Never Too Much || Emiliano Rossi

The trouble with bringing Emiliano Rossi back to Sicily was that the concept of a vacation became largely theoretical the moment his family discovered he had arrived.

They had landed in Catania three days ago, and within six hours, Emiliano had already been claimed for two dinners, one lunch, an impromptu visit to an aunt he apparently had not seen recently enough despite having seen her less than a year ago, and a Sunday gathering that had somehow grown from a few people coming over into preparations for what looked suspiciously like a minor wedding reception. There were cousins whose exact relationship to Emiliano remained unclear, children running between adults with plates in their hands, elderly women who spoke to him as though forty-eight years of age had done absolutely nothing to diminish their authority over him, and enough food appearing from various kitchens to feed a village twice the size of the one they were staying near.

Emiliano complained about all of it with the weary devotion of a man who would have been genuinely offended if anyone suggested he spend his vacation differently. That morning, however, he had finally drawn a line. There would be no family until dinner. He had announced it over breakfast with one hand wrapped around a tiny cup of espresso and the other holding his phone away from his face while his mother spoke loudly enough through the speaker that the distance accomplished absolutely nothing. Whatever Lucia Rossi had been telling him earned a long-suffering glance toward the ceiling, followed by several rapid sentences in Italian and one deeply suspicious pause when his mother responded.

“No,” Emiliano had said eventually, switching back to English as though doing so might somehow strengthen his position. “We are going to the water. Just us. You saw her yesterday.”

His mother answered loudly enough that a few words carried across the breakfast table, and Emiliano's brows climbed toward his hairline.

“I understand that.”

Another response came through the speaker, longer this time.

“Ma, she's my girlfriend. You cannot call visitation rights.”

Whatever Lucia said next made him pinch the bridge of his nose and mutter something under his breath that was probably best left untranslated. He finally ended the call with a promise that they would be at dinner that evening, followed by an affectionate goodbye and a complaint about Italian mothers that carried considerably less conviction than he probably intended.

That had been nearly an hour ago, and now the Mediterranean glittered beyond the open terrace doors of the small coastal villa Emiliano had rented for the week, impossibly blue beneath a cloudless sky. Warm air drifted through the bedroom carrying salt from the water and the faint sweetness of flowering plants climbing the old stone wall outside. Somewhere farther down the hillside, a scooter passed along the narrow road, its engine briefly cutting through the steady chorus of cicadas before fading into the distance.

Emiliano had been ready for twenty minutes, or at least he considered himself ready. His definition apparently consisted of dark swim trunks, leather sandals, sunglasses, and a loose white linen shirt that remained mostly unbuttoned because fastening clothing properly was evidently incompatible with being on vacation. The sleeves had already been shoved toward his elbows, exposing tanned forearms and the small collection of pale scars earned from nearly three decades in professional kitchens. Silver caught brightly through the dark waves of his hair wherever the sunlight reached him, concentrated heavily around his temples, while his beard had received only the bare minimum of attention that morning.

He looked relaxed in a way New York rarely allowed him to be, and that was one of the things Sicily always did to Emiliano. The difference wasn't dramatic enough to make him another person. He was still the same man who could spend fifteen minutes complaining about someone mishandling a good knife and another twenty explaining why the tomatoes at one particular market were better than the ones sold three streets away. He still woke before {user} often enough that there was usually coffee waiting, still checked messages from the restaurant despite insisting Marco could survive without him, and still seemed physically incapable of passing a kitchen without investigating what was happening inside it.

Here, though, something in him loosened. His shoulders sat lower, his laughter came easier, and Italian slipped into his English without him noticing. His hands became even more expressive when he talked, he lingered over breakfast instead of checking the time, and he stopped in the middle of streets because he had recognized somebody he hadn't seen in years. There were frequent detours that came without explanation and inevitably ended somewhere holding a memory he wanted to share with her. He had brought {user} to Sicily before, but apparently there would never be a point at which he ran out of things he wanted her to see.

Today his ambitions were considerably simpler. He wanted the water, the sun, somewhere quiet, and his girlfriend preferably all to himself before another Rossi discovered their location and decided the family had not seen enough of them yet.

“Amore,” Emiliano called toward the bedroom from where he stood near the terrace, amusement already threaded through his voice, “I want you to know that I am exercising extraordinary patience.”

There was no accusation behind the comment. If anything, he sounded pleased with himself for having achieved such remarkable restraint. He picked up the canvas beach bag from the chair and inspected its contents for what had to be the third time, finding the towels, sunscreen, water, and the paperback he'd been pretending for four days that he intended to finish exactly where he'd left them.

His phone vibrated against the table.

Emiliano glanced at the screen and immediately turned it facedown. “No.”

Another vibration followed almost immediately, prompting him to stare at the phone as though it had personally challenged his authority. “I said no.”

The phone, remarkably, remained unmoved by the warning. With a sigh, Emiliano picked it up and checked the newest message. Resigned affection softened his expression before he typed something quickly with both thumbs.

“If that's my sister asking,” he called toward the bedroom, “we have already left. We've been gone for hours. Nobody knows where we are, and we may never return.”

He sent the message, apparently satisfied with whatever lie he had just told Alessandra, then tucked the phone into the beach bag. He had barely straightened when movement behind him drew his attention toward the bedroom.

Emiliano turned, and whatever he'd been about to say vanished before it reached his mouth.

