Page 39 of Replay
And fuck me if my mood hasn’t cheered right the bloody hell up.
Which brings me to my next point. Why is the sight of Tilly dumping scoops of boiled tomatoes into the electric strainer with my nonna so fucking hot?
Wait…shit…that sounds wrong.
It’s not my nonna that’s hot. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely woman, but Tilly with my nonna…asking questions, following directions, doing whatever is asked of her without hesitation…it’s causing me to feel things.
Things I’ve never felt before.
It’s not love. Christ, that’s insane.
It’s just…chemistry. Pure, undeniable chemistry that I am struggling to gain control of. Has any woman ever rocked my control like this? I know the answer to that question.
Tilly and I work alongside each other for the next couple of hours, laughing and flirting as we strain and jar tomato sauce. When a large chunk splatters her nice, painfully tight tee, and both of us react like a couple of immature teenagers under the glowering eyes of Nonna, I realise that just being friends with Tilly is too hard. My patience is spent. The more I’m around her, the more I want her. And seeing her get out of her head and have some fun with me again is all the sign I need to know that we have the potential to be more.
Going back to our previous arrangement with rules and limits is out of the question. Too much has changed. And as nerve-wracking as it may be, I need to know that she feels the same way. Otherwise, we may need to stop whatever this is right fucking now before she truly becomes “the one who got away”.
I can’t help but notice my mother watching our interactions with great interest. She’s clearly intrigued. Most likely because I haven’t brought a girl around my family in well over a decade. The last time I brought a girl home was probably secondary school, and the reasons I haven’t done it since then still weigh heavily on my mind.
Now, my mother’s eyes twinkle as she sets the table for us to all eat dinner, taking care to put Tilly right beside me and sit herself directly across from Tilly. It’s clear she likes Tilly, but I think she’d like any woman I brought around because it means there’s hope for her son, whom she’d long feared was hopeless.
For years, my mother and I had a strained relationship because I resented her for reasons I didn’t fully understand. And when I was a teenager, and she started a second family with Bart and Angela, I felt like they didn’t want me around anymore.
However, our annual trips have done a world of good for our relationship. Spending that quality time with her has helped me understand that she thought she was doing what was best for me.
“So, you said you all run an Italian deli up in the Cotswolds?” Tilly asks as she passes a basket of bread past a distracted Angela over to Bart at the head of the table.
My mother nods proudly. “Yes, it’s a supermarket and deli in Bourton-on-the-Water. We have high-quality Italian products, plus our bakery, deli counter, and kitchen with some tables for eating. We often have a line out the door.”
“I do the baking,” Nonna says from beside Mum, squinting her face as she scrapes the last bit of sauce off her plate with a wedge of bread. “Nonno, the cooking.”
“Angela runs the till when she manages to stay off her mobile long enough,” Bart adds, reaching over and grabbing her mobile out of her hands.
She scoffs. “I run the till brilliantly. The customers love me.”
Nonno grumbles at the other head of the table, and Tilly seems to enjoy this interaction. “So, how long have you guys owned it then?” she asks before taking a sip of her fizzy drink.
“My brother, Antonio, started it with his wife, who’s from there, nearly forty years ago. It was just a supermarket back then. A few years later, my parents decided to leave Venice and join him in the Cotswolds.” Mum glances at Nonna, who looks stoic as she continues. “It was quite the journey for them, considering I was sixteen and pregnant with Santino. Then suddenly, there we were, picking out family recipes for a restaurant we were opening in a small, British village. It’s hard to believe how quickly our lives changed back then.”
Tilly blinks in fascination. “Wait, are you saying you had Santino at sixteen?”
I tense, unsure how my family will take this very direct question from a woman they’ve only just met. Frankly, a bold question from Tilly is exactly what I would expect from her, but it’s not the way most people react when my mother decides to casually drop this little detail for shock factor. Most people avoid the question. Most people aren’t Tilly.
The clattering of a fork hitting a plate turns our heads to find Nonna quickly recovering it. “My daughter—”
“Got pregnant very young, yes.” My mother straightens and tilts her head to the side.
“I see,” Tilly replies, a look of astonishment in her eyes as she gazes back at my mum for a long silent moment. “My parents had my older brother when they were both eighteen, but they’d finished secondary school by then, so it’s not nearly the same. It’s amazing that you all were able to start a new life in a new country, open a deli, and have a wee baby on board. What an accomplishment.”
Nonna gazes back at Tilly with wide eyes while Nonno focuses on his empty plate. My mother responds slowly, “Everyone has their own journeys to take. Santino’s journey was to become a lawyer.” She raises her glass to me. “The first of our family to go to university…and then he added law school on top of that.”
“Alla salute, Santino!” Nonno lifts his glass to me and winks.
Tilly smiles warmly and offers her glass to me as well. “An excellent journey indeed.”
My mum’s eyes fixate on Tilly’s drink, pointedly noticing hers and mine are the only glasses at the table not filled with red wine. “And you, Tilly? What is your journey?”
Tilly straightens in her chair, and the two of them look at each other like they’re in the middle of a standoff that I’m not sure is a good thing. She inhales sharply and replies with a professional edge to her voice, “I’m planning to accept an executive position that was just offered to me on Friday at Harrods. It’s a dream job for someone like me with a master’s in business retail, so I hope that it’s the start of a new beginning for me.”
