THE TEXT COMES IN AS I brush my teeth before bed. I read it at least twenty times. “Dear Iris”—it’s like an email opener, isn’t it? It’s so like Gio to be formal. Most of my texts are from Bobby or Robin, and they just launch straight in. “Dear Iris” suggests someone who doesn’t text often. As for everything else he said, I’m moved by the simplicity, by the apology without any attempt at mitigation. And “We miss you, I miss you.” I read it aloud, knowing what he means because I feel the same. I miss them in general, the place, Sophia, the gelato hunt…spending a few hours there each morning fast became the highlight of my day. And then there’s Gio himself, an immovable rock steeped in tradition and family, entrenched in that place as securely as those industrial machines in the back kitchen. It sometimes feels as if he’s lost touch with who he is among all that tradition, but then when it’s been just the two of us, I’ve glimpsed sparks of the man beneath. I’ve been so wrapped up in being guarded about the recipe that these small unacknowledged moments have accumulated into a neglected pile.
Objectively, of course, I’ve acknowledged he’s hot—he just is—but not in a boy-band way. He’s coming on forty and exudes this air of, I don’t know, being a man who knows stuff. He looks as if he could build me a bookshelf and mend his own car with those good hands of his, and is the sort of person you need around in a crisis. That doesn’t really touch the sides of what I mean. It’s the small things. The green-glass shards in his amber-brown eyes I’ve noticed sometimes when he looks directly at me, the edge of an unseen tattoo visible when his white shirtsleeves are folded back in the kitchens. It’s the strength of character and grit that runs through him like a river, a seam of solid gold alongside the steel. There’s vulnerability when he speaks of the people he loves, the woman he lost, the daughter he worries for. He’s a complicated man embedded in a complicated life, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t missed all of those things about him in recent days. I’ve kept my life purposefully small here in New York, but that seemingly throwaway act of going to the festival with Bobby has opened the doors to new possibilities. My world is opening up. I’m singing Joan Jett songs to strangers, for God’s sake, and I kind of love the new me. It’s a fragile balance—I want to go back to Belotti’s because I miss them, I miss him, but I don’t want to feel as if the secrets I need to keep make me a bad person. I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, toothbrush in hand, and I decide to text him back. It’s a risk worth taking, and I promise the girl in the mirror that I’ll watch her back.
* * *
—
GIO IS ALONE IN Belotti’s when I push the door open. He turns at the sound of the bell and I pause, half in and half out, as nervous as the first day I came here. He lays his cloth down on the counter and is still too, and we take each other in for a moment before a slow smile lifts one corner of his mouth.
“You came back,” he says, reminiscent again of that morning a few weeks ago.
“I couldn’t leave my machine here,” I say, but soften it with a smile of my own so he knows I’m joking.
He half laughs and looks down. “I thought as much. Coffee?”
It’s really cold out this morning, the tip of my nose and my hands chilled from the short walk. “Yes, please,” I say, taking off my coat and scarf. “A bucket.”
He turns away and busies himself at the machine, and when he turns back he places a mug down in front of me.
“Not quite a bucket,” he says.
Customers here all get the same small white cup and saucer, and I have too, up to now. This morning I have a forest-green mug, and when I reach for it I see it has my name on it in gold lettering.
“Oh,” I say, unexpectedly touched. Gio and Sophia have the same ones—I’ve seen a rack of family mugs at the back of the kitchen. “I love it.”
He looks pleased, and then puts his cloth over his shoulder with a small shrug. “I was ordering new ones, so.”
And now I’m the one looking at the floor and feeling like a kid at the school disco. Our small but significant text exchange seems to have upset the balance between us. I think it’s down to me to try to right it.
“I’m sorry,” he says, rushed. “I was out of line last week.”
Okay, maybe not down to me. I expected Gio to avoid talking about it, but here we are.
“It’s okay,” I say, neutral. “I didn’t intend to overstep the mark with Bella.”
He sighs and shakes his head, polishing the already spotless counter. “You didn’t, Iris, you really didn’t. It caught me off guard, that’s all, and reminded me of what she’s lost,” he says, then brightens. “She passed her piano test, by the way.”
“She did? I’m really glad,” I say, biting the inside of my lip as I think about what he said just now. “Was her mum musical?”
His hands still. “Penny? No,” he laughs. “Brilliant at so many things, but totally tone deaf.”
I fold my hands around my mug and draw it in toward myself. “Bella’s full of talent,” I say. “Where does she get it from?”
“The Belottis are a giant bunch of show-offs,” he says. “My sisters all play instruments and sing.”
“And you?”
He frowns. “Guitar for a while as a moody teenager,” he says. “Nothing these days.”
I suddenly wonder if he’s seen that video doing the rounds of me singing in the park, and change the subject, embarrassed.
“So, the gelato,” I say. “How’s it going?”
“I’ve been trying to get the hang of your machine,” he says. His accompanying hand motions suggest it’s about the size of a thimble rather than capable of turning out a perfectly respectable three pints.
“And?”
“I think it likes you better,” he says.
I mentally high-five my good old gelato maker. “There’s a knack to it.”
The bell over the door rings.
“Oh my God, it’s freezing this morning!” Sophia flings herself inside the warm gelateria and lights up when she spots me at the counter. I find myself hugged, her cheek cold against my warm one. “I’m hanging on to you to steal your warmth,” she says, lingering.
“Maybe you could wear a coat?” Gio says what I was thinking.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, okay, Dad.”
“Don’t you start, one grouchy teenager is enough for anyone,” he says, chucking Sophia’s work apron at her before turning into the kitchens.
She pulls a face behind his retreating back and then leans into me.
“I saw the video of you singing,” she stage whispers, her eyes dancing. “I was like ‘I know her!’ And no one believed me.”
I don’t know why I don’t want Gio to see it, but I don’t. “Oh God, Sophia, can we not talk about it?” I say, equally quiet. “It was just something that happened in the moment, I didn’t know anyone filmed it.”
“That’s what makes it so cool,” she says, clutching my arm. “It’s obvious you didn’t go there to sing, and then you shut the place down.” She mimes dropping the mike.
“Don’t show Gio?” I ask, not even sure why I don’t want him to see it.
She narrows her eyes and then shrugs. “Okay, I won’t. But don’t be surprised if someone else does.”
By someone else I suppose she means Bella. I can only cross my fingers and hope that a thirty-odd-year-old British woman randomly singing eighties power hits in the park will be of little interest to her.
Gio sticks his head around the kitchen door, looking for me. “Coming?”
I shoot Sophia a quick “thank you” as I pick up my personalized mug and follow him through.
* * *
—