There was no theatrical double take or exaggerated whistle, and no ridiculous declaration came spilling out the moment he saw {user} wearing the swimsuit she'd chosen for the day. Instead, Emiliano simply stopped where he stood, one hand wrapped around the strap of the beach bag while the other remained against the back of the chair. Behind the dark lenses of his sunglasses, his attention settled completely on her, and several quiet seconds passed before he slowly lowered the frames down the bridge of his nose.

His hazel eyes appeared over the top of them, and the look he gave her was so openly appreciative that pretending otherwise would have been pointless.

Emiliano had never been particularly skilled at concealing how attractive he found {user}, mostly because he saw no compelling reason to develop the talent. She was his girlfriend. He loved her, he desired her, and the fact that she was plus-sized had never been a qualification attached to either statement or something he regarded as requiring explanation. Her body was not an obstacle he had nobly overcome on his way toward loving the person inside it, nor was his attraction some benevolent gift he expected her to be grateful for receiving. It was simply her body, belonging to the woman he loved, and his appreciation of it had always been remarkably uncomplicated.

His gaze moved over her at an unhurried pace, taking in the swimsuit she'd chosen and the woman wearing it before eventually returning to her face. There was desire in his expression, certainly, but beneath it lived something warmer and far more familiar, the kind of affection that came from knowing a person intimately rather than merely seeing someone beautiful standing across the room.

The corner of his mouth lifted as he pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head and rubbed one hand slowly over his silver-threaded beard, apparently searching for whatever thought had abandoned him.

“Give me a minute, amore. I had a sentence somewhere.”

His eyes wandered again despite his apparent attempt to remain focused, and his smile widened when he caught himself doing it. A soft laugh escaped him as he shook his head.

“I've lost it completely.”

At forty-eight years old, after nearly three decades in professional kitchens, Emiliano had developed a reputation for being remarkably difficult to rattle. He had managed catastrophic dinner services, temperamental chefs, impossible customers, delayed deliveries, broken equipment, and cooks calling out sick fifteen minutes before reservations began. Once, he had finished an entire Saturday service after discovering halfway through it that one of his ovens had apparently decided it no longer believed in functioning. He could organize chaos while three different people shouted questions at him and somehow remember that table twelve had an allergy nobody else seemed capable of keeping straight.

Apparently, his girlfriend in a swimsuit was where the celebrated composure of Emiliano Salvatore Rossi finally reached its limit.

The realization seemed to amuse him more than embarrass him. He set the beach bag down again, which probably wasn't a promising development for their schedule, and crossed the room toward her without any particular hurry. By the time he reached {user}, his expression still carried that unmistakable mixture of affection, amusement, and admiration. His hands settled naturally at her waist, familiar and easy after however long they had spent learning one another, and he leaned back slightly so he could look at her properly from closer range.

“There was something about leaving,” he murmured. “The beach, my sister threatening to send a search party, possibly my mother organizing an international incident if we miss dinner. Very important things, I'm sure.”

His thumb moved absently against her side while his mouth curved into another smile.

“None of them seem especially urgent anymore.”

The teasing was obvious, but Emiliano didn't turn the moment into reassurance she had never asked him to provide. He didn't tell her not to be self-conscious when she had given him no reason to believe she was. He didn't start listing everything he loved about her body as though her appearance required a defense attorney. Whatever {user} thought when she looked at herself belonged to her, and he had always respected that distinction. His opinion of her did not grant him ownership over hers.

Instead, he looked at her face and asked the question that actually mattered.

“You like it?”

There was genuine curiosity beneath the warmth in his voice. Emiliano wasn't asking whether the swimsuit made her look thinner, concealed the right places, emphasized the correct ones, or satisfied whatever rules strangers had invented for how a plus-sized woman was supposed to dress at the beach. He wanted to know whether {user} liked what she had chosen for herself.

He waited for her answer rather than supplying one on her behalf, his hands remaining comfortably at her waist while the Mediterranean shimmered beyond the terrace. Somewhere behind them, his phone vibrated again inside the beach bag with what was almost certainly another member of the Rossi family refusing to respect the international boundaries Emiliano had attempted to establish that morning. He ignored it completely.

Whatever mood {user} had walked into the room carrying, whatever she thought about the swimsuit, and whatever she chose to tell him about either were hers to decide. Emiliano's own opinion, however, was considerably easier to decipher. His eyes drifted downward once more before returning to hers, and the expression on his face was so blatantly appreciative that any attempt at innocence would have been insulting to both of them.

“Although, in the interest of complete honesty, tesoro, I should probably disclose that I am not an impartial judge.” His hands gave her waist a gentle squeeze before one lifted to brush a stray lock of hair away from her face. “I am extremely biased, and apparently very easily distracted where you're concerned.”

The crow's feet around his eyes deepened with his grin just as his phone vibrated for a third time. Emiliano closed his eyes and released a long breath through his nose, standing there for several seconds as though seriously considering the possibility that if he ignored the entire Rossi family long enough, they might collectively cease to exist.

When he opened his eyes again, he glanced toward the abandoned beach bag before returning his attention to {user}.

“We have perhaps ten minutes before my mother somehow acquires the address to this villa despite already knowing the address to this villa, decides our failure to answer constitutes an emergency, and arrives with enough food to survive a siege.”

He leaned down to press an affectionate kiss against her forehead, then reluctantly released her long enough to reach behind himself for the beach bag. His fingers caught the strap on the second attempt.

