I think about what my father would do.
Then I think about what I'm going to do, which is not exactly the same thing but close enough that I can live with it. My father never asked himself if he could live with it. I ask every time. That's the difference, and I don't know yet if the difference matters.
I pick up the phone.
There's work to do.
Chapter 17
Growing Closer
Valentina
He asked me on Wednesday.
Standing in the doorway of La Terrazza after the dinner service, his collar open, his car idling at the curb. I was still in my apron, smelling like branzino and bread, my hair falling out of its tie.
"This weekend," he said. "Stay with me. The whole thing. Friday night through Sunday."
"That'stwo nights."
"I can count."
"What would we do for two days?"
"Whatever you want. Cook. Read. Nothing. I have a kitchen nobody uses and a view nobody sees."
I looked at him. The silver temples. The dark eyes waiting for an answer he wasn't certain of. The Don who commands rooms without raising his voice, asking a waitress to spend the weekend like it was the most dangerous question he'd posed all week.
"I'll pack a bag," I said.
The bag sits by his bedroom door now, untouched since Friday. I brought a toothbrush, clean underwear, a book, a change of clothes I haven't needed because I've been wearing his shirts since Saturday morning and he hasn't objected. His white cotton button-down hangs to mid-thigh. His grey cashmere pullover swallows my hands. I am disappearing into his wardrobe and neither of us wants to reverse the process.
Saturday morning. I wake to the sound of the shower.
The bed is warm where he was lying. The sheets hold the shape of his body, the indent of his shoulders, the warmth he left behind. I stretch. My muscles are loose in the specific way they get after a night of being used well. Friday nightwas the second time we slept together and we improved on the first the way you improve on anything: with attention, with data, with the willingness to adjust based on feedback.
The shower runs in the bathroom. Steam curls through the door he left open.
I get up. Pull off the t-shirt I slept in. Walk naked through his bedroom, past the bookshelves, past the window where the morning bay gleams blue and silver, into the bathroom.
He's standing under the rain shower, his back to me. Water running down the tattoos, tracing the ink like fingers reading braille. The compass rose on his left shoulder. The Latin along his ribs. His head is tilted back, eyes closed, the water hitting his face and running down his throat.
I open the glass door. Step in.
He turns. Water in his eyes. He blinks. Sees me.
"Good morning," I say.
His gaze moves from my face down my body with the thoroughness of a man who has already memorized every detail but checks anyway. The way he checks a painting he's seen before. Looking for something new.
"You're in my shower," he says.
"Your shower is big enough for two."
"It's big enough for four."
"Let's start with two."
