11
THERE’S A CAR waiting in my driveway when I finally make it home, a stack of brand-new books and a self-indulgent pepperoni pizza on my passenger seat. Matty had been walking on air when I stopped in before heading home, humming under his breath as he pulled pizza from the oven. It had been enough to temporarily lift the little storm cloud that settled over my shoulders following Luka’s call.
Now though, I feel rumbles in the distance as I watch Luka’s mom climb out of her bright red Kia, a stack of Tupperware in her arms and a grin on her face. It’s a strange thing—to feel both crippling guilt and heartwarming flattery in the same breath. But I manage all the same, raising my hand in a wave as I sigh.
Luka’s mom is stunningly beautiful, with rich chocolate brown hair that tumbles down her back. She has streaks of gray just behind her ears, with light gray eyes to match. I’ve heard the kids in town talking about her “spooky eyes” and how she misses absolutely nothing. The rumor is that the little Italian doll that sits on the edge of her desk in her eighth-grade classroom is a spirit object. It lets her watch her class when her back is turned to the board. It’s hysterical, and Luka bought his mom three more after he found out.
She’s intimidating in the way all good teachers are—quiet, knowing, and sure. She’ll let you know when you’re not reaching your full potential and then hug you through it. Everything is a lesson; every moment is an opportunity to learn. Luka likes to complain about how she made him write reports on holiday TV specials during Christmas break. Practice fractions with his asparagus at family dinner.
I climb out of my car, my arms loaded with books and pizza. She takes one look at the cardboard box stained with grease in my hand and narrows her eyes to slits, the change in her demeanor so comically swift I have to
swallow around my laughter.
“Hi, Mrs. Peters.”
“Stella, you make me feel old when you call me that.” She hoists her tower of Tupperware in one arm so she can point at my pizza. “What is that?”
I glance down at the box. We only have one pizza shop in town, and Matty’s boxes have a fairly obvious blue-and-white logo printed across the top. It says MATTY in a large bold font along the sides. “It’s a pizza.”
“From Matty.”
I check the box again, just to be sure. I can just catch the edge of the blocky blue letters. Still, I hesitate, because Carina Peters looks like she’s one step away from using her Tupperware as a weapon against the dinner in my hands, and I’m really craving pepperoni. I clutch it a little tighter and nod toward the house.
“Want to come inside? It looks like your hands are full.”
She tightens her grip on the containers stacked neatly in her arms. White with blue lids, a triangle pattern printed at the very top edge. Luka has the same stack of Tupperware in his fridge in the city, leftover risotto and manicotti and tiramisu that I always sneak bites of when I stay over. She has two trays and another three smaller canisters, all with labels taped cleanly on the side. It looks like enough food to feed me for weeks.
“Come inside,” I say again. “I think I have some biscotti leftover from Luka. You can even have some pizza if you want.”
She follows me up the stairs to my porch, back to glaring at the box in my hands. “I wouldn’t eat that pizza if it were the last thing on this planet.”
I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t eat Matty’s pizza if someone was holding a gun to her head. I’ve heard her refer to it as an insult to the people of Italy, a bastardization of culture.
Eating there with Luka is always a master class on evasion. He has never once actually dined in the building, and he makes me go in alone when we get takeout. His mother almost caught him once, waiting at the curb for me to
come back with our dinner. He had driven away so fast, the street cleaner had to buff out his tire marks. I came out with our food to an empty street and had to walk four blocks down to the alleyway behind the café to finally get a ride home. His hands were shaking when I slid into the passenger seat, wide-eyed terror on his handsome face. He slept on my couch that night, too afraid to go home and face his mother if she happened to have seen him.
“No Italian in their right mind would put cheese in the crust of a pizza,” she shakes her head like she’s never heard of a more ridiculous thing in her life. “And the stromboli. Did you know stromboli doesn’t exist in Italy? It is a crime to create such a thing.”
I do know this. She’s told me before. And Luka tells me every time he
orders a stromboli.
“It’s very delicious though.”