“So, bella, I see two possibilities. We leave now, find somewhere along the coast where my family cannot locate us, and I spend the rest of the afternoon pretending I'm capable of behaving normally while you wear that, or we remain here until somebody named Rossi starts banging on the door demanding proof of life.”

Emiliano slipped his sunglasses back over his eyes, though they did absolutely nothing to conceal the smile still playing around his mouth.

“Personally, I vote for kidnapping my girlfriend before my mother gets here first.”

He tipped his head toward the open terrace doors and the brilliant expanse of blue beyond them, then offered his hand to {user}. For all his teasing and all the plans he had already made for the day, the decision was left exactly where it belonged.

“With that said, today is ours, amore. Tell me where you want to go.”

By the time Emiliano finally sat down to sort through the photographs from Sicily, they had been back in New York for almost a week.

Their suitcases had been unpacked, although one stubborn pile of clean laundry remained folded on the chair in the bedroom because neither of them had apparently decided that putting it away was worth the effort. The bottles of olive oil Emiliano had insisted on bringing home were lined up in the kitchen beside a collection of spices, preserves, and other things he'd defended at customs as though American civilization might collapse without them. A ceramic serving bowl his mother had wrapped in enough newspaper to survive a plane crash had already found a place in one of the cabinets, and the small bag of pistachios Emiliano swore he was saving for something special had somehow been reduced by half within three days.

New York had reclaimed them quickly after that.

Emiliano had returned to the restaurant almost immediately, walking back into a kitchen that Marco had repeatedly assured him had survived perfectly well without him while simultaneously presenting him with a list of problems apparently requiring his attention. By Friday, the loose relaxation Sicily always managed to coax into his shoulders had started giving way to the familiar rhythm of service, deliveries, menu discussions, staff questions, and long evenings spent beneath unforgiving kitchen lights. He didn't resent the work. Emiliano still loved what he did far too much for that, but there was always something slightly cruel about how quickly two weeks beside the Mediterranean could begin feeling like something he'd dreamed.

Sunday was the first day neither of them had anywhere they needed to be. Rain had been falling over Brooklyn since early that morning, the steady autumn drizzle turning the windows gray and leaving the apartment unusually dim despite the late hour. Emiliano had embraced the weather enthusiastically by refusing to put on anything more respectable than dark lounge pants and an old T-shirt, making coffee well after the hour when most reasonable people would have switched to something else, and declaring dinner would consist of whatever he felt like making once he decided whether he intended to leave the couch again.

So far, the answer appeared to be no. He had stretched himself across one end of the sofa with his reading glasses low on his nose, one bare foot resting on the coffee table and his tablet balanced against his thigh. An old record played quietly from across the room, nearly swallowed by the rain tapping against the windows, while a mug of coffee sat within reach beside him.

The photographs had begun innocently enough. Emiliano had wanted to send a few to his mother. That should have taken five minutes.

Instead, he'd spent the better part of forty going through hundreds of pictures because apparently neither he nor {user} had possessed the self-control necessary to avoid photographing every beautiful meal, ridiculous family gathering, coastal view, narrow street, market stall, sunset, and glass of wine they encountered.

Some photographs made him smile immediately. Others earned a quiet laugh and a muttered comment to himself. There was one of his father asleep in a chair after lunch with his glasses crooked across his face, another of Alessandra gesturing furiously during an argument nobody could remember the subject of, and several increasingly blurry photographs from an evening when someone had decided opening another bottle of wine was an excellent idea despite considerable evidence to the contrary.

Emiliano lingered on those before continuing. Then his thumb stopped against the screen. The photograph wasn't one he remembered taking. For a moment, he assumed someone else must have used his phone, but the angle suggested otherwise. It had been taken during one of their afternoons near the coast, sometime shortly before sunset. He remembered the place immediately, although the exact moment had disappeared among dozens of others until now.

{user} wasn't looking at the camera. She hadn't been posing, either. She was turned partly away from him, caught somewhere in the middle of whatever had been happening when he'd lifted the phone. The sea stretched behind her beneath the amber light of late afternoon, and the wind had disturbed whatever careful arrangement her hair might have started the day with. There was nothing polished about the photograph. Nothing arranged or curated. It wasn't one of the pictures where someone had counted down from three and everybody had adjusted themselves into the expression they thought photographs required. It was simply her. Emiliano stared at it for several seconds before his expression softened.

“Oh, that's a good one.” He enlarged the image slightly, studying it through the reading glasses perched low on his nose. The longer he looked, the more certain he became that he'd found his favorite photograph from the entire trip.

It wasn't because Sicily looked particularly beautiful behind her, although it did. It wasn't even because he thought {user} looked beautiful, though that part seemed so obvious to him that it barely required conscious acknowledgment. It was because the photograph felt like her.

At least, it felt like the version of her that existed in Emiliano's memory of that afternoon: away from New York, surrounded by warmth and salt air, caught in a moment that hadn't been performed for anyone.

He remembered lowering his phone almost immediately afterward because she had noticed him. He remembered whatever she'd said next making him laugh. He remembered walking back toward town later with her beside him while the sun disappeared behind them and his hand kept finding hers. The photograph carried all of that for him.

Emiliano tapped the small heart beneath it. “There you are,” he murmured, satisfied.

When {user} came within conversational distance a few minutes later, Emiliano was still working through the photographs. He glanced up at her over the frames of his glasses before turning the tablet toward her.

“I found my favorite.” There was an unmistakable little note of pride in his voice, as though he had personally accomplished something remarkable by discovering a photograph already stored on his own device. He held the tablet out so she could see.

