Pierce had slammed it at the gym for the last few weeks, and put in far more hours than the brunch cafe needed. Eventually, he’d had to pull back there, as he was in danger of cutting staff simply so he’d have enough to do to keep himself distracted.
In any case, no amount of activity or self-inflicted pain chased the guilt over his behaviour out of his head. What the hell had he been thinking? It wasn’t like him to shove himself in a woman’s face.
He jabbed the sand-filled punching bag, grunting as the impact travelled from his gloved knuckles and up into his arm.
The thing was, he hadn’t been thinking. He had acted on instinct—base, primal desire. He saw her, he liked her, he wanted her.
His left fist followed the right, muscles flexing and tensing as he swung into the leather in a strong cross, then swiped a hook from his right. He followed the moves with two swift, sharp uppercuts, the smack of knuckles against the leather forcing an explosion from his mouth each time.
The air he sucked back in between his gritted teeth was laden with the bitter odour of leather and sweat. He swiped a forearm across his dripping forehead, concentrating on the punching combinations in the hope the rhythm would shut his brain down for an hour. Get it off the loop that insisted it didn’t matter how often he told himself that Sam had flirted back, that she had maybe even given him the come-on a couple of times, it still didn’t equate to consent.
The confusion on her face when he’d stepped back made it clear she hadn’t been expecting him to kiss her. And that made him barely any better than his bloody brother.
He stalked over to the uppercut bag mounted on the wall, and slammed out a volley of punches.
‘Guess you’ve got the look for it, bro.’
The muscles across his shoulders sheeted into a tense raft, and he clenched his teeth to hold in a snarl. Think of the devil and he appears, Mum liked to say. He didn’t want to turn around. One of his more minor reasons for taking up boxing had been that Dante wasn’t into it: no doubt the sport required too much actual hard work and didn’t provide enough steroid-enhanced photo ops for his brother’s liking.
‘The look, get it?’ Dante indicated his nose, but tilted his head toward Pierce.
‘Yeah, I got it.’ His mashed nose was the result of a fight they’d had when Dante lived at his place, years earlier. Typically, Dante had figured everything that had been Pierce’s was now his. At the time, Pierce had other ideas. He snorted: how many times was he going to be proved wrong on that one?
‘Not still sore about that, bro?’ Dante chortled.
‘You were both adults. Up to you how you behave.’ He used his teeth to unknot the laces on his gloves, then stuck his fists under his armpits to yank the leather off.
‘Not what you said way back when, though, hey?’
‘Yeah, well, maybe I thought you trying to get Jem hooked on your shit wasn’t the best idea.’ Even though Jem should have known better.
And maybe, by then, Pierce should have known better than to care what she did.
‘Don’t think that’s all that bothered you, though, was it, bro?’ Dante’s trademark cocky grin faltered. ‘Look, man, I owe you an apology for that one. I was a dick. Bygones now, hey?’
Dante was full of shit, as usual. ‘It’s a big city, Dan. What are you doing in this gym?’ Pierce stalked across to the lat pulldown and grabbed his towel, slinging it around his neck.
‘Mum’s getting all antsy, wanting to know why you’ve not been around.’
‘I’ve been around.’ Trying to scrub away the simmering anger, he rubbed his face with the sweaty towel. He really should chuck it in the wash. ‘I was there for Christmas. And had dinner with them last week.’
‘So I heard. When I was out.’ Dante took on his familiar stance, hands on his hips to bulk himself out. Pierce wondered if his brother ever saw the bantam rooster in the mirror. ‘Mum means why haven’t you been around for a family dinner. Or come to the tratt to eat?’
‘Mum can speak for herself.’ And she had. Volubly, swapping between Italian and Australian, her hands flying.
He had seen his parents half-a-dozen times over the last month and a half. And not one visit had been without rapid-fire recriminations—loud, fast and vehement enough to make him occasionally second-guess whether he actually had done them wrong. But he only had to think of his brother, swooping in to grab everything he’d worked toward, to get over that idea.
At first, Mum tried to make it sound like they all believed Pierce was taking a break from the trattoria, a well-deserved holiday, with bloody Dante being nice enough to step in to cover him. Then she moved on to mute denial that they had shoved him aside to save Dante. Instead, she talked about next week’s menu and that day’s customers, as though he and Dante worked side by side at the tratt. As though he still retained a shred of interest in the restaurant.
Dad didn’t say a word, just pushed his food around the plate and changed the subject as soon as possible. Every time. He’d never known Dad to have any interest in football, current affairs or climate change, but they were sure as hell covering it all now.
In a way, it was good: the guilt he’d felt at leaving his parents in Dante’s hands was tempered by his anger—no, his frustration—at their denial of their part in it. And that made it easier to move on. He wasn’t going to hold onto the past any longer.
Pierce stuffed his gloves in his bag. ‘Tell them I’ll be round tomorrow.’
‘I’m home tomorrow,’ Dante said, his tone oddly somewhere between hopeful and apologetic.
‘Suit yourself. The tratt is shut, so I’ll come for dinner.’ ‘Cool, bro!’ Dante slapped him heartily on the shoulder. ‘Mum will be stoked.’
Maybe not when she found out the plan that had slowly grown in his mind, like dough proving on a warm windowsill.
He was right. Mum threw her flour-covered hands up and acted like he had lost his mind. ‘No, non uscire di casa!’ she wailed.
