She was most dangerous like that, when she was innocent.
“Yes,” he said, smoothing her hair, “I heard it.”
“That was the stupid thing.”
“Yeah, I sorted that out.”
“Jesus, we’re fucked, aren’t we?”
Yes, yeah, probably. “Who cares.”
“Exactly.” She sounded smug. “Besides, if we fuck it up, you can just go back in time and fix it, can’t you? Promise me that, Aldo. If we fuck this up and it goes badly, then okay fine, you’ll go back in time and make sure we never meet. Okay?”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said, and finally, she seemed satisfied.
“Okay,” she said again, and he leaned his cheek against her forehead, listening to the sound of her breathing as it slowed, then steadied.
When they woke up, Masso had already gone to the restaurant, leaving a note telling them he’d see them at the annual party for the restaurant that evening. Aldo made a strata while Regan sat on his kitchen counter, observing him with her dark eyes, and while it was in the oven he slid the t-shirt up her legs and they fucked quietly, her fingers tangled in his hair. She kissed his neck while he washed the dishes, telling him, You need another haircut. Her tongue slid over the lobe of his ear and he sighed, Stop, I’m just a human man, you’ll have to wait until later.
“Fine, fine. What are we doing today?”
He didn’t know. He’d never thought of logistics, like what to do with a day, until her.
“Nothing, I guess.”
She smiled, licking Nutella from her finger and drawing it slowly across his lips.
“Perfect,” she said, and he believed her.
part five, variables.
EVERY YEAR, ALDO’S FATHER MASSO hosted a party for his employees at the restaurant, inviting them and their families for an evening of sociability while he cooked and they mingled, like they were all his family. He said hello to each person individually, spoke to them at length; he opened the good bottles of wine, said a long toast about having a prosperous year, and invited them to have as much as they liked, to even take some home if they wanted. Masso, who for Aldo had been mother and father both, was friendly, warm, inviting. He was completely unlike his son in every conceivable way, and yet it was obvious to Regan where Aldo had gotten his heart, his attentive eyes, his good nature.
Watching Masso was, for Regan, like falling in love with Aldo all over again, piece by piece. There were Aldo’s hands, there were his gestures, there was the way he stopped to look into space for a moment when he was trying to get the right words. Masso’s pauses were shorter, his voice gentler—he was more accustomed to conversation, and his patience for others seemed unending where Aldo had a tendency to be clipped, halted, rushed—but still, amid this climate of affection, Regan could see the familiar elements belonging the man who stood next to her, sheepish from his father’s praise. Here, like this, she could fall for him anew; again and again and again.
Masso only called Aldo by his full name, Rinaldo, and he spoke of him as a man, not a child. As if they had always just been two friends stumbling together through life, one with his love of food and the other with his love of math. “My son,” Masso would say, “he’s always been in his head, too smart for his own good, nobody could ever understand him. So imagine my surprise, he brings home a girl—yes, I know, a girl, and a pretty one too, who knew?—and she came here to celebrate with us, isn’t that wonderful?”
Regan, buzzed on wine and attention and the thrill of Aldo’s hand in hers, spoke rapidly, with words dripping from her lips and spilling into the fluidity of mindless conversation, or not at all, thoughts popping and fizzing inside her head. Aldo spoke little, only introducing her to this person or that one and answering their questions: “Yes, I’m enjoying school,” “We met at the art museum,” “Yes, I like my job,” “She’s an artist, she insists that she isn’t but she’s very good, you should see her work.” When Aldo spoke of Regan his voice had a tendency to change, illumination rising near his cheeks. “You should see her work,” he would say the same way someone else might have said: Come outside, come look at the stars.
Eventually, filled to bursting, Regan pulled Aldo into the back corridor of the restaurant by his tie （“His tie! Imagine it,” Masso had insisted in his toast, beaming with pride） and into the bathroom, which smelled like sweet basil and looked like Sorrento, and which felt like being near the sea.