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I shake my head, embarrassed, but the man simply pushes the piece a little closer.
“È tradizione.”
It's tradition.
I accept it with a smile.
“Grazie.”
He looks satisfied, as though I've just passed some kind of important Sicilian test.
I take a bite, and the sweetness fills my mouth. It's so good I close my eyes for a second.
“Old man has good taste,” Jude says beside me as he finishes his own piece.
“In fruit?”
He turns towards me, and something in his expression changes as those green eyes settle on mine.
“Women.”
Oh.
Jude
We spend the morning visiting all of Damiano's favorite places, and I can't shake the feeling that D is right here with us, grinning like an idiot and looking ridiculously proud of the place he came from.
I knew he loved Sicily. Hell, I heard enough stories about it growing up to feel like I'd already been here a dozen times. But actually seeing it is different. Every person we meet seems to have a story about him, and half of them involve him getting into some kind of trouble. The other half usually end with someone feeding us.
We have lunch at a rosticceria where we eat arancini, pizza, fried pizza and a whole bunch of other fried shit I can't remember the names of but would happily eat every day for the rest of my life. Somehow, we pay almost nothing for it, despite eating enough to put the place out of business.
I'm starting to understand D in a way I didn't before.
He was eight when he came to Wyoming, and I met him not long after that. By then, he was already the kid who could walk into a room full of strangers and leave with ten new friends. I never really understood how he did it. I was the kid hiding in the corner, hoping nobody noticed me, while D was introducing himself to everyone and somehow making them feel like they'd known him forever.
Now I look around at the people who raised him, the way they welcome complete strangers into their homes and insist on feeding them until they can barely move, and it makes sense.
No wonder he never gave a shit about my weirdness.
Tonight we're meeting everyone at the beach. And by everyone, apparently they mean every cousin Damiano ever had, half his old friends and whoever else happens to hear about it. They're calling it a falò, which I gather means a bonfire, although judging by the preparations, I'm beginning to suspect we're hosting the entire fucking island.
***
By the time I make my way down to the beach, most of them are already there. The sun is getting lower over the water, turning everything gold, and someone has driven wooden poles into the sand and tied a tarp between them to make some kind of shelter. A long folding table sits underneath it, covered in plates, plastic cups, utensils, bottles of water, wine and enough food to survive a natural disaster. There's another table just for the meat, loaded with sausages, chicken, steaks and trays of things I don't recognize.
Enough to feed an army.
Obviously.
Farther down the beach, a few of the guys are getting a fire going while two others set up a grill nearby. Smoke curls into the evening air, and there's a heated discussion about how the wood has been stacked. At least I think it's a discussion. I've learned not to assume people are arguing just because they're waving their arms and shouting at each other in Italian.
Matteo is sitting on a chair in the sand with a guitar across his lap, playing something half the people seem to know by heart. Kids run around barefoot, someone has music coming from a speaker, and every few seconds another person arrives and gets greeted like they've returned from war.
It's loud, chaotic, and somehow I kind of fucking love it.
I look for Nora.
It doesn't take long to find her.