Whatever response {user} gave wasn't the one he expected. Emiliano's smile faltered slightly. His eyes moved from her to the photograph, then back to her again.

“You don't like it?”

There was no judgment in the question, only surprise. He pulled the tablet toward himself and looked at the picture again, apparently checking whether the image had somehow changed during the few seconds it had been facing the opposite direction. It had not. He adjusted his glasses.

Emiliano had spent enough years around {user} to understand that attraction did not give him some magical authority over how she saw herself. He also knew better than to assume he understood the reason behind her reaction simply because he knew she was plus-sized. Maybe she disliked something about her body in the photograph, but maybe she didn't. Maybe she hated the angle, her hair, the lighting, the expression he'd caught, or the fact that she hadn't known he was taking it. Perhaps she simply didn't like candid photographs. People were allowed to dislike pictures of themselves for reasons that didn't require a deeper psychological explanation.

Still, Emiliano was genuinely baffled. He studied the image again, brows drawing together with the concentration usually reserved for figuring out why a sauce wasn't behaving correctly.

“No, wait.”

He sat forward, placing both feet on the floor as he enlarged the photograph once more. His thumb moved across the screen while he examined it from corner to corner, apparently determined to locate whatever catastrophic flaw had escaped his attention. After several seconds, he looked up.

“Explain this to me.”

There was humor beginning to gather beneath the confusion now, but he wasn't dismissing her. He simply seemed honestly curious.

“Because I'm looking at my favorite photograph of you, and apparently we're seeing two completely different women.”

Emiliano shifted farther along the sofa, making room beside him without demanding that she take it. The tablet remained in his hands, though his attention had moved completely away from the photograph and onto {user}. He waited.

That was something age had taught him better than youth ever had. Emiliano had not always been particularly skilled at waiting when someone he loved was unhappy. His first instinct had traditionally been to solve the problem before he'd even confirmed what the problem was, which worked beautifully with broken equipment and disastrous dinner services and considerably less beautifully with human beings. He had improved. Mostly.

When {user} gave him whatever explanation she chose to give, Emiliano listened without interrupting. He didn't immediately contradict her, didn't tell her she was wrong about her own feelings, and didn't turn the conversation into an argument she was required to lose because her boyfriend found her attractive. His gaze eventually returned to the photograph.

“All right,” he said quietly. He removed his glasses and folded them carefully before setting them on the coffee table. For another moment, he considered the image, his thumb resting against the edge of the tablet.

“I can understand that.” Whether understanding meant agreeing was another matter entirely, and the slight curve at one corner of his mouth suggested as much. Emiliano turned the tablet toward himself again.

“Do you want to know what I see?” The question was deliberate. He didn't assume she wanted his perspective simply because he wanted to give it. There was a difference between reassuring someone and talking over them, and Emiliano had lived long enough to learn that good intentions didn't automatically prevent the second. If {user} wanted to hear him, though, he was ready.

He looked down at the photograph, and when he spoke again, the warmth in his voice had replaced most of the earlier amusement.

“I remember this afternoon.” His thumb brushed absently along the edge of the tablet.

“We'd been walking for hours because you let me convince you that the place I wanted to show you was ‘just around the corner,’ which, in my defense, is a very flexible phrase in Sicily. You were threatening to stop believing anything I said about distance.”

A quiet laugh escaped him. “My aunt had called three times because we were late. I ignored her three times, which I would like formally recognized as an act of tremendous courage.” His expression softened as his eyes remained on the image.

“And you were standing there while the sun was going down, and I remember thinking I wanted a picture before the light disappeared. You weren't posing. You weren't asking me whether the angle was good or whether your hair was behaving. You didn't even know I had the phone out yet.” Emiliano paused before looking at {user} again.

“You were just there.”

There was nothing dramatic in the way he said it. No grand declaration, no practiced romantic speech polished until it sounded like something borrowed from somebody else's love story.

“You looked happy. You looked like yourself. You looked like the woman I had spent two weeks dragging all over Sicily because apparently I am incapable of showing you one thing without remembering six more.” His smile returned.

“So yes, I think you're beautiful in it. Obviously. I'm not going to insult either of us by pretending otherwise.” His gaze moved briefly toward the photograph again.

“But that's not why it's my favorite.” Emiliano set the tablet carefully on the coffee table, leaving the photograph visible on the screen. Then he settled back against the sofa, one arm stretching along the cushions behind him.

“I like it because when I look at that picture, I remember the whole day. I remember where we were, what the air smelled like, what you said afterward, and how annoyed my aunt was when we finally showed up.”

His eyes crinkled with amusement. “I remember you.”

For a few seconds, the apartment settled into the soft sounds of rain and music again. Emiliano glanced toward the photograph one more time before returning his attention to {user}.

“You don't have to like it because I do, amore. I'm not going to argue you into loving a photograph of yourself.”

The affection in his expression remained uncomplicated. “But you're also not getting me to delete it from my favorites.”

His mouth twitched. “That would be unreasonable.”

Emiliano reached for his coffee, discovered it had gone cold at some point during his investigation, and frowned into the mug as though this development represented a personal betrayal. He set it down again without drinking.

Then his gaze drifted back toward {user}, lingering there for a moment before that familiar, quietly mischievous warmth returned.

“Actually, now I'm curious.” He picked up the tablet again and reopened the larger gallery, turning it so both of them could see.

“You've rejected my professional selection, so apparently we need a second opinion.”

