"It is."
"Mine is my grandmother's tiramisu. She taught my mother the recipe, and my mother taught me." My throat tightens. "I haven't made it since she died."
Bruno's eyes flicker to my face.
"Your mother?"
"Two years ago. Cancer."
The word hangs in the air between us.
"I'm sorry," Bruno says.
It sounds genuine.
"Thank you."
More silence. But it's softer now. Less like a wall and more like a bridge.
"What did you want to be?" I ask. "When you were a kid?"
Bruno's hands tighten on the armrests.
"I wanted to be a pilot," he says.
I blink.
"A pilot?"
"When I was seven. I wanted to fly planes." His voice is flat. Distant. "My father took me to an airshow. I watched the jets cut across the sky and I thought... that's freedom. That's what it looks like."
I look at him having nothing to say.
"What about you?" Bruno asks. "What did you want to be?"
"I wanted to own a bakery."
His eyebrows rise slightly.
"A bakery?"
"My grandmother's bakery. In the old neighborhood." I smile at the memory. "She used to let me help her on Saturday mornings. Rolling dough. Decorating cookies. The whole place smelled like sugar and butter."
"What happened to it?"
"She sold it when she got sick. The new owners turned it into a laundromat." I shrug. "I was going to study business. Open my own place someday. But then my mother got sick, and my father started gambling, and..."
"And you became what your family needed you to be."
I look at him.
He looks back.
"Yes," I say. "I did."
Bruno
She's sitting on the edge of the bed now. Legs crossed. Hair falling over one shoulder in messy waves.
