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“Frittata di maccheroni.” Carmela sits down across from us. “It originates from Naples—my grandmother’s recipe. Leftover pasta, eggs, cheese. Whatever is good in the pantry.”

“It’s delicious,” Ellise murmurs savouring her first bite.

“It’s a quick recipe you make at midnight when two stubborn people haven’t eaten properly all day.” Carmela sighs, shaking her head as she wipes down the counter while muttering even more Italian.

Ellise looks up from her plate, her fork pausing halfway to her mouth. “How did you know?”

Carmela offers a knowing smile. “I always know, amore mio.”

“Seriously, this is the best thing I’ve tasted in a long while. Thank you so much, Carmela." Ellise pauses, a faint flush dusting her cheeks. “And… thank you for all the other food you’ve been feeding me for weeks. It’s all been incredible.”

Carmela pauses wiping the counter, her eyes softening as she looks at the girl sitting in front of her. A fond, gentle smile touches her lips, the polite distance she’d maintained for weeks dissolving completely.

“It is my absolute pleasure, Ellise. You are welcome in this kitchen anytime,” Carmela says. “Anytime at all. Make sure you come down and say hello to me next time, instead of hiding up in his room.”

She points directly at me.

“Thank you, I will,” Ellise replies.

I focus on my frittata, shovelling another bite into my mouth to keep it shut. If I say a single word right now, it is going to be something I regret, and Carmela will leverage it against me for the next year.

She catches my eye over Ellise’s head, giving me a smug, triumphant look.

“Now,” Carmela begins, leaning her elbows on the island and resting her chin in her hands. “Tell me about the shop and about tonight. I've been waiting weeks to hear all about it."

Ellise’s face lights up instantly. She tells her everything—her hands moving through the air, completely animated as she describes the jazz guitarist, the poets, and the journalist from the Times.

Her passion fills the quiet kitchen. Carmela and I sit back, watching her. Neither of us wants to interrupt the radiant joy tumbling out of her.

“Three times,” Ellise says, shaking her head with an affectionate smile. “My mom cried at least three times in the span of an hour.”

“Four,” I correct her around a forkful of food. “You missed the one in the poetry section.”

Ellise looks at me sideways, her blue eyes sparkling. “You counted?”

“I was paying attention. She was pretty adorable.”

“Poor Mom,” she murmurs. “Tonight was a lot for her to process. She loved every single second of it though, Julian. Truly.”

Carmela looks across the table at me, her eyes glittering with a knowing warmth. I don’t even need her to utter a word. I know exactly what she is thinking. I continue eating my frittata, my focus entirely on my plate so I don’t give Carmela the satisfaction of seeing me blush.

“It sounds like a magnificent evening,” Carmela says to Ellise. “Does your mom run the shop alone?”

“Since my dad died, yes,” Ellise answers calmly, though the weight settles over her posture. “He was the one who had the original vision for the shop, but since he passed, it’s just… gotten more difficult to keep it afloat without him there. Tonight felt like the version of it he always imagined it could be. When I was little, we used to have music and local poets in the shop all the time, but tonight felt different. It was brimming with genuine love of the two things that he loved the most—music and literature.”

Carmela is very still for a moment.

“Then it was exactly right,” she says simply, her voice thick with maternal empathy.

Ellise looks across at her, and a silent understanding passes between them. Two people recognising shared grief and fiercely guarded love across a kitchen table at one in the morning.

By one-thirty, Carmela finally prepares to go to bed. She stands up, removes her stained apron, and says goodbye to Ellise with the biggest hug and soft kiss on the forehead. On the way out, she catches my eye, flashing a wide, elated grin that tells me she is extremely pleased with how things turned out and is already orchestrating our future.

Then it’s the two of us left at the table.

Ellise looks down at the empty pan, her fingers tracing the empty plate in front of her, mopping up the leftover sauce.

“She loves you,” she states quietly, looking up at me through her lashes.