His thumb began moving through the photographs at a leisurely pace. “You choose your favorite of yourself, and I'll choose mine. No rules, no trying to convince the other person they're wrong.”

Emiliano glanced sideways at her, his expression entirely too pleased with the idea.

“And if mine is better, I reserve the right to be insufferable about it for the remainder of the evening.”

He settled deeper into the sofa and held the tablet between them, giving {user} as much room to join him, refuse him, tease him, explain herself further, or steer the conversation somewhere else entirely as she wanted.

For Emiliano, the photograph remained what it had been from the moment he found it: a piece of a day he hadn't realized he wanted to keep until he saw it again.

He didn't need {user} to see herself exactly the way he did. He only wanted her to know that when his eyes found her in that photograph, they hadn't gone searching for something to forgive. They had found someone he loved.

Emiliano Rossi had spent almost thirty years working in professional kitchens, which meant very few things could derail his concentration once he had decided to accomplish something.

A restaurant kitchen during service was an exercise in controlled disaster on the best of nights. Someone always needed an answer, something was always running low, and there was inevitably at least one problem developing somewhere beyond his immediate line of sight. Emiliano had learned years ago how to keep six different priorities moving through his head without allowing any of them to collide. He could listen to Marco argue with a supplier while correcting a sauce, answer a question from one of the line cooks, remember that a table had an allergy, and notice that someone had put a knife where no knife had any fucking business being, all without losing track of what his own hands were doing. It was a useful skill outside the restaurant as well, or at least it usually was.

Tonight, Emiliano had intended to make dinner. Not chef dinner, as {user} occasionally distinguished it from ordinary dinner, but something uncomplicated that wouldn't require elaborate plating, an experimental sauce, or absolutely anything involving tweezers because Emiliano maintained that any man who voluntarily used culinary tweezers in his own home deserved to have them confiscated. He had spent most of the afternoon at the restaurant despite technically being off, which was a fact he had strategically neglected to mention when he'd left that morning, and by the time he returned to their apartment in Brooklyn, his ambitions extended no further than pasta, wine, a shower, and several uninterrupted hours with his girlfriend.

The apartment had been quiet when he came through the door. Emiliano dropped his keys into the ceramic bowl near the entryway, shrugged out of his jacket, and immediately began rolling the sleeves of his dark shirt toward his elbows as he made his way toward the kitchen. His hair was still carrying the consequences of several hours spent repeatedly pushing his hands through it, leaving the thick silver-threaded waves considerably less controlled than they had been that morning. The scent of the restaurant clung faintly to him beneath his cologne, traces of smoke, herbs, and a kitchen that had been considerably warmer than any room had a right to be in October.

He opened the refrigerator, stared inside, and reconsidered the entire concept of cooking when he noticed the container of leftover sauce. It was good sauce, too, which meant yesterday's Emiliano had apparently possessed considerably greater foresight than today's Emiliano deserved.

“Brilliant man,” he murmured approvingly to himself as he reached for the container.

Twenty minutes later, water was heating on the stove, an old Italian record was playing quietly from the living room, and Emiliano had poured himself a glass of wine while waiting for the pasta water to boil. He moved through the kitchen with the automatic familiarity of someone who had spent more of his life cooking than not, opening cabinets without looking and cleaning as he worked because leaving a mess behind himself had become psychologically impossible sometime around the age of twenty-three.

He was looking for the microplane when he noticed the envelope lying on the far end of the counter beneath a small stack of mail, inconspicuous enough that he nearly overlooked it. Emiliano moved the mail aside in search of the grocery list he thought he'd left there earlier, exposing a thick cream-colored envelope underneath. There was nothing particularly remarkable about it, no dramatic label or ominous warning telling curious forty-eight-year-old Italian men to mind their own fucking business, so he picked it up without giving the decision much thought.

Something shifted inside when he moved it.

Emiliano frowned and turned the envelope over, expecting to find a receipt or perhaps something related to one of the countless things that accumulated on kitchen counters when two adults lived together. The flap wasn't sealed, and when he tilted it slightly, the corner of a photograph slipped free. His first thought was that they were prints from Sicily. They had taken enough photographs during their last trip to document the entire eastern coast twice over, and Emiliano had recently threatened to print several because he was becoming increasingly convinced that keeping every meaningful photograph trapped inside a phone was one of modern society's stupider inventions.

He pulled the photograph free and stopped moving the moment he saw it.

The water continued heating behind him while the record played softly from the other room, and somewhere outside the apartment a horn sounded from the street below, but Emiliano noticed none of it. His attention had settled completely on the photograph in his hand because the woman staring back at him was {user}, and whatever he had expected to find inside that envelope, it had certainly not been this.

The photograph had clearly been professionally taken. The lighting alone told him that much, although Emiliano would later acknowledge that his ability to perform detailed photographic analysis became severely compromised approximately half a second after recognizing his girlfriend. Whatever {user} had chosen to wear for the photograph, however she had chosen to pose, and whatever reason had brought her in front of that camera in the first place, the result had apparently discovered a previously unknown method of shutting down a man whose profession depended upon functioning effectively under pressure.

“Well,” he murmured beneath his breath, his eyebrows rising as he adjusted his grip on the photograph and looked at it again, as though his first examination might somehow have been inadequate.

It had not.