‘I don’t live at home, Mum, so I can’t be leaving,’ he remarked mildly. Unless he was mistaken, his father looked relieved. Dad was never confrontational, he just wanted his wife and sons happy. This was the best way to achieve it for all of them. ‘In any case, I’ll be back and forth for a couple of months. Maybe until Easter.’ He’d had to think long and hard about whether to rip the bandaid off and only tell them when he was on his way out the door, or ease them into acceptance. Right now, he regretted not simply sending a postcard.
‘And the cafe?’ Dad said.
‘You know the breakfast business is quiet after Christmas and well into the New Year. I’ve been using the downtime to train Stefan. He’s keen for as many extra hours as he can get, anyway.’
‘And you’re okay with that? Just walking away and letting him run it like it’s his own place?’ Dad was a firm believer in keeping business in the family. As he said many times, he’d take his last breath in the trattoria.
It took everything in Pierce not to point out that, thanks to that philosophy, he already had experience in walking away. ‘I’m not really feeling it lately. I need to change things up.’
His mind was definitely somewhere else. At first, he’d thought the old river paddle-steamer was constantly in his thoughts because he tied it to Sam. But gradually he had realised the creaking timbers and dusty windows of the vessel had an odd magic of their own. A yearning quality. The more he thought about Pelicanet, exploring the boat in his mind, adding the areas he hadn’t seen, even researching paddle-wheelers online to get an idea of the layout, the more it seemed that a piece of history was in danger of disappearing—and, having identified the risk, he would be responsible if he chose not to do anything about it.
‘But if you go, who will make the bomboloni, the tiramisu?’ Mum slapped a ball of dough on the counter. ‘I can’t do it all the time.’ She managed to sound like she’d been picking up his slack.
‘Dante will step up, I’m sure.’ He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Okay, so telling himself he was the big man who could move on without glancing back apparently didn’t extend to not taking a shot at his brother when the opportunity presented.
Dante nodded seriously, picking up a piece of the dough Mum had rolled. ‘I tried biscotti this week. Right, Mum?’ Their mother waved him away crossly. ‘Si, si. But that is not cannoli and bomboloni and crostata, now is it?’ She was doing a fantastic job of ignoring the fact that Pierce hadn’t worked in the tratt for well over a month. ‘Do the patroni want a biscuit for dessert? Of course not. Biscotti is for coffee.’
Pierce noted with relief that her mood had changed from devastated to irritated. Snappy Mum was much easier to deal with. He did actually feel sorry for Dante, though. Oddly, the flash of compassion made him feel better about himself: it was exhausting holding on to such intense dislike, no matter how warranted. ‘How did the biscotti end up?’
Dante shot him a glance that flickered between suspicious and grateful. The lack of trust clearly went both ways. ‘Not too bad. I did triple chocolate and nut.’
‘Start with hazelnut. It’s simple, classic. And don’t use butter or oil. Eggs only, or they go soft.’
Dante nodded too eagerly. ‘Done. And I was thinking, for Easter, I’d try a white and dark chocolate and nutmeg tiramisu. You know, mix it up, get with the season.’
Pierce was a purist, didn’t like bastardised Italian food himself, but at least Dante seemed to be following up his usual hot air and big plans with some actual effort.
It wouldn’t last long, though. Never did.
Still, not his problem, he reminded himself.
Mum finished running the cutter across the sheets of pasta with flamboyant, angry movements, and he picked up the tray of floured tagliatelli. ‘You’ve got the sauce under control, Dan?’ he asked as he slid the ribbons into the steaming, salted pot.
‘Vino bianco e funghi.’ Dante nodded toward the copper-based frypan.
Pierce hadn’t needed to ask, he could smell the mushrooms in white wine, and it had taken everything in him not to cross the room, test the sauce, adjust it with a pinch of this, a dash of that. It hurt being back in the kitchen he had made his own, and seeing Dante banging around with his pans, his cleaver, his stuff. Yet the pain wasn’t as sharp as he’d anticipated. Instead, he was buoyed by a sense of reprieve, a feeling of having escaped a lengthy sentence, rather than losing a legacy. Maybe it was because he was finally allowing himself to dream bigger than running a cafe and working at a family restaurant.
No, it was the realisation that he had options, that he could pursue whatever the hell he wanted in life now.
Whoever he wanted.
He turned away from the steaming pot, banging a colander into the sink as though the cymbal clash could banish the thought.
‘You’ve made Mum happy,’ Dad said quietly as a glass of red appeared at Pierce’s elbow.
‘By saying I’m leaving town?’ he joked. It wasn’t like Dad to do the serious stuff.
‘By being here now. Relationships aren’t easy, Pierce. You, of all people, know that. Family is no different. Everyone has needs. It’s all about balancing. Sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we don’t.’
Despite the unwanted reminder of his own history, it was probably as close to an apology as Dad would get.
‘I get it, Dad,’ he murmured as Mum loudly oversaw Dante’s sauce making. ‘You’ve done what you think you have to. But you know the risk in having Dante in here.’
Dad stared into his own wine glass. ‘A father takes risks for his son. For both sons. They might be different risks, but they are still there.’
Pierce firmed his jaw belligerently. He knew what Dad was getting at: he had trusted Pierce to run the trattoria years ago, and that had been an act of faith. But that didn’t make it right to lump him in the same category as Dante.