She slashes her hand through the air with a sharp gesture, cutting right through my words. “I have been asking that the school stop using his food for fundraisers, but the kids love it. I gave my eighth graders a lesson on Italian dining”—I have no idea how she managed this as a math teacher—“real Italian dining, mind you, and they had the audacity to ask if mozzarella sticks were considered antipasti.” She places a hand against her chest, her fingers covered in rose gold rings. One from her late husband, another from her sister Cecilia, and another from Luka. They glint in the sunlight as I reach for the tin of cookies Luka hid in my cabinet. “The damage this man is doing to our young people.”
She shakes her head sadly and turns on her heel, heading straight for the fridge. She manages to open it without a single dish toppling from her arms and begins to rummage inside. I watch as she takes a bag of wilted mixed greens and throws it in the general direction of the garbage, arranging and rearranging to fit her collection of Tupperware.
“Do you know he’s from Boston?” She tosses an expired bottle of mustard after the bag of greens. “I bet he doesn’t even have a drop of Italian blood in his body. I once asked him what part of Italy his family is from, and he said the northern coast. The northern coast, Stella! I do not believe this to be true.”
“Why wouldn’t it be true?”
She turns to glance at me over her shoulder, a lock of thick dark hair cascading over her right eye. A single eyebrow arches, and I now know what it feels like to be one of her students caught on their cell phone in the back of class.
“Because the northern coast is known for their risotto al nero di seppia.”
The words trip off her tongue in the faint accent she hasn’t quite managed to get rid of despite thirty years living in the States. “And I have never seen the man so much as look at squid ink.”
I make a face and her lips quirk up at the corners, a little sharper on the left side, the look so reminiscent of Luka that I feel an answering tug in my chest. “It is better than you think.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I tell her. I hand her a plate loaded with biscotti. “All right, here you go. I’m sorry I don’t have any Illy on hand. Luka
complains too.”
“My son is giving you a hard time?”
I think of Luka standing at the stove just two feet from where she stands now, my hand towel in his back pocket. How he made me dinner and packed up leftovers, hid groceries around my kitchen. I think about his shoulder pressed to mine on the couch, my hair catching in the scruff along his jaw as I faded in and out of sleep. How I woke up in my bed with a thick blanket tucked around me, a glass of water on the nightstand.
I think about him in the barn, gloved hands holding mine tight. The taste of peppermint and hazelnut coffee.
“No.” I smile at her, heat brushing at my cheeks despite my best efforts.
“He’s not. You raised a really wonderful man.”
Even when I don’t want him to be. Even when I’m upset with him.
She preens at that, a proud look on her face. “I did, didn’t I?” She takes a bite of her cookie and settles into one of the kitchen chairs, patting the space diagonal from her in invitation. “Though I suppose some of that goes to his father as well.”
“He doesn’t—” I hesitate, unsure if I should say that Luka rarely talks about his dad. Is it wrong for me to share these things with her? Is it
dishonest to Luka and the relationship we have if I talk to his mom about it? I don’t know where I stand with this fake relationship and how it blurs the lines of my real ones.
She gives me a knowing look as I slide into the seat across from her. “He
doesn’t talk about his father?”
“Not really, no.”
He’ll let things slip sometimes. An unconscious mention of something his dad once did or said. But as soon as he realizes, he bottles it back up. Tucks away the memories piece by piece until they don’t hurt as badly. I do the same thing with my mom, in a way. Sometimes it sneaks up on you when that constant ache turns into pain so sharp it steals your breath.
She nods. “He doesn’t speak of him with me either.” One finger traces the edge of her plate, back and forth, her gaze drifting out the window. “It makes me sad. We should remember those who have left us with fondness. Speaking of them keeps their memory alive.”
“My mom said something similar to me right before she, um, right before she passed.” I still remember the smell of antiseptic, so strong and so chemical, burning at my nose. How my shoes squeaked across the floor as I bent at the waist and tried to find a free electrical outlet for the scent diffusers I brought. Lavender, her favorite. “She said she only wanted me to have happy memories.”
I try my best. I try to remember her when she was healthy and happy and spinning around our kitchen to the beat-up old radio she kept on top of the fridge. But some days are easier than others, and while it’s mostly fondness now like Luka’s mom says, it’s also a healthy dose of longing too.
Carina’s hand reaches for mine. “I sometimes forget that you lost your mother. She passed away right before I moved here, yes?”
