Page 65 of Shades of Grey & Gold

“We know,” both sisters say at once and roll their eyes at him.

The kitchen smells like a restaurant, garlic and onions and basil. Carmela walks in and her face lights up with that involuntary warm delight, and she says something to Cal in Italian that makes him put his hand briefly over his eyes before crossing the kitchen to kiss her cheek.

Nico pours a glass of wine and points at me, looking at Cal.

“She came back, Ma,” he says. “I told her Max would run the other way once you saw Cal in the mornings, but here you are.”

“You said she wouldn’t come back?” Cal looks at him with disgust.

“I said she was too smart to come back.” He shrugs. “I’m reassessing.”

“She’s smart enough to come back,” Sophia corrects from somewhere behind me. “Those are different things; she liked us so much she came back.”

“I asked myself, why ever would a woman want Cal—”

“Nico,” Carmela says, without turning from the stove. One word. It lands like a gavel.

Nico closes his mouth.

I press my lips together, burying a smile.

Cal appears at my shoulder. “Still enjoying this?” he says quietly, right at my ear.

“Enormously,” I whisper back.

The table fits ten and there are six of us and somehow every inch of it is covered. Carmela circulates between the kitchen and the table efficiently like someone who has been doing this for thirty years and enjoys every moment of it.

Maggie and Sophia argue about whether the braciole needs more sauce. Nico somehow has opinions about this despite being told numerous times he doesn’t get a vote if he doesn’t contribute to the cooking process.

Cal sits next to me. His knee is against mine under the table, just resting there, and he doesn’t move it, so I don’t move mine either.

And God this just feels… right. Everything in this moment: the laughs, the food, Cal.

Carmela pours wine. She reaches me and I put my hand over my glass.

“No, thank you,” I smile sweetly at her.

Cal looks at me sideways.

I look back.

I noticed he moved his empty glass away from his plate earlier.

I look back at my food.

Across the table Nico is telling a story that involves significant hand gestures and what I’m fairly certain is an embellished account of something that couldn’t have happened the way he’s describing it. Sophia is fact-checking him in real time, and Maggie is trying to eat and failing because she keeps laughing. Carmela is watching all of them with her chin in one hand and her wine glass held loosely in the other and there is an expression on her face, like longing or wistfulness. She stands and lifts her plate to go into the kitchen.

I pick up my own.

“I’ll help,” I say, and before anyone can tell me not to, I’m in the kitchen behind her.

She sets her plate down and starts moving between the counter and the sink, and I fall into the rhythm of it beside her, scraping plates and rinsing them.

She’s quiet for a moment.

Then I hear her exhale, soft and controlled, the kind that means the opposite.

I look over.