Page 50 of Duke for the Summer

“Oh, sei italiano? Pronto, chi è?”

It was her. Now that she was speaking their native language, he recognized her voice, from hours of discussing literature in cafes, wreathed in cigarette smoke, from late nights spent studying in the library, from drunken confessions in the back corners of bars.

“It’s me,” he said, hearing his voice crack. “Jacopo Brunetti.” Stupidly, he felt the need to add his last name, as if maybe he wasn’t as memorable to her as she had been to him.

“Minchia! Jacopo? I didn’t think I’d ever hear from you. I wasn’t even sure if you had the same email.”

“I’m sorry.” He swallowed. “I was too afraid to call you until now.”

“What changed?” There was a silence, achingly awkward, and then she spoke again, before he could answer. “No, no. You’ll have to tell me in person. We’re both so bad at talking.”

“I know. I–I want to see you. And I want to meet her.”

“Where are you? Still in Carmosino?”

Jacopo shook his head. “No. Are you still in Napoli?”

Lucia laughed. “I haven’t been there in years. We live in Dublin, the two of us and–my wife.”

“Wife?” Jacopo exclaimed. He felt dizzy, and a little bit unreal, like he was watching himself from far away.

“Well, yes.” He could practically hear her shrug down the phone, even if he couldn’t see it. “You weren’t the only one trying to prove something that night, it turns out. Come see us, Jacopo. Noemi would love to meet you.”

*

Lucia’s flat had three flags waving outside: Irish, Italian, and rainbow, and the door was painted a bright magenta. There was a tinny, staticky taste in Jacopo’s mouth as he rang the bell, his fingertips tingling. He stared at the shiny wood and time stretched out and a cascade of panicked thoughts tumbled through his head–that he had the wrong house, that Lucia would shut the door on him, that this was all a joke and he’d be stranded in Dublin with a suitcase full of old paperbacks and a jacket that was already too thin for the evening air–and then the lock made a loud clunk and the door swung open and there she was, different but also the same, older, her face bearing unfamiliar lines.

“Jacopo,” Lucia said, with an uncertain smile. “You’re just as skinny as ever.”

“And you’re–” He took her in, her dark lipstick and the expensive cut of her clothes, the way her hair glowed silver-blond in the fading afternoon light–a huge upgrade from bleaching it over the bathroom sink. Beautiful? Jacopo couldn’t say that; he wasn’t attracted to her, and he didn’t want to be weird, considering their shared history. But she was beautiful, really. She was a grown woman, far more adult than he felt,and a strange sort of pride glowed in Jacopo’s chest, seeing who she was now. There had been so many facets to their friendship besides that one drunken, embarrassing night, and it was a relief to see that it had left no stain on her. Lucia was Lucia, after all this time.

“–you’re still much cooler than me,” he concluded.

She laughed. A cat threaded around her ankles, giving Jacopo a suspicious look on its way past him, out into the front garden. “You’d better come in. Noemi’s just gotten back from school. I told her you would be here.”

Noemi. He hadn’t known her name until Lucia had said it earlier, on the phone, and it had been all Jacopo could think during the short flight from London, looking down at the dark, glassy surface of the sea, the patchwork fields and jagged coastline of Ireland, so intensely green that it had reminded him for a moment of the trees in Nate’s home town, the riotous brightness of the leaves and the nearly iridescent moss. His daughter’s name was Noemi, and she was a real person, not just an idea to torture himself with at night, another thing to feel guilty about, but a whole life lived without him. Jacopo’s mouth was dry as Lucia led him into the flat, and he barely registered the room around him, because there was a staircase and someone was thundering down it, making the kind of unself-aware noise that only a lanky teenager can, and then she was standing there at the bottom of the stairs with her hands on her hips, looking at him, the assessing expression on her face a mirror of Gracie’s, or his mother’s, or his own.

“This is awkward,” Noemi said, in Irish-accented English, her voice high and clear and wonderfully foreign to Jacopo’s ears. “Am I allowed to say that this is awkward?” She had Lucia’s large, thick-lashed eyes, and she was all elbows and nose, as Jacopo had been at that age.

“Noemi.” Lucia let out an exasperated sigh. “Say hello.”

“Hi.” Noemi held out a hand. “Do you speak English? I speak Italian. And I’m learning Irish in school, but it’s hard.”

Jacopo shut his mouth, aware that it had been hanging open. He cleared his throat. “I speak English. It’s nice to meet you, Noemi.”

And they shook hands, which was both more and less than he had hoped for. It was awkward, as Noemi had said, painfully awkward, and it didn’t get much better when Lucia invited him into the kitchen for a glass of wine, Noemi flouncing along behind.

“Don’t you have schoolwork?” Lucia said over her shoulder.

“Really, Mamma? On the night that my long-lost father appears?”

In the kitchen, Lucia leaned against the counter, studying them both with the same focus she’d once devoted to picking apart the lines of a poem. “Why don’t you get to know each other?”

Jacopo took a long drink of wine, not really sure what to say. “Um,” he said finally. “Do you like to read?”

The question unleashed a flood of information; it was as if Noemi had been waiting all her life for someone to ask her about her reading preferences. She loved fantasy, and the classics, and Oscar Wilde, Dublin’s own native son. There was a whole list of fictional characters who she was obsessed with and wanted to fall in love with each other. Jacopo believed it was calledshipping, though he couldn’t have guessed why. He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she talked, cataloging her mannerisms, trying to understand this bright, confident, gawky girl who dressed like she was straight out of the 1990’s and used all sorts of slang that Jacopo didn’t know, who was eager to show him the TikToks she’d made of her cat and the pictures on her phone of almost supernaturally pretty Korean boys from her favorite bands. Sheseemed incredibly foreign but also like someone he’d known forever. Every so often one of her gestures would remind him of Gracie or Mirabella, or her expression would mirror Lucia’s, and when Lucia’s wife, Caitlin, came home, Jacopo figured out where Noemi had gotten her outgoing nature, as well: not from either of her biological parents but from the woman she called Mum.

“Jacopo!” Of the three of them, Caitlin was the first to give him a hug, her jacket covered in raindrops and a cloth bag, filled with clinking bottles, slung over her shoulder. “Oh, you’re very welcome! Lucia has told me so much about you. I’m sorry I’m late, I had to stop by the shop for Italian wine. Thought it was appropriate.” She was the distillation of what Jacopo would imagine an Irish person would be, strawberry blonde and pale as milk, her cheeks covered in freckles, and she had an infectious smile. The house seemed brighter with her in it, more complete. Jacopo watched in equal parts awe and embarrassment as she swept Lucia into a hello kiss and ruffled Noemi’s hair, asking her about her homework. He wondered what it must feel like to be so at ease. To fit so perfectly somewhere.

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