On a Tuesday at 3:13 p.m. It had just rained, and there was a rainbow arching over a tree in the parking lot where I sat on the curb, both my legs splayed in front of me, hair plastered to my forehead. I was smoking a cigarette I got from one of the security guards, and I had never touched one before in my life. I nod. “She was sick for a while. Cancer.”
“Cancer is a terrible thing,” Carina says. She makes a short sound under her breath, a quick tsk. “I do not know if there is an easy way to lose someone, but with Leo, it was so quick. He left for work as he always did. He kissed me twice, Luka twice, and the last time I saw him, he was walking out the front door yelling over his shoulder that he wanted zucchini flowers for dinner.” She swipes under her eyes quickly with her fingertips. “He was a bossy man.”
I recognize the sadness in her words, the loneliness of remembering someone all by yourself.
“You should try to talk with Luka about him,” I offer gently. “I think it would be good for both of you.”
She nods and wipes at her face again before waving her hand between us, a finger pointed at me in mock accusation. “This is not why I came here, to cry at your table.” She pulls her hand from my grip and presses both palms flat to the tabletop, situating her body in the chair until she has me pinned with her stare. “I came for an interrogation.”
“Oh?” Now her questions feel like a welcome break from the heaviness of our conversation. This is what I was expecting when I saw her car in my driveway. I lean back in my chair and reach for a cookie from the tin. “I hope you put some tiramisu in the fridge, then.”
She laughs, a bright burst of it that lights up my small kitchen. “Oh, there you are. I was worried for a second that you’d play coy with me now that you’re dating my son.” She settles in her chair. “Now, tell me. How did you and Luka go from best friends to something more?”
I KEEP IT as close to reality as I can. I tell her that after so many years of friendship, we just sort of fell into dating each other. That in the end, dating wasn’t so different from . . . being best friends. She arched an eyebrow at that, an interested hum beneath her breath.
We talk about the kids in her classroom, her sister Eva’s foray into ballroom dance, and the ridiculousness of Ms. Beatrice and her merit-based
ordering system. It seems the only way Mrs. Peters can get a hazelnut latte is by enlisting Luka’s help as well.
It’s nice having her in my kitchen. It’s cozy and warm, and she fills the space with her loud laughter, her rings clinking along the edge of the table.
She devours the rest of her cookies and declares that she has to go bother Giana with Thanksgiving preparations, abruptly pushing back from the table and handing me a folded-up piece of notebook paper out of her back pocket with reheating instructions. She leaves with a kiss to both of my cheeks and a slightly threatening invitation to family Thanksgiving called over her shoulder.
Disappearing in a cloud of kicked-up dirt, her little Kia rumbles away down the road back to town. I watch her go with my shoulder against the banister of my front porch, the lights in the fields beginning to twinkle alive as the sun dips below the horizon. I hear my phone in the kitchen but choose to ignore it for now, watching Mother Nature paint the sky in shades of purple. Corn stalks blow gently in the breeze, the only remnant of the fall season. We’ll cut those back soon enough and fill the space with precut trees, ready for families who don’t want to make the trek all the way out into the foothills. Layla handles that portion of our business, sawing down trees and loading them up in the little tractor Beckett uses to make trips back and forth.
She says it’s good for her suppressed rage. Beckett says it’s good for his back.
When the sky finally fades to a deep indigo, I head back inside, eyeballing the phone on my counter. I don’t like arguing with Luka. I never have. Our disagreements never last long, but they always leave me feeling like I’ve put on an itchy sweater, uncomfortable in my own skin. I tap his number.
“Stella, listen.” He sounds a little bit breathless, uneven. “I’m sorry.”
I collapse onto my couch and kick my feet up on the coffee table. I drag the cable-knit throw he was using the other night over my lap. It still smells like him. “I’m sorry too.”
He exhales slowly, and I imagine him falling back into his plush couch, his arm spread wide against the back of it. “Was she—did my mom stop by?”
“She did.” I glance over my shoulder at the fridge. I wish I had grabbed that tiramisu on the way over. “She brought me food.”
Luka groans long and loud, and it pulls my belly tight. Hearing those sounds from him has never been easy, but now that I know what he tastes like, it’s borderline unbearable. I shift under my blanket. “That means she
also brought the inquisition.”
“She called it an interrogation.”
