"And the sign. Renzo is bringing the sign at eight. I want it up before we open."
"What does the sign say?"
"Graziella's," she says. "The sign says Graziella's."
Her name. On a sign. Above a door. On a corner in South Philadelphia where she bought coffee every morning for three years from a woman who told her she was too thin and her hair was a crime; who handed her the keys to the place when she retired because Rosa saw what I saw, what Renzo saw, what Javi saw: a woman who deserved more space than she was taking up.
"Good name," I say.
"Damn right it is." She cracks eggs into a bowl. "Now come here and separate these yolks. Even you can't screw up egg yolks."
I push off the counter and stand next to her at the prep table. Our arms touch. Her shoulder against my bicep, the height difference compressing the contact into a diagonal line of warmth. She cracks and I separate and the eggs cooperate because even eggs know better than to argue with Grace when she's in her kitchen at four thirty in the morning with a reopening in five hours.
The biscotti dough comes together under her hands and I slice almonds, then she folds them in. The kitchen smells like heaven and the coffee that's been brewing on Rosa's ancient machine since we got here at midnight.
"Carmelo, hey, can you pay attention, please?"
"Yes."
"Put the biscotti in the oven. Three fifty. Twelve minutes."
I slide the tray in and set the timer on my phone. I turn around and she's right there. Not at the prep table. Right there, in front of me, between me and the oven, and her hands are on my belt and she's unbuckling it.
"Grace."
"Graziella."
"Graziella. We open in four and a half hours."
"Then I better be quick." She pulls the belt free and drops it on the floor. "Sit."
There's a stool in the corner. Metal, backless, the kind Rosa used to sit on when her knees were bad. I sit on it and Grace steps between my knees and puts her hands on my shoulders and pushes me back until my shoulder blades hit the wall.
"You've been watching me bake for four hours," she says. "Staring at me. Not helping."
"I separated the yolks."
"You separated the yolks and stared at my ass while I piped cannoli. Don't think I didn't notice."
"I wasn't staring at your ass."
"You were absolutely staring at my ass. You've been staring at my ass since the first night you sat at table four and watched me carry plates. Six months of dating and you still stare at my ass while I work. It's pathological."
"It's appreciation."
"It's going to get you in trouble." She drops to her knees.
She's kneeling between my legs and smiling because she is enjoying the fact that the Bonaccorso Butcher is about to come undone on a stool in a bakery.
She unbuttons my jeans. She pulls them down enough to free me and her hand wraps around me. I'm already hard because I've been watching her bake for four hours and her tank top is thin and her arms are flexing when she kneads and her hips move when she reaches for the high shelf and I have been staring at her ass, she's right about that, and I'm not apologizing for it.
Her mouth closes around me, and my head hits the wall behind me. The sound I make bounces off the tile and the stainless steel and the ceiling. Her hand grips the base while her mouth works the rest and she's not teasing, not building. She's efficient. The same competence she brings to the dining room and the pastry case and the cannoli shells, applied with devastating focus to taking me apart.
My hands go to her head. Her hair is coming out of the knot, dark strands falling around her face, and I gather them in one hand and hold them back so I can see her face and her mouth onme. Her eyes flick up and she watches me while she works, and the eye contact combined with her mouth is going to end this faster than either of us planned.
She pulls off just as I’m about to bust and stands. She unties her apron and pulls down her pants and her underwear, kicks them off one leg and climbs onto my lap on the stool, straddling me, and I grip her hips and she sinks down and the stool creaks under our combined weight and neither of us cares if it holds.
Her hands are on my shoulders, her forehead against mine, and her hips roll and snap and grind in the rhythm she sets, always her rhythm, always her pace.
