A little while later, Julie was still finding it hard to live down Nico’s words. Not that he wasn’t right, but it made her nervous to admit it. Way too much had happened in twenty four hours and she needed to leave. She needed distance and time to let the fog clear. She couldn’t think straight with Nico so close.
Plus, she had to get home and get changed for work, so she didn’t really have the time to mull over the meaning of everything just yet.
Julie dressed in her freshly laundered shirt and pants that Nico had washed for her sometime while she was sleeping off her drunken stupor. She gave him a closed-mouth kiss goodbye, before traipsing down the stairs with a little extra bounce in her step.
As she turned the corner, hoping to find the front door—having only vaguely recalled entering the house in the first place—Julie bumped into a woman who only came up to her shoulders and wore a familiar amused expression on her face.
“Shit—”
“Dio Santo!” the woman exclaimed, holding a powdery floured hand to her chest.
At first glance, the woman could have easily been mistaken for a housekeeper, given her ruffled apron and the wooden spatula she had aimed at Julie in defense. Clearly, Julie hadn’t been expecting to run into anyone either. But, as Julie’s heart rate settled and she narrowed her gaze on a few of the minute details, the resemblance was indisputable.
The woman wore her hair in a tight bun behind her head, pulling the fine lines of her tawny skin taut. She had the same kind, warm chocolate brown eyes with sweeping lashes and thick arched brows, though her face was slightly more rounded and she had a teensy mole below her right eye.
Realization settled in and Julie knew this wasn’t just any cute little old Italian lady.
Fuck. Nico’s mom.
Immediately, Julie covered her mouth with her free hand. If her eyes opened any wider, surely they’d fall out of their sockets. Her heart began to pound again and her breath shallowed. Nico had said he’d moved back from the East Coast to take care of his mom. To live with his mom. This was Nico’s mother’s house.
Oh. My. God. Kill me. Kill me now.
Julie had just had the most amazing sex of her life in this house—with his mother in the next room. Sex, which involved loud wet body-clapping in the shower and orgasmic moans, from both of them. His mother had heard her son, her baby, fucking Julie’s brains out. She cringed. What must this woman think of me? The words whore and floozy sprang to mind.
God she needed to get out, fast.
Her gaze darted around the homely living room in search of an exit, but her feet were leaden and she hadn’t spotted the front door. The walls were closing in on her and suddenly the room was spinning.
Julie eyed Nico’s mother, but couldn’t bear the embarrassment and turned away again. She stared down at her heeled feet sinking into the long pile forest green carpet. Focus. As she lifted her gaze again, she took in the quaint space. The walls were muted in warm earth tones. A giant paisley sofa centered the matching antique wooden coffee table, end tables, and sideboard positioned around it.
Along the far wall, oval-shaped frames chronicled the highlights of Nico’s family over the years. One in the middle, in particular, showcased a beautiful sepia-tinted image of a younger version of the woman before her. Strands of gray now streamed seamlessly with her dark locks, but in the picture, her hair flowed in shiny ebony waves and her pouty lips were painted a bright candy apple shade of red. She was facing a man who Julie assumed to be Nico’s father based on the fact that he looked practically identical to Nico, but the photo paper itself had been tinged with the yellowing of a few decades of aging.
“Are you all right, Cara?” his mother asked.
Julie stared at her for a moment, confusion twisting her brow. “Cara? I, I’m Julie.”
A smile pulled at the corners of the woman’s eyes. “Si. Yes.” She shook her head. Cara means “dear” in Italian,” she explained, dusting her hands on her apron. “Allora, I know that you are Julie. You were asleep last night when my Nico brought you home. He said you weren’t feeling so well, so I’m making you something to help. I already finished the gnocchi soup. Now, I’m making you ciabatta. You’ll feel better.”
“Oh, no. It’s okay. I have to get going—”
Before Julie could finish her sentence, Nico’s mother cut her off. “Then, you’ll take it with you.” The way she said it, there was no point arguing. She clapped her hands together and turned on her heels toward the warm, hearty scent of tomatoes and herbs and fresh bread, which Julie hadn’t actually noticed until now. Although, now that she did, it explained why she was drifting, being dragged by her nose toward it.
She’d been so caught up in the awkward moment and the fact that she was meeting Nico’s mother, but she supposed it was time to start acting like a big girl and start facing things head on. No matter how scary, or sweet.
Julie walked at a glacial pace in the direction of the delicious aroma wafting through the air. In the kitchen, the beautiful older woman pulled out plastic containers. She ladled a heaping serving of the colorful soup in the larger one, and a half loaf of bread in the smaller one. As she stacked them and stuffed them into a handled paper bag, Julie just about wanted to die. There was no way this astute, kind woman hadn’t heard the intimate, practically pornographic sounds of Julie and her son this morning, but she was merciful enough not to mention it.
As Julie slinked out of Nico’s mother’s house, unhinged and frankly, a little bit edgy, she couldn’t get a certain niggling question out of her mind. Nico had explained away the kids and trail of broken hearts he’d left behind to be his family, friends, and students. Although her judgment and lie detection skills had improved some, she couldn’t help wondering whether Nico’s mother was just being nice, or if she’d just become accustomed to meeting her son’s endless line of women on their morning-after walk of shame.