“Stella, I’m so sorry.” His voice drops lower, a little bit muffled, like he’s speaking through a pillow or his face is pressed to the nearest flat surface. “I should have been there.”
“And what would you have done? You can’t lie to your mom.”
“I absolutely can. I do it all the time. How do you think I’ve survived my mother and all her sisters? You have to be agreeable. You have to tell them their pasta sauce is the best thing you’ve ever tasted. You have to say you like smelts.”
I frown and cozy down farther in the couch, pulling the blanket up to my nose. “Do I want to know what a smelt is?”
“No. You do not.”
“She invited me to Thanksgiving,” I mumble. “So I’ll probably find out then anyway.”
“You’ll actually come?” He sounds surprised.
“Of course I will. Your mother invited me.”
He scoffs. “I have invited you. For years. And you always make excuses.”
“It’s not an excuse if I already have plans.”
“And those plans, you suddenly don’t have them this year?”
I’ll still go to the shelter in the morning and help serve meals, but I can be back in time to go to the Peters’ for Thanksgiving. It’s easy to tell myself it’s for our secret so no one suspects that we aren’t being truthful. But honestly, it would be nice to not be so alone on the holiday. I think about what Mrs.
Peters and I talked about—about remembering and happy memories. I don’t think my mom would want me wallowing alone on my couch on Thanksgiving, eating gas station food.
“I think—” I start slowly, careful with my words. Layla told me I’m allowed to enjoy this time, and I think she’s right. There’s no harm in spending a holiday with my best friend and his family. “I think I’d like to try something different.”
Luka makes a happy little sound. I hear the shuffle of fabric against leather, the clink of a glass against his coffee table. “I’m really glad to hear it.”
“Me too.” I wiggle my toes in my thick socks and pick at a loose thread in the blanket resting over my chest, hesitant to bring up what else his mom and I discussed. I want to talk with him about it, but I’m not sure how he’ll react.
“What is it?”
I chew at my bottom lip. “What is what?”
“Whatever you’re not saying.”
“Your mom and I talked about a few other things too,” I say. When he says nothing in return, I continue. “We talked about your dad a little bit. I think—I think it makes her sad that you don’t talk about him with her.”
Luka had been twelve when his father passed away. There’s never a good time to lose a parent, but Luka had to grow into a man without his dad. His mom has a picture of him in the hallway of her house, hanging just as you begin to walk up the stairs to the second floor. It’s a high school spirit night or something similar, Luka’s body gangly in the way most teenage boys’ are, his hair shaggy and unkempt. It’s a picture of all the young boys and their dads, with Luka standing proudly with his arm around his mom. Every time I’m at their house and every time I see it, I feel an overpowering rush of sadness. Because I can see it in the strain of his arms, in the weak edges of
his smile. He missed his dad.
He misses his dad.
Luka clears his throat. “Did she say what she wanted to talk about?”
“No, just that she wants to talk about him. She said talking helps keep a memory alive.”
He’s quiet for a long time at that. So quiet I check the phone several times
to make sure he hasn’t hung up on me.
“Luka.”
“He made me grilled cheese,” he says softly, a heavy pause following his declaration. I can hear the click in his throat when he swallows. He takes a deep shuddering breath in, holds it, and then releases it. I grip my phone tighter, the edges pressing indents into my palm. I wish I were with him, my knee pressed to his hip on my couch.
“He was—he was a shit cook, actually. Always blamed my mom and called her bossy in the kitchen.” I huff a laugh, thinking of Carina saying the same thing just an hour ago. “But he would make me a grilled cheese.
Whenever I was sad.”
That day at the hardware store, when Luka caught me from face-planting into the cement, he took one look at me and asked me if I wanted to get grilled cheese. Did he know I was sad? Could he tell?
I rub at my nose, the rush of fondness for this silly, stupid man overwhelming. I firm up my voice, make it as steady as possible. “You can— whenever you want to talk about him, Luka. You can.”
He’s still quiet, a stillness that I feel even through the phone. “I wish you were here right now,” he confesses.
Something squeezes in my chest. I nod and pluck at the blanket in my lap.
“Yeah. Yeah, me too.”
Another lengthy pause. His voice, quieter this time. “Thanks, La La.”