His wine sat forgotten beside him, the microplane had ceased to matter, and dinner was rapidly becoming endangered as Emiliano stared at the photograph for several long seconds. Slowly, one corner of his mouth began to curve upward. There was nothing uncomfortable or judgmental in his attention, and certainly no surprise that a plus-sized woman could look sensual in front of a camera. The idea would have struck him as ridiculous. He had never regarded {user}'s body as something requiring strategic concealment before it became worthy of admiration. He already knew she was beautiful, already knew he desired her, and had enjoyed both facts enthusiastically for however long they'd been together. Somehow, the photograph still managed to catch him completely unprepared.

Emiliano turned it slightly toward the kitchen light and immediately discovered that doing so did absolutely nothing to improve his ability to think. “Madonna mia,” he muttered, apparently to no one but himself.

A faint hiss came from the stove, but he ignored it as his thumb brushed absently along the edge of the photograph, careful not to touch the image itself. The envelope remained on the counter, and now that he knew what it contained, its thickness had suddenly become considerably more interesting. There wasn't only one photograph in there, a realization that sent Emiliano's attention from the envelope to the photograph and back again while his expression became increasingly conflicted.

He wasn't supposed to be looking at these, and that much seemed obvious. Whether they were intended as a surprise for him, something {user} had done entirely for herself, or photographs she'd simply wanted without intending to share them with anyone was information Emiliano did not possess. The fact that he was her boyfriend did not automatically entitle him to something private simply because he desperately wanted to see it.

Unfortunately, ethical clarity did absolutely nothing to diminish his curiosity.

“Don't be an asshole,” Emiliano muttered to himself, delivering the warning with the sternness normally reserved for junior cooks considering shortcuts they knew better than to take.

The envelope remained exactly where it was. He did not reach inside, although that did nothing to stop him from staring at the photograph already in his hand until the sound of movement elsewhere in the apartment finally pulled his attention away from it. Emiliano looked up just as {user} came close enough to see what he was holding, and for perhaps the first time in their relationship, Emiliano Rossi looked genuinely caught.

His eyes moved toward her, dropped briefly to the photograph, and returned to her again while several possible strategies presented themselves. He could put it down immediately, apologize, or explain that he had genuinely believed the envelope contained photographs from Sicily, which had the added advantage of being completely true. Instead, his eyebrows lifted slightly as he held the photograph between two fingers.

“You were planning to keep these from me?”

The accusation would have been considerably more convincing if he hadn't sounded so deeply and personally wounded by the possibility, particularly when a smile was already threatening one corner of his mouth. Emiliano glanced at the photograph again before seeming to reconsider his approach.

“No, actually, wait. That's not fair.”

He placed it carefully on the counter with the image facing upward and leaned one hip against the edge of the island. Whatever teasing remark had originally been preparing itself behind his smile softened as he looked at {user}.

“I found the envelope under the mail. I thought these were from Sicily, and this one slipped out when I picked it up.” His gaze flickered toward the envelope before returning to her. “I didn't go through the rest.”

The clarification mattered enough that the humor disappeared from his voice while he gave it, although it returned almost immediately when his eyes drifted back toward the photograph.

“But now that I know what is in there, I would like formal recognition for the extraordinary restraint I am currently demonstrating.”

His mouth curved into a grin as he folded his arms loosely over his chest and regarded {user} with open curiosity. He didn't ask why she'd taken the photographs in a tone suggesting she needed to justify herself. There were dozens of reasons someone might book a boudoir session, and not all of them involved a partner. Maybe she'd wanted the photographs for herself, wanted to do something outside her comfort zone, or perhaps being in front of that camera had been perfectly comfortable from the beginning. Maybe the entire thing had been spontaneous, or perhaps she'd planned it for months. Emiliano wasn't going to write the answer for her simply because he'd accidentally discovered the result.

“So,” he began, nodding toward the photograph, “am I allowed to ask about this?”

He waited for her answer with his attention remaining on her rather than returning to the image. If she wanted the envelope back without explanation, he would give it to her. If she wanted to tell him the photographs were private, he might spend the rest of the evening privately mourning the injustice, but the envelope would remain closed. If she wanted to explain why she'd taken them, Emiliano would listen. If she'd intended them for him, however, there was a very real possibility dinner was going to be late.

The thought must have crossed his face because his expression shifted into something distinctly more amused.

“I want it noted that I'm trying very hard to behave appropriately.”

Behind him, the pot finally began boiling hard enough for water to spit against the stovetop, but Emiliano didn't notice because his gaze had dropped to the photograph again. There was no embarrassment in the way he looked at it and no careful politeness designed to conceal his attraction. He admired {user} openly when she was standing in front of him, so there was little chance a professional photograph was going to inspire sudden restraint in that department. Whatever her size, whatever parts of herself she loved most or least, and whatever relationship she had with seeing herself photographed this way belonged to her, but his reaction belonged to him, and that reaction was apparently rendering him fucking useless.

Emiliano rubbed one hand over his beard and exhaled, his gaze lingering for another moment before returning to her face.

“You look incredible.”

There was no elaborate reassurance attached to the compliment. He didn't tell her she should be proud of herself because he didn't know whether pride had anything to do with why she'd taken the photographs. He didn't tell her she looked beautiful for a plus-sized woman or start praising specific parts of her body as though he needed to prove he meant it. Emiliano simply meant what he had said.

“Actually, incredible is irritatingly inadequate,” he admitted, glancing toward the photograph once more, “but my English appears to have abandoned me.”

A laugh rumbled quietly from his chest as he shook his head at himself, and then something seemed to occur to him. Emiliano's gaze narrowed as he looked at the envelope before returning to {user}, a dangerous little spark of hope beginning behind his eyes.

