Page 21 of Diego

Dante shrugs. “They can cook. They don't want to.”

“Hey, I cook,” Alessio insists.

“Yeah. Steak, pasta, or whatever can be eaten standing over the kitchen sink.”

Matteo points his fork at him. “That is still cooking.”

“Oy,” I say. “Your grandmother would have a fit to hear this.”

“Which is why I cook,” Dante says.

I glance between them and decide I have been here approximately three minutes too long to remain sober. “Where’s the whiskey?”

Edoardo tilts his head toward the cabinet behind me. “Same place it always is.”

“Good. At least something in my life is consistent.”

I pour myself a drink while the conversation drifts back toward whatever was happening before I walked in. The strange thing about this house is that it never requires anyone to make an entrance. People come and go, conversations overlap, someone is always opening the refrigerator, and no one expects anything to stop because another person walked into a room.

Usually I like that about being here.

I'm not sure how I'll like living in it.

Once dinner is ready, we end up eating around the kitchen island because apparently the dining table is currently buried under some project of Tomasso’s. I don't ask about it. The answer will annoy me, and I have had enough sources of irritation for one day.

Dante sets a platter of chicken on the island, and everyone shifts automatically to make room. I take the stool beside Edoardo while Tomasso clears a stack of mail out of the way with one hand and Matteo reaches for a plate before Dante has even finished setting everything down.

“You guys are going to make me fat,” I say, looking around at them. “I’ve only been here for thirty seconds, yet somehow I’m already eating.”

“You say that like it’s a hardship,” Matteo says.

“Plus I've seen you tuck away quite a bit of food there, Zio,” Alessio comments while spearing chicken with his fork.

“Not nearly as much as you boys.”

Dante pours himself a glass of wine and sits across from me. “You’ll adjust.”

“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Edoardo laughs into his glass. “You act like you haven’t been eating here for years.”

“Eating here and living here are very different things.”

“Only because now you can’t leave when we annoy you,” Tomasso says.

I point my fork at him. “Oh, I can leave. Don't test me.”

“And where would you go?” Alessio asks.

“Your father offered to let me live with them for a while.”

Alessio and Edoardo look at each other for a moment, then they burst out laughing.

Edoardo wipes a hand over his mouth. “You? With Papà and Donna?”

“Yes.”

Alessio shakes his head. “You wouldn’t last a night.”