Page 84 of A Place in the Sun
With the children helping Stella to settle back into the bedroom she has been sleeping in for the last couple of years, now cleared of junk and having been given a fresh coat of paint, I head up to La Tavola.
When I arrive, I step over the lip and in through the wooden gate. The courtyard is looking wonderful. The barrels and pots Caterina planted when she first arrived are blooming and thriving with the care she’s lavished on them.
‘Ciao?Giovanni?’
I walk through the dining room, following the smell from the kitchen at the back. As I do, I pass a rucksack. I’m confused: I’m sure we left Stella’s rucksack at Casa Luna’s. But I must have been mistaken. It’s been a long day.
‘Hey,’ he says, as I walk into the kitchen where he’s cooking.
‘Hey,’ is all I can say. I’m feeling exhausted, but seeing him lifts my spirits. He pours wine into a short stubby glass and hands it to me. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘And I’m making you pasta.’
‘Thank you. But you don’t need to cook for me.’
‘You’ve been looking out for everyone else today so I think I can cook for you.’
I pull up a stool at the counter. ‘It’s you who needs to remember to eat!’ And my heart swells at the same time as my stomach flips. My whole body feels alive, very much so, with this man.
He puts a big bowl of pasta in front of me.
‘Cacio e pepe!’ I smile. ‘Just like when I first arrived!’
He gives me a fork.
‘Are you having some? There’s loads!’
‘Okay,’ he says, ‘but I’m saving on washing-up.’ He grabs another fork and pulls up a stool at the corner of the kitchen island.
All my nerve endings stand to attention. ‘Thank you for this.’
‘It’s fine.’ He has twisted the fork in the soft tangle of pasta and put it into his mouth.
I do the same. It tastes delicious. Creamy, peppery, comforting. Just like it did on that first day. ‘Giovanni, I don’t want things to be awkward, me staying here, but we’ll make it work.’ I don’t want to add that I’m sorry about thenonnas match-making us, and I wish I could tell him I’ve moved on. That there is room for him in my life, as well as my past, which is Marco. But I don’t know how.
‘I don’t want it to be awkward either,’ he says.
And we have both forked the same piece of pasta, sucking it into our lips like the Lady and the Tramp. I could bite or … I could suck some more until our lips finally meet. And they nearly do, but he bites the spaghetti, setting me free. I slurp and stop, my lips trembling, swollen, wanting his on them.
‘What I mean is,’ he says, ‘maybe I did need a nudge out of my comfort zone, which is La Tavola. It needsto be run better than I’ve been running it. It needs to be the cookery school you’ve started. It needs you. I need you.’
I blush and cough.
‘To run more cookery weekends.’
He smiles, but not the full Giovanni smile.
‘There I go messing it up again.’ He waves his fork around.
He reaches for the wine bottle and refills my glass. I wish time would stand still and let me stay in this happy place. Here, in a village I’ve come to love, with a man I find very attractive, a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine. It doesn’t get much better. He puts a fork into the pasta, twirls it again and puts it into his mouth, sucking at the loose ends.
‘So that’s why I’m leaving.’
‘What?’
He puts down the fork and dabs his mouth with the napkin he’s placed in front of the two of us. ‘It’s time for me to move on. Like I say, you nudged me out of my comfort zone. I’d got stuck here, playing it safe, too scared to venture out into the world of food again. Too scared of being burnt. A bit like with love.’
He looks at me. ‘But … I can’t be second best again. And I can’t stay here, if it’s not with you.’
‘You know I’m not going to be seeing Sebastian again, not romantically anyway.’
