In Love With My Ex's Cousin

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Luca

Sunday was supposed to stay indoors.

Luca had work on the dining table he almost never used: a contract clause, a note from legal, a logistics summary that could wait until Monday and would not. The penthouse was quiet. That was the point of it. He had already declined Matteo’s club invitation on Friday. He had already sent him two firm names. The week, as far as he was concerned, was finished.

At eleven-forty the intercom rang.

Matteo’s voice came through before Luca had decided whether to answer.

“Don’t pretend you’re not home. The car is downstairs. Put on a coat.”

“I’m working.”

“You’re hiding. There’s a difference.” A pause, lighter. “Mother asked me to look at a chair she wants moved from the storage house. I am not doing it alone, and Adrian has conveniently gone to the gym. Thirty minutes. Then you can return to your cave.”

It was not a café.

It was not social.

It was an errand with Matteo attached.

Luca looked at the contract. Then he looked at the door.

“Thirty minutes.”

“I’ll believe it when you’re in the car.”

The storage house sat behind Matteo’s mother’s property, a low brick building that held furniture the family did not use and refused to sell. Luca knew it. He had been there as a boy. He had not been there in years. That was the kind of request Matteo made when a direct invitation would have been refused: wrap the outing in family, make refusal look like neglect.

The drive was short. Matteo talked the whole way. The summer house. A woman he was seeing who laughed too loudly. The two firms Luca had sent, which he described as tasteful and dead.

“You still won’t give me the one you used,” Matteo said, taking a corner too quickly.

“They’re occupied.”

“With curtains.”

“With a job.”

Matteo glanced at him. “You’re very loyal to a contractor.”

“I’m loyal to finishing something I started.”

That ended it for the length of a traffic light. Matteo turned up the radio, then turned it down again, unable to sit inside a silence he had not chosen.

The storage house smelled of dust and old wood. The chair was obvious: dark, carved, heavier than it needed to be. Matteo declared it ugly and important in the same breath. They moved it between them to the back of the house, where a housekeeper pointed to a corner and thanked Luca as if he had done more than lift.

Twenty minutes. Not thirty.

Matteo clapped dust from his hands. “Coffee. Don’t argue. There’s a place on the way back that does not require you to enjoy yourself.”

“No.”

“Luca.” Matteo’s voice lost the joke, only briefly. “You came this far. Sit down for ten minutes so I don’t have to tell Mother you helped and then vanished like a man avoiding his own family.”

It was an unkind sentence dressed as a practical one. It was also effective.

Luca followed him to the café on the corner because the alternative was another conversation about absence. He did not take off his coat. He ordered nothing he would finish. Matteo ordered for both of them anyway and talked about October, about the boat, about a dinner that had gone well because Matteo had decided it had gone well.

Luca listened enough to be present. He did not offer the apartment. He did not offer a name. When Matteo asked whether the new place had furniture yet, Luca said, “Not yet,” and left it there.

They were in the café for twelve minutes.

On the pavement afterward Matteo stretched as if the morning had been exercise.

“That wasn’t fatal.”

“It was an errand.”

“Call it whatever lets you sleep.” Matteo’s smile came back. “I’m taking the chair as proof you can still be extracted from a building. I’ll use it.”

Luca got into his own car when they reached the penthouse block. He did not invite Matteo up. Matteo did not ask. That, at least, still worked.

Upstairs, Luca washed his hands, hung the coat, and stood at the window with the city laid out in hard Sunday light. He had left the apartment because Matteo had made leaving look like duty. He had sat in a café because Matteo had made sitting look like the cheaper cost.

That was the mechanism. Not preference. Not company.

He returned to the contract. The clause was still wrong. He corrected it, sent the note to legal, and closed the laptop at three.

Adrian called at four.

“Matteo says he got you outside.”

“He needed help moving a chair.”

“Of course he did.” Adrian sounded almost amused. “Did he ask about the firm again?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I repeated myself.”

“Good.” A pause. “Monday the installer is at Riverside.”

“I know.”

“Are you going?”

“No. The desk has access. The designer will handle it.”

Adrian did not argue. “All right. I’m not calling tomorrow unless something burns.”

After the call Luca ate without sitting, then sat anyway because the day had already been pulled out of shape once. He thought of the café only as a room he had not chosen. He thought of Matteo’s question only as a question that would return.

Monday the windows would go up.

He would be at the office.

If Matteo wanted another chair moved, he could find Adrian.

Luca turned off the lamp in the living room and left the contract in a folder for the morning. Sunday had not stayed indoors. That did not mean he intended to make a habit of it.

It only meant Matteo still knew which requests were harder to refuse.