Jade took a deep breath, hung her apron up on its hook at the far end of the kitchen and motioned for Dario to follow her from the bakery to the cottage.
There, she boiled the kettle without thinking, dropped tea bags into mugs before she remembered he didn’t even drink it. And the only coffee he’d enjoy would be one from Etna’s fancy machine, and Etna wasn’t someone she wanted looking on at this conversation.
‘I’m sorry, I only have instant coffee,’ she said.
‘I’m not here for your coffee.’
His smile and the way he was staring at her made her nervous as she took out one of the tea bags and instead added instant coffee granules. Her hand wobbled as she poured the boiling water into the mugs and she asked him about his journey to distract him from focusing on her actions. Otherwise, she was liable to pour the water everywhere and burn herself. It worked. He talked about some of the sights in London where he’d stayed for two nights until he caught a train and then a bus up here, and she managed to get the full mugs over to the table without much drama.
Sitting at the table, she watched him as he talked. It was surreal, having him here. But the moment he paused in his amusing story of trying to navigate the tube system, she said, ‘I always wondered whether you’d send me an email or get in touch another way.’
The whole time he’d been here his eyes hadn’t left her. When you went into a different house, someone’s home, you took in the surroundings, the colour on the walls, perhaps the things dotted around that made it theirs, but Dario hadn’t done any of that. His attention was on her and her alone. ‘We agreed we wouldn’t. I almost did, more than once.’
‘Me too.’
They let the moment settle between them. And while she looked down into her mug of tea or watched the sway of the branches on the neighbouring tree beyond the kitchen window, Dario didn’t waver. He watched her, made eye contact every chance he could.
‘What made you come now?’ she asked. She hadn’t taken a sip of her tea; she suspected it would go cold before she even did.
‘I wish we hadn’t said goodbye at all. I regret that we did. And I’m sorry we agreed not to stay in touch. I thought it would be easier.’
‘It wasn’t easy, but we both decided it was the best thing at the time.’
‘I thought I’d let you go and you’d move on with your life, that I would too.’
‘I looked you up on the internet,’ she admitted. ‘You have moved on, you’ve done well.’
She felt skin on skin as he reached out across the table and covered her hand with his own bigger, darker hand. The hand she remembered holding more times than she could count as they explored the sights together, as he took her to popular tourist hangouts as well as the hidden gems only the locals knew about.
‘I looked you up too. It’s how I found you, and I remembered the name of the village.’ He smiled kindly and she felt dizzy, remembering how safe she’d always felt with him. ‘You’ve done very well too,’ he added, perhaps sensing her head was all over the place and so a chance to make reference to her business might be the best thing for now.
She silently thanked him for his understanding. ‘We’re pleased with how quickly we settled in here and made the changes we wanted to at the bakery. The locals are friendly, supportive, but we wanted to really make the place our own, which is why we renovated.’ She was babbling now, but it felt like the only release from all the tension. She recounted more details of the cottage renovation too, the way they’d added the upstairs, and he was interested enough that he asked her to show him around.
She left the mug of tea, soon to be stone-cold, and went through to the lounge. He followed after her, all the while close enough that she could feel the heat of his body unless she was mistaken and really it was the summer breeze sneaking in through any open door or window it could. They talked about paint colours on the walls, the soft furnishings, Jade going into too much detail but every exchange leaving her more relaxed and able to process the fact that he was here.
They took the stairs up to the top and she explained the conversion, how it gave them the space they needed, how it had transformed the cottage into a real home. But aware she was in her bedroom and had to move so close to him that they were almost touching when their heights meant they both needed to stand towards the tallest parts of the ceiling, she tried to head back downstairs.
He caught her hand before she could. ‘I’m confused. I do not know whether you are glad I am here or not.’ He was so close she could see the marks on his earlobes where once he’d worn studs and as he moved from his teens to his twenties took them out and let the holes close up.
It was good to see him but she didn’t know whether she was glad he was here. All she knew was she was confused. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she told him honestly.
‘Mia cara…’My darling. He stepped closer and the heady feeling was back, the same way she’d reacted to him the first time he took her hand in Italy, the first time he kissed her.
She pulled back. ‘How is your family?’ Family was part of the reason he hadn’t wanted to leave Venice; in fact, she’d say it was probably more of the deciding factor than the business and the fact he’d been born and raised there. She and Celeste were close to their parents but it wasn’t determined by distance and even though they were here and their mum and dad still lived in Ireland, it didn’t diminish the family relationships one bit. Their brother was still in Ireland too, as much a part of the place as a pint of Guinness, with no intention to ever live anywhere else, but Jade and Celeste had both always been keen to spread their wings. When first Celeste and then Jade had moved to London, their dad’s words had been “Go live your lives, let us live ours”. They’d all laughed about it because the minute Celeste and Jade left, their brother got his own place, their parents downsized and used the freed-up cash to go and do the things they hadn’t been able to do before retirement – see Vienna, ride a camel in Egypt and, the last trip they’d been on, Christmas in New York, which according to her dad was not for the faint-hearted and not something he was keen to repeat with the crowds and the excitement.
‘My family is good,’ Dario told her. ‘They all send their love.’ And when she smiled, he told her, ‘Nonna is still with us, still up in the early hours fussing around us all.’
When she went to ask more, he reached out and put a finger across her lips. ‘Please, I don’t want to talk about them, I want to talk about us, Jade. I want to know if there is – if there can be – an us.’
She froze for a moment at the contact against her lip, the familiarity, the warmth and the remembering but then she snapped out of it and headed straight back down the stairs. ‘I don’t know what to say, Dario. You show up like this, all of a sudden, expecting answers. And I don’t have the answers. I –’
But he’d come up quickly behind her and when she turned, hands on hips to carry on telling him what she thought of this stunt, he caught her by surprise, bent his head and kissed her on the lips. Not a quick kiss to test her reaction, but a long kiss, a kiss between two lovers who’d been reunited after a long time apart.
Her head spiralled, all the way from Heritage Cove to Venice and back again.
‘Why did you do that?’ she mumbled into his chest when she ended the kiss and he pulled her into a hug. She felt comfortable for a split second but pulled away because she also felt more confused than ever.
‘Anyone home?’ a voice called out from the garden.