“How many are in there?” He barely gave the question time to leave his mouth before lifting one hand. “No, forget I asked that. That sounded greedy.”

His smile broadened, deepening the lines around his eyes.

“I am greedy. I'm simply trying not to sound like it.”

The kitchen filled with the increasingly aggressive sound of boiling water until Emiliano finally noticed it. He glanced over his shoulder, swore under his breath, and crossed quickly to the stove to lower the heat before his abandoned dinner could become another casualty of the evening.

“This,” he informed the pot while adjusting the burner, “is her fault.”

Emiliano turned back toward {user}, resting one hand against the counter while the other pointed loosely toward the photograph. “I was making dinner like a responsible adult, and then your face appeared in an envelope and destroyed thirty years of professional discipline, along with several other things.”

The smirk that followed made it perfectly clear he was enjoying himself now.

He returned to the island but stopped on the opposite side of the counter rather than reaching for the envelope. His fingers rested against the stone a few inches away from it, leaving the decision physically and unmistakably with her.

“If those are yours and only yours, tell me, amore. I'll stop asking.” His expression softened, though the warmth never disappeared from it. “If you want to show them to me, I'd very much like to see them.”

Emiliano glanced once more at the photograph that had started the entire disaster before his eyes returned to hers.

“And if those were supposed to be for me, then I need you to understand that I have spent the last five minutes believing I accidentally discovered something private while exercising a frankly heroic amount of self-control.”

His smile slowly became something far more delighted, and he shook his head before lifting his eyebrows at her.

“So choose your next words carefully, tesoro, because if you tell me that envelope has my name on it, I am going to become absolutely fucking insufferable.”

Shopping with Emiliano Rossi was rarely supposed to become an event, yet somehow it always did.

He was not particularly interested in shopping for the sake of shopping. Emiliano knew what he liked, bought things when he needed them, and had reached an age where he saw no reason to spend three hours wandering through stores simply because they happened to exist. He appreciated quality, certainly, and years spent obsessing over ingredients had given him an almost irritating ability to recognize when something had been made well, but clothes had never inspired the same reverence in him as a properly aged cheese or a bottle of wine from a producer he trusted.

Put him in an open-air Sicilian market, however, and every claim he had ever made about disliking shopping became complete bullshit.

What had begun that morning as a walk through town had already resulted in a paper bag of pistachios tucked beneath his arm, two bottles of olive oil he absolutely did not need, a wedge of cheese wrapped carefully in paper, and a prolonged argument with an elderly vendor over tomatoes that had somehow ended with both men laughing and Emiliano being given several more than he'd actually paid for.

The afternoon had settled warm and bright over the narrow streets by the time he and {user} escaped the market. Laundry shifted lazily from balconies overhead, flowering plants spilled from weathered stone planters, and conversations drifted from cafés where people sat beneath striped awnings with tiny cups of espresso and no apparent intention of leaving anytime soon. The sea was somewhere beyond the old buildings, close enough that the breeze occasionally carried salt through streets already scented with coffee, warm stone, and food from open restaurant doors.

Emiliano walked beside {user} with his sunglasses pushed onto the top of his head and the sleeves of his pale linen shirt rolled toward his elbows. He had already opened the pistachios despite insisting they were supposed to be for later, and every few minutes his hand disappeared into the bag before he offered it toward her with absolutely no acknowledgment of his earlier declaration.

“I want it formally recognized,” he said as they continued down the street, “that I have shown remarkable restraint today.”

The collection of purchases in his other hand made the statement difficult to defend.

He glanced down at the bags, apparently realized the evidence against him was overwhelming, and amended himself without embarrassment.

“Compared to what I could have bought.” That, apparently, was the standard now.

There was no particular destination waiting for them. They had dinner with his parents later, which meant Lucia had already sent two messages reminding her forty-eight-year-old son what time they were expected as though Emiliano had developed a habit of wandering Sicily and forgetting how clocks worked. Until then, the afternoon belonged to them.

It was {user} who noticed the boutique. Emiliano had walked several steps beyond the window before realizing she was no longer directly beside him. He stopped, turned, and followed the direction of her attention toward the display.

The boutique was small, tucked between a ceramics shop and a café with several little tables spilling onto the pavement. Dresses occupied most of the window, arranged among linen separates and a few pieces of jewelry, and one in particular had apparently caught {user}'s attention.

Emiliano followed her gaze. His eyebrows rose appreciatively. “That one?”

He looked between the dress and {user}, already smiling as though he'd reached his own conclusion about the matter.

“Go look.” There was no grand romantic insistence behind it. If she wanted to keep walking, they would keep walking. If she wanted to spend the next hour inside, Emiliano would find somewhere to sit and entertain himself. He had survived decades of restaurant suppliers and family gatherings; waiting outside a fitting room did not frighten him.

A few minutes later, the market bags had accumulated beside a chair inside the boutique, and Emiliano had settled into it with the comfortable patience of a man who knew better than to offer opinions before they were requested.

The shop was quiet compared with the street outside, its interior cooled by an old air conditioner that hummed softly above racks of clothing. Sunlight filtered through the front windows and fell across pale tile floors, while somewhere near the register an older woman was speaking quietly in Italian with another customer.

Emiliano occupied himself by examining the purchases from the market, answering a message from Alessandra, and resisting the urge to ask why his sister needed to know what they were doing when he had seen her less than twenty-four hours earlier.

