It strikes me suddenly how generous Giuseppe and his family are being, allowing us entry into their home, giving us fresh clothes, a meal, a dry place to sleep.
She’s about to go, to give us privacy to change, but I catch her hand. “Grazi.”
It doesn’t feel like enough. I wish I knew more ways to thank her in Italian. I repeat it again and again. She smiles and ducks her head.
“Vestire,” she says, pointing to the clothes. Then, she mulls something over before testing her English. “Come for cena. Erm…” She’s trying to think of a word, and when she gets it, she grins. “Supper.”
Noah and I thank her again and then she leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
I drop the clothes on the bed and sort through them. There’s a long dark blue summer dress and sweater for me, pants and a linen shirt for Noah.
It’s not ideal. I don’t have a bra or underwear to put on once I take my swimsuit and cover-up off. Noah will most assuredly not fit into either the pants or the shirt. He has almost a foot on Giuseppe.
We lock eyes and shrug, coming to the same conclusion: beggars can’t be choosers.
I take my clothes and curve around Noah so my back is to him. I stop when I’m a safe distance away and drop my clothes on a short stack of boxes before I start to pull my cover-up off over my head.
We give each other privacy as we change. I don’t see an inch of Noah’s skin as he unties his board shorts and slips on his borrowed clothes, but I hear it all. I imagine everything.
For a brief moment, after I’ve pushed down my one-piece, I’m totally naked and my heart races. My skin heats and I go quicker, yanking the dress on over my head and tugging it down until it covers me completely. I look down and blanche. Without the sweater, my cleavage is indecent. I belong in the Playboy Mansion.
Noah laughs and I peer over my shoulder. In the too-tight shirt and too-short pants, he’s mid-transformation as the Hulk, about to wreak havoc on the nice folks in the Marvel Universe. The clothes must be from when Giuseppe was much, much younger.
I laugh and he looks back, sees me in my dress, and his smile melts right off his face. Oh, right. I grab my sweater and make quick work of tugging it over my head. It’s scratchy and thick and much too warm for a summer night in a house with no central air conditioning, but I don’t have a choice. I can’t go down for dinner without it.
“I wish I had a camera to document this,” Noah tells me when we finish and turn to fully face each other again.
“You and me both.” I step closer and wave my hand over his outfit. “The blackmail potential is endless.”
He hums. “I can see it now. Schoolwide newsletter. My photo, blown up, front row, center.”
I scoff. “Give me more credit than that. The newsletter is so…blasé. Barely anyone reads it. I’m thinking flyers. Pasted on every locker. I’d spring for full-color printing.”
He whistles. “That ain’t cheap.”
I shrug. “It’d be worth it.”
If someone asked me my absolute favorite thing about Noah, first, I would lie and say I don’t have a favorite thing about Noah and everything about him is bad. But in truth, it’s this: our ability to riff with one another. When we get going, we’re two musicians playing perfectly in sync. Something just…clicks.
“You’ll boil in that sweater,” he says, reaching out to feel the cuff on my right hand.
“It’s not so bad,” I lie.
His brows tug together as he stares down at where his hand is still toying with the fabric. “I could ask if they have something else you could borrow.”
“No. They’re doing enough for us as it is. This is fine.”
To prove my point, I take the elastic band from around my wrist and tie up my mass of thick wet hair into a high ponytail. Already, I feel better.
“Ready to eat?”
Downstairs, there’s a flurry of activity as Giuseppe and his family finish setting up for dinner. The small dining area is right off the kitchen. Eva delivers orders in Italian that the whole family heeds without question. Giuseppe brings two more mismatched chairs in from the living room and tugs them right up to the table, shifting every seat a little closer together. The two toddlers add forks and spoons to the place settings at the table, not quite getting it right but looking adorable all the same. Giuseppe’s daughter still has the baby on her hip while she helps plate the food and she looks like she has it under control (the way moms do), but I still feel bad not being put to use since I have two free hands.
I rush forward. “How can we help?”
Giuseppe shoos away my offer and ushers us to the table where there are already glasses filled with red wine and a basket filled with warm, steaming bread. We’re given the spots right on the end, side by side.
The smell in the house is simply…mouth-watering. My appetite hasn’t been the first thing on my mind this evening, but now I realize how starving I am.
Plates start getting carried to the table and Noah shoots to his feet to help. Once everyone has a heaping amount of food in front of them, we bow our heads as Giuseppe says an Italian prayer, and then we dig in.
“Pasta alla puttanesca,” Eva tells us, pointing her fork at the main dish she’s prepared. The pappardelle pasta has obviously been homemade. It’s covered in a thick tomato-based sauce laced with bold flavors I can’t get enough of: red wine, garlic, anchovies, olives, and capers. It’s so distinctly Italian and so delicious. Alongside it, she’s prepared crispy-tender green beans, roasted with garlic and lemon and sprinkled with pine nuts. On top of everything, there’s freshly grated parmesan. I barely come up for air after I take my first bite. It’s hands down the best meal I’ve had in Italy, and I make sure to let Eva know.
She eats up our praise, smiling wide as we voraciously clean our plates. She won’t hear of us turning down seconds either. More food gets piled on, and I sop up the tomato sauce with chunky pieces of flaky bread. The red wine pairs nicely, and I finish a glass and a half before I cut myself off.
After we’ve finished literally scraping every last morsel from our plates, I help Eva and her daughter clear the table. They try to wave me away with their dish towels, but they don’t succeed. There’s no way I’m going to let them wait on me hand and foot. I’m happy to help.
Noah ends up in the living room with Giuseppe and the kids. When I walk over to clear a few more dishes from the table, I peer in and see Noah on the floor, on his hands and knees, pretending to be a great big bear. He rears up onto his hind legs (his knees), turns his hands into claws, and growls ferociously. The toddlers squeal with delight, running around the room like they’re about to be eaten alive.
Giuseppe watches them, amused, from his perch on an overstuffed armchair, bouncing the baby on his knee.
After the kitchen is clean, Eva and her daughter disappear to give the children their bath and put them to bed. Giuseppe helps Noah charge his phone so he can call Lorenzo. I feel bad we didn’t think to do it earlier, but there was a lot going on. Apparently, Lorenzo and the kids only made it back to Rome a little while ago. There was bad traffic the whole way. Lorenzo offers to drive one of the vans and come get us, but now that it’s so late, Noah tells him to just stay put, help Gabriella and Ashley with the kids. Once the tire is fixed on the Fiat in the morning, we’ll drive back.