In Love With My Ex's Cousin

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Elena

Saturday did not begin with Luca Moretti.

It began with laundry, a grocery bag that split at the bottom of the stairwell, and a call from the Hawthorne clients at ten-seventeen asking whether the sculptural sofa could also be “a little less sculptural.” I stood in my kitchen in leggings and an oversized shirt, tomatoes rolling toward the fridge, and told them I would send two options by Monday.

Then I picked up the tomatoes.

That was the morning I had promised myself: ordinary, useful, mine. I put the washing on. I wiped the counter. I ate standing up because sitting down would have made the day feel like it was waiting for six-thirty.

At noon Sofia arrived with coffee and no warning.

“You look like a woman about to pretend a site visit is just a site visit,” she said, setting a cup on the counter.

“It is a site visit.”

“At six-thirty on a Saturday. In an empty apartment. With him.”

I took the coffee. “The light is the point. I can’t specify window treatments from a photograph.”

Sofia leaned against the counter and looked at me the way she did when she had already decided not to argue. “I’m not telling you not to go. I’m telling you to come back out of that building as the same person who went in.”

“I intend to.”

She stayed long enough to steal an apple and tell me about a campaign that was falling apart in the most expensive way possible. I listened. I asked the right questions. For twenty minutes the day belonged to her work and not to mine. When she left, she paused at the door.

“Text me when you’re done.”

“I will.”

I spent the afternoon on the revised drawings. Seating turned away from the windows. More storage in the bedroom, as requested. The office left alone. I printed the pages I would need and slid them into a thin portfolio. Then I changed.

Dark trousers. A black knit that would not look out of place in an unfinished room. Flat boots. Hair up. The gold hoops. I looked like myself on a Saturday site visit.

The building was quieter in the evening. The lobby lights were warmer. The man at the desk nodded once, as if Saturday had already been written into his instructions.

The elevator opened at 6:27.

Luca was there.

He stood in the living room with his back to the windows this time, as if he had already accepted the change I had drawn. No jacket. Dark shirt. The same stillness. He looked at the portfolio in my hand before he looked at my face.

“You’re on time.”

“So are you.”

The light was the reason I had come, and it was doing exactly what I had expected. Late sun struck the river first, then the glass, then the floor in a long pale sheet that would become glare if we left the windows untreated. I walked the room without waiting for permission and stopped where the seating would go.

“This is the problem,” I said. “At this hour the view stops being a view. It becomes a light source. If the sofa faces it, no one sits. They squint.”

He came to stand a few feet away, not close enough to crowd the point. “And if it faces the interior wall?”

“Then the river is something you turn toward when you want it. Not something that sits in your face until you leave the room.”

He considered that. “Keep it.”

I made a note I did not need. Writing it down kept the conversation where it belonged.

We moved to the bedroom next. The storage I had added ran along the inner wall, clean and closed. He opened one of the empty cupboard spaces as if measuring it against a life I had not been shown.

“This is enough,” he said.

“Good.”

The office needed nothing. I said so. He accepted that without argument, which I was beginning to understand was not the same thing as disinterest. He only spoke when the speaking changed a decision.

Back in the living room the light had shifted again, colder now, the river turning from gold to grey. I stood at the balcony doors and watched the change the way I watched all materials: for what they would do tomorrow, not for how they looked in one generous minute.

“Sheer and a heavier layer,” I said. “The sheer keeps the day. The second layer gives you the quiet you asked for after six.”

“Do it.”

I turned from the glass. The work for the evening was finished. There was no polite reason left to stay.

“I’ll send the treatment options Monday,” I said.

“That’s fine.”

I slipped the portfolio under my arm.

“Sunday’s tomorrow.”

His expression did not change, but something in his attention sharpened. “It is.”

“I wasn’t asking.” I adjusted the strap on my shoulder. “I only meant I won’t need you on site. Monday is enough.”

“I know.”

We stood in the last of the light. I could have filled the silence. Clients often did, once the work paused. He did not. I did not either.

“Goodnight, Luca.”

“Goodnight, Elena.”

I left first.

The elevator doors closed.

Downstairs I texted Sofia from the lobby.

Done. Window treatments Monday. I’m going home.

Her reply came before I reached the sidewalk.

Same person?

I looked back once at the fifth-floor windows. From the street they were only glass and evening.

Yes.

It was true enough to send.