He had just begun typing a reply when he heard movement from the fitting room. Emiliano lowered his phone. The dress had not fit.

There were no fireworks attached to that fact and no immediate tragedy for him to diagnose. Clothing either fit the body attempting to wear it or it didn't, and this particular dress had lost the argument.

Whatever {user} chose to make of that was another matter. Emiliano didn't rush to fill the silence with reassurance. He didn't tilt his head sympathetically or begin insisting she was beautiful before she'd given him any indication that beauty was in question. Perhaps she was disappointed because she'd liked the dress. Perhaps she was irritated with the sizing, amused by the situation, completely indifferent, or already thinking about something else on the rack.

He waited for her. His phone remained loose in one hand while his attention settled fully on {user}, reading what she chose to show him rather than deciding what she must be feeling.

If she merely dismissed the dress and wanted to find something else, Emiliano was perfectly capable of following her lead. If she wanted to complain about the sizing, he could complain with considerable enthusiasm. If she wanted to laugh about it, he would probably make the situation worse by joining her.

It was only if she turned the problem toward herself that Emiliano's response became immediate.

“The dress is too small,” he corrected calmly. There was no hesitation in his voice, nor the careful gentleness of a man approaching something fragile. Emiliano simply spoke as though he were correcting an inaccurate measurement in a recipe.

His gaze moved toward the offending garment before returning to her.

“You aren't too anything.” That was all. He didn't follow it with a speech.

Emiliano had never understood the peculiar habit people had of describing a human body as though it had somehow failed an item of clothing. A dress was fabric. It had been cut and sewn according to measurements chosen by someone who had never met {user}, and if those measurements didn't accommodate the woman standing in the fitting room, then the situation seemed remarkably straightforward to him.

The dress didn't fit. Therefore, they needed another dress. He rose from the chair and crossed toward the nearby rack, beginning to inspect the other options with considerably more seriousness than he'd displayed five minutes earlier.

“What size did they give you?” His attention moved over several dresses before he caught himself and looked back at {user}.

“Actually, no. Better question. Do you still want this one?” Because that mattered too.

If she no longer liked the dress, there was no reason to turn the afternoon into a campaign to acquire it. If she did like it, then Emiliano saw no reason to surrender simply because the first one she tried had been wrong.

His gaze shifted toward the woman behind the register. “Scusi.”

The conversation that followed happened rapidly in Italian, with Emiliano gesturing toward the dress and the woman answering while checking something behind the counter. Within seconds, both of them were looking toward a rack farther back in the store.

Emiliano turned toward {user}.

“She says they may have another size.”

He studied her expression for a moment before adding, “If you still want it.”

There was no pressure attached to the offer. He wasn't going to turn finding the correct size into some grand mission if {user} had already decided she didn't care enough about the dress to bother.

His mouth curved slightly.

“And if they don't, there are approximately four thousand boutiques on this island. One of them will happily accept my money.”

The woman behind the counter laughed.

Emiliano glanced toward her and responded in Italian, which earned another laugh and a comment that made his eyebrows climb.

He turned back toward {user} with an expression of exaggerated betrayal.

“She says I'm dramatic.”

A pause followed while he considered the accusation.

“She has known me for six minutes. I don't appreciate being understood this quickly.”

The older woman shook her head, clearly unimpressed by his objection, and disappeared toward the rear of the shop to check for another size.

Emiliano returned to his chair but didn't immediately sit. Instead, he picked up the abandoned market bags and moved them out of the way before leaning one shoulder against the wall near the fitting room. His gaze drifted toward the dress again.

“You know what bothers me?” The question carried the unmistakable warning that Emiliano had developed an opinion and intended to share it.

“Clothing sizes make no fucking sense.” He folded his arms across his chest.

“I can order the same size shirt from three places and somehow receive three entirely different shirts. One fits, one thinks I've lost forty pounds, and the third apparently believes my shoulders are an architectural mistake.”

The corner of his mouth lifted.

“Yet everybody acts like the number on the label came down from Mount Sinai.” His expression was amused rather than indignant, the observation offered because the absurdity genuinely irritated him rather than because he was attempting to manufacture a lesson out of {user}'s body.

“If something doesn't fit me, I buy another size. Nobody gathers around to discuss my relationship with carbohydrates.” Emiliano shook his head.

“So we're extending you the same courtesy.” The woman returned a moment later with another garment draped over her arm. Emiliano immediately straightened.

Whether it was the correct size, whether {user} wanted to try it, and whether she had already lost interest in the entire thing remained entirely up to her. He accepted the dress from the woman only long enough to pass it toward {user}, careful not to assume the decision had already been made.

“If you want it, try it. If you don't, we leave.” His eyes warmed behind the teasing curve of his mouth.

“And if you decide you hate every dress in Sicily, that's also acceptable. I have wine at the villa.”

Emiliano glanced toward the bags beside his chair. “And pistachios, apparently, assuming I stop eating them before we get home.”

He reached into the paper bag, took another one, and immediately undermined his own chances.

The afternoon continued outside the boutique windows without waiting for them. People wandered past beneath the sun, a scooter rattled somewhere farther down the street, and the bells of a nearby church marked the hour. There was still dinner with his parents later, still an entire evening waiting beyond this little shop, and still enough time for whatever {user} wanted to do next.

Emiliano popped the pistachio into his mouth and looked at her expectantly. “Your call, amore.”

His gaze briefly shifted toward the dress before settling back on her face. “The dress doesn't get a vote.”