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I wanted to end the story there because I wished the story ended there, with everything working out exactly the way that I had planned. Thankfully Luca allowed me to.
“And then you ended up a celebrity on the cover of magazines.” He opened the Spuma and poured fizzy liquid into two plastic cups. We lifted them in cheers, and I humbly dismissed his comment.
“I’m so far from a celebrity. I was in the right place during the right time for the right story. But tell me more about you.”
“Like you, I hated working in other people’s restaurants.”
“Where did you work?” I expected him to tell me Palermo, or maybe Rome, Florence, possibly as far away as Milan.
“Brooklyn,” he said, clocking, and obviously enjoying, my surprise. “I went to New York when I was twenty. We have family there. Everyone here has family there and I moved in with some cousins in Bensonhurst and they told me they could get me a job in a kitchen in Little Italy and I thanked them and then went to find work in a Vietnamese restaurant in Queens. I’ve been eating and cooking Italian food all my life. I can make a ragù in my sleep. I wanted to eat and cook things I’d never had before. Thankfully the Vietnamese restaurant hired me to wash dishes and then I was a delivery boy and a line cook and they taught me some things along the way. My cousins thought I was a traitor and a weirdo and kicked me out, but the owner let me sleep on a cot in the basement until I was able to rent a room. Then I went to work at a Korean place and an Argentinean steak house and a Ukrainian deli.”
“You worked your way around the world,” I said, impressed and a little envious.
“I did. Via the N train.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“I missed home. Italian Americans are different from the people here. So different. I know that we come from the same place and that we are blood, but their idea of being Italian is so strange. It is all based on that movie The Godfather, you know.”
I nodded as if I had only a passing familiarity with the film, as if my dad didn’t make us watch it with him once a year.
“And all my uncles and my cousins in America thought they were tough guys even though they were not in organized crime as far as I could tell. They still talked and walked and bluffed like they were. They were plumbers. All of them. And my uncle made people call him by a ridiculous name, Frankie Meow Meow. He was a grown man who wanted to be called Frankie Meow Meow! And they would introduce me as the ‘cugino from Sicilia’ like I was their connection to the Mafia. They have no idea what the Mafia is here or what it means or what they do. At first I tried to tell them about my actual life in Sicily, but that’s not what they wanted to hear. It was exhausting. But that wasn’t the only reason I came home.” He sighed. “I missed my mamma. I missed the sea. I missed how we cook here and how we eat. Everyone ate so fast in New York. They inhaled their food. Except at brunch, when they’d stay for hours and then barely leave a tip. Oh Gesù, the brunch. Everywhere I worked was tormented by it, what will we serve for brunch? Let’s make twenty-seven new dishes with eggs. There are never enough eggs. Americans are obsessed with brunch and cooked eggs. I will never understand you.”
“I hate eggs. I hate brunch,” I declared. “I refused to do a brunch service the first two years we were open because I wanted to spend weekend days with my husband and then my new baby. But my investors eventually told me I was being foolish and irresponsible and I stopped getting to make my own decisions.” This was the part I didn’t want to talk about. I quickly shifted the subject back to Luca. “When did you come back?”
“Five years ago. I had managed to save a little money working in America and some friends from growing up told me they would invest in a restaurant by the sea if I wanted to cook, and here we are.”
I thought about how nice it would be to have friends put up money for your restaurant, instead of a bunch of rich dudes who demanded instant returns. I wanted to hear more, but it was hot and I also wanted to jump in the water and then maybe take a nap. I stood and stretched my arms above my head before pivoting on my heel and running into the sea, stopping right where the waves licked the sand before turning to him.
“Don’t chase me this time, OK?”
He obeyed, to my slight disappointment. By the time I got back, he was sound asleep. I ordered myself a negroni from one of the passing beach boys and sipped slowly. This was a perfect day. Like the story I’d told Luca earlier, I wished I could make it end right here, because nothing ever stays perfect.
Luca snored, a reassuring flaw. He also drooled a little in his sleep and his elegant Roman nose was slightly crooked when viewed from above. His body was compact, but he had an exquisite build, like God was showing off his geometry skills. The pleasant zip of the first negroni compelled me to order a second while I took him in.
I hadn’t slept with anyone since Jack asked for a separation. And before Jack there were only a couple of guys. Prior to meeting my husband, I mostly loved men who would never love me back. I started to think about the other Serafina, about how she married young, about how she met Marco later in her life after getting married and having her children, how she might have found passion when she was least expecting it.
Luca suddenly startled awake and swiped the drool from the side of his mouth. He’d caught me staring hungrily at his body.
“I want to kiss your face.” He said it so simply, like it was already an inside joke between the two of us.
I wanted it too. I wanted to taste this man who had been feeding me delicious things. I wanted to put my hands on his body. Maybe it was the heat, or the gin, or the sight of his perfectly bronzed skin shining in the sun. I leaned down and placed my lips on his, nudging his mouth open with my tongue. He didn’t hesitate for even a second even though we were on a public beach surrounded by surly teenagers and young mothers. He sat up and gripped the back of my neck with a force that surprised me, pulling my body closer to his so that more than our mouths were touching. His broad chest pushed against my breasts. My nipples went hard beneath my bathing suit, and I groaned so loudly that the noise surprised me. I pulled back.
“I will take you somewhere,” he whispered. When he stood I followed. We walked past the bathrooms to the sheer cliff walls surrounding the beach. He waded into the water then disappeared below the first wave that crashed over his head. We powered through the breakers until the water went smooth and we were clear of the rocks. Then Luca made a sharp right turn and swam around the steep cliffs. I kept swimming, each movement stoking my desire. The water was cool in all the places where my body was burning. I finally saw a small opening in the rock wall, the tiniest of sea caves. He looked back at me and gestured toward it with his chin. The passageway was tiny; I had to duck below the water and trust my instincts to keep me moving forward. I was awed as my head broke through the surface, and I wiped the salt water from my eyes. Inside the cave was a cathedral of stone. A hole in the rock somewhere above cast a ray of golden light into the water, turning it a deep emerald. Luca stood on a small patch of sand to my left. The water was quiet, the current and waves stopped by the rock walls, though probably still churning beneath the surface. If I were a religious person at all, this was exactly what I’d want the gates of heaven to look like.
I was barely out of the water before Luca put both of his hands on my hip bones and leaned in to kiss me again, softer and slower this time; his lips fluttered only briefly on mine before they moved back behind my ear and trailed down the side of my neck. His lips went everywhere as his hands reached for the clasp on the back of my bikini.
“Is this OK?”
“Yes,” I gasped.
His mouth covered my nipple by the time the fabric hit the sand, his tongue tracing quick and then lazy circles that made me dig my nails into his shoulder blades. He squeezed one breast with his hand while his tongue took care of the other. I didn’t want this part to end, but I couldn’t wait for the next one to begin. I hooked my thumbs into the top of his bathing suit and pushed down slightly.
“Is this OK?”
“Sì.”
I shoved his swimming trunks to his ankles, wanting to take some control, wanting to be a participant instead of a silent bystander.
