“Slower next time,” he says.
“As long as there’s a next time.”
He raises his head enough to look at the bedside clock. “Give me an hour.”
I laugh into his shoulder. “Three orgasms. I think you earned some sleep.”
“I set that bar too high,” he says.
“And all that Italian stuff,” I say with a sigh. “So hot.”
I feel rather than hear his laugh.
“What was it you said to me?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”
“It was magic to my ears. Shall we do this every Monday?”
“You mean like a sex date? Are you propositioning me?”
I nod. “We can do all of the things we normally do every morning so no one else knows, and then on Monday nights—boom.” I make fireworks in the air with my hands. “You whisper unspeakably filthy things to me in Italian and I have three orgasms.”
“I don’t know if I can keep my hands off you all week,” he says. “You’ve woken something in me I thought was long dead and now it’s all I can think about.”
I pause, because something about the cadence of his words wasn’t quite natural. “Are you role-playing Moonstruck?”
“Yes,” he says, turning on his side to face me, smoothing my hair back from my face.
“It was very convincing.” I roll on to my back. “This doesn’t even feel like my life.”
He rolls on his back too. “Mine either. I’m the guy too stuck in his ways to experience this.”
“And I’m the noodle chef afraid of her own shadow.”
Gio raises himself on one arm, his head resting on his hand as he looks down at me.
“Why are you afraid?”
I’ve exposed too much of myself. How I wish I could tell him the truth, that I didn’t think I’d ever feel safe with anyone again, that my being here is a testament to the undeniable goodness that radiates from his bones. I sigh and shake my head, not wanting to burst this bubble between us.
“I don’t know. Life just knocks you around sometimes, doesn’t it?”
He doesn’t push for more, just slides his arm under my shoulders and pulls the quilt over us. He curves his body around my smaller one, my back against his chest, his knees behind mine, his arm over my body.
“Cucchiaino,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
He strokes his thumb along the underside of my breast. “Little spoon.”
“How do you say big spoon?”
“Grande cucchiaino.”
I smile. “It sounds better in Italian.”
“Everything does.”
His breath fans my neck, his hand splayed on my ribcage as I close my eyes.
“How do you say bliss?”
“Beatitudine.”
“So many syllables,” I murmur, pressing my back into his chest.
And that’s how we stay until we fall asleep. Beatitudine.
17.
“DON’T BE MAD, BUT I’VE made something for you to test.”
We’ve been downstairs for an hour or so by the time Sophia arrives for her morning shift, going about our usual business so as not to make it obvious I’ve spent the night here. But she’s so preoccupied with the silver thermos in her hands, the squat kind you usually carry soup in, that I don’t think she’d have noticed if she’d walked in on us kissing.
She takes a seat at the counter and opens it, shooting a “help me” look my way as she pushes it toward us. I can’t help my chef’s curiosity, so I lean forward to have a look inside.
“Great color,” I say. “Blackberry?”
“And blood orange,” she says, unable to keep the gleam of excitement from her eyes or her voice.
She grabs two disposable spoons from the customer pot and slides them toward us.
Gio doesn’t react so I take the lead, and my tastebuds burst alive with dark fruit and citrus.
“Wow, it’s punchy,” I say, trying it again. I can see that my opinion matters to her, so I don’t just pay it lip service, I take a third spoonful and mentally sift the flavor profile for what might be missing.
“It’s delicious as it is,” I say, “but I’m wondering if adding a touch of something sweet in the background, honey or maybe a hint of almond, might make it pop even more.”
She reaches for a spoon and tastes it herself, her eyes narrowed as she considers my suggestion.
“Oh my God, yes, you might be right,” she says, her eyes bright with an anticipation I well understand—the need to make a dish sing. “Almond could be interesting. I’ll do another batch.”
Gio still hasn’t said a word, so we both turn to him. I think for a second that he’s going to refuse to even taste it, and watch his eyes and see him consider that option seriously. Then he squares his shoulders and reaches for the spoon. Sophia’s eyes widen a fraction and she bites her bottom lip, uncharacteristically nervous for one usually so full of beans. I’m nervous for her as Gio studies the deep-purple gelato on the spoon. We stand in tense silence as he slides it into his mouth, and I have to look away because I can’t help but remember all the places on my body that mouth touched last night. He lays the spoon carefully down and lowers his gaze, the sweep of his impossibly dark lashes hiding his eyes from us as he considers his verdict. Sophia flicks me an anxious look, and I do a tiny shrug because I don’t know any better than she does.
“Okay,” Gio says.
Sophia leans in a little. “Okay you like it, okay you hate it, or…？”
“Okay we’ll try it your way,” he says. “You can make your guest flavors, on the understanding that we go back to vanilla when we have the recipe again.”
It’s almost funny to watch Sophia fast forward through such a wide range of emotions, from battle ready to incredulous to euphoric happy dancing on the spot.
“Oh my God, Gio! I promise you won’t regret this, I have so many ideas for flavors,” she says, talking too fast as she opens her bag and pulls out a notebook.
“But, Sophia, there is to be no public mention of losing the recipe,” he says, serious. “For Papa’s sake.”
“Sì, sì.” She draws an imaginary zip across her lips. “Not a word.”
He nods, then turns on his heel and disappears into the kitchen. Once he’s gone, she checks the door has closed and leans her back against it, laughing with exhilaration.
“I can’t actually believe he said yes,” she whispers. “You heard him too though, right? I didn’t just dream that?”
“It’s seriously good gelato,” I say.
She grins, her shoulders coming up around her ears. “Isn’t it, though?”
She opens her notebook and runs me through some of her other flavor ideas, noting down any suggestions I make as we chat between customers. It’s one of the nicest half-hours I can remember, trading flavor options, discarding one idea for another, unearthing my knowledge of food and lifting it into the light for a while. Menu planning used to be one of my greatest joys, picking through the best of what was in season to create new flavor combinations, testing, tweaking, honing dishes on instinct until they were worthy of a place on a menu.