own father.”
“He was the mayor of the town and also trying to buy up the town.”
“Exactly.” Benito drains his wine glass. “In the past decade he had big plans to modernize but he was too focused on. . . other things for it to come to fruition.”
“Is that why he left?” I ask.
Benito rolls the stem of his empty wine glass between his thumb and index finger. “The other things? Yes.”
He stiffens and I get the sense he doesn’t want to share. I may not know much about the art of seduction, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to interrogate your target about their father. “You don’t have to tell me—”
“He had a woman. In Milan.” He turns to me with a surrendered smile. “Well,hasa woman in Milan, I should say. He’s been with her for the past six months. Since he left mymamma.”
I feel my face drop and my heart follows. “Benito, that’s awful. That must’ve been really hard.”
“For 20 years.” The breath leaves my lungs. I try to put myself in his shoes. What would I do if I found out one of my parents. . . no, the thought is too dark to follow. It would destroy me. He shrugs, setting his glass down on the coffee table. “It confirmed what I always knew in the back of my mind. That he’s not a good man.”
“And your mom—”
The muscles on Benito’s face tighten. “She pretends it’s not happening. We’re all pretending he doesn’t exist for her sake.”
“You shouldn’t have to pretend your father doesn’t exist.” I instinctively rest a consoling hand on his shoulder.
He shakes it off. “I can’t imagine a world where I’ll ever speak to him again, so I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“Of course. I just mean, it must be hard for you too.”
His eyes grow dark, and I find myself instantly missing their usual luster. “I wasn’t here. I barely spent time with him. It’s my mother who suffers. I don’t get to—” He pauses, taking a breath. “It’s not for me to feel anything but for her.”
We’re quiet for a moment. I’m at a loss for how to get this conversation to go in the direction I want. How does one be sexy amidst personal crises? “Well, you’ll live here and be mayor and watch La Musa thrive again without any modernization whatsoever.”
Benito laughs.
“I’m serious,” I say.
“Look at this place,” he says, pointing around. “Would it really be so bad to replace it with something newer?”
