2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Enzo Moretti was just about to get up on the scaffolding rising against the enormous brick wall when his phone rang.

He glanced at the screen, calculating the time he'd lose by taking the call versus the pain he'd suffer if he declined it.

He pressed accept and set it on the old desk he'd found on the side of the road and dragged over to use as a temporary workstation while he worked on this mural.

"Hi, Mom," he said into the speaker.

"Oh, darling, I'm so happy I caught you," Giana said.

"Just in time," Enzo said. She wasn't here so she couldn't see his eye roll. He loved his mother—for forever it had just been him and her against the whole world, but she'd responded to that by hanging on to him far too tightly, and even being three thousand miles away hadn't really felt far enough from Indigo Bay.

"Are you working?" she asked.

Enzo tried not to let it drive him nuts that she didn't understand what he did. That she seemed to have some misplaced, misguided idea that he just fucked around with paints all day.

When in reality, he was covering hundreds of square feet with artistic creations that could be seen blocks away.

When in reality, it was work . Work he loved, too, but hard work nonetheless.

"Yes," he said. Keeping it short and simple. Trying to not be—or feel— defensive.

"I thought you'd be almost done with that one, by now," she said.

Don't do it, don't do it.

"Mom, it's a five-story building."

In his mind's eye, Enzo could see her waving her hand. Dismissing what was actually an enormous expanse of brick to cover. "You know, we have buildings here, too, in Indigo Bay. Buildings you could paint."

He stifled his sigh. It was inevitable.

"I know," he said. "But I've been so busy, Mom." Thought you'd be happier about that.

She was proud of him. Always telling him about how she talked to her friends about his accomplishments. Always blown away when he sent pictures of what he was working on.

She certainly seemed to appreciate how solid their financial situation was, compared to years ago, when the deli was struggling, before Luca had ever shown up.

Enzo gazed up at the nearly finished star system sprawled over the brick above him, the dappled blues and grays and purples, dotted with stars. A whole galaxy that he'd painted, on the side of this building that had once been a warehouse but was now going to be a children's museum.

Could use some more lavender on the edges of that black hole .

Considered the problem as she kept talking.

"You've missed so much, already, this year," she said. "Thanksgiving. Christmas. The spring wine dinner Oliver and Luca hosted, the Memorial Day picnic, and of course, the Festival ."

"Oh, yeah, the Festival."

Ugh, the Sweethearts Festival. Even if he'd been free, Enzo wouldn't have come home for that. It made him feel weird and uncomfortable, surrounded by so much love and romance, when he was alone. Preferred to be alone, traveling on his own, making friends where he went, living out of a bag, moving to a new city every six to eight weeks.

It confused the hell out of Giana, but he loved it. And wasn't he the person he needed to please? For most of his teenage years and early adulthood, he'd never gotten to. Was it any wonder he was so fanatically dedicated to doing it now?

"I'm just saying, you've missed so much. You should come home. You know, like I said, we have buildings here. Buildings that could use murals."

"You've said." More than once.

He wasn't against painting a mural in Indigo Bay. He was against going back to Indigo Bay.

Whenever he went back, the town seemed to close around him, reminding him every time he turned a corner of the boy he'd used to be. The boy he'd exorcised, but who somehow rose from the dead every time he crossed the town line.

"We just miss you, darling," Giana said in a small, soft voice, and there it was, like clockwork. The guilt.

"I'll think about it," Enzo said. He pulled out a large empty plastic container, already stained with a half-dozen colors he'd already mixed up and used on the mural. He squirted blue in and added red, then white, mixing and mixing with a wooden stake until the color was exactly what he wanted.

"You will?" She sounded thrilled.

"I said I would," Enzo promised.

"What is your schedule like?" she asked, all official now. "Can we get on it? There's a perfect wall here, you know the old hardware store . . ." She laughed. "Of course you do. It's been remodeled inside, and the brick restored, and oh, you'd love it. The perfect place for you to paint a mural in Indigo Bay."

He probably would love it. It probably would be perfect.

That was the problem with his mother. She knew him too well and knew exactly what kind of treat to lay in the trap.

"Uh . . ."

Enzo had a feeling he knew where this was going.

An inevitable kind of feeling.

Who'd spilled the beans? Luca? Or Oliver?

The other day when they'd talked, he'd told Luca about the suddenly empty slot in his schedule. A building had been delayed in the construction phase, and as a result, the mural he'd been supposed to paint had fallen through. Truthfully he hadn't decided what he was going to do about those empty weeks, yet, but he'd toyed with the idea of going and staying with Chiara and Ilaria, Luca's sisters in San Francisco, but he hadn't yet decided. That was the beauty of his schedule. It was up to him.

Of course, Luca might not have been the one to tell Giana. It could very well have been Oliver, who seemed to share Luca's brain, these days.

"I heard about that project that fell through. Luca mentioned it." If Giana had demanded he come home or acted like it was an inevitability, it would've been so easy to turn her down.

To tell her something else had come up, even if it hadn't.

But the hope in her voice made it impossible to do that.

"It just happened, and I haven't had time to think about what it means." All true. The schedule change had happened when he'd been right in the middle of this mural, lost to it the way he was always lost to his best pieces.

All he'd had time to do during the thick of it was paint and fall into bed, after.

"I could send you pictures of the wall," Giana said excitedly.

Enzo rationalized with himself that he'd been meaning to come home, anyway, one of these days. And wouldn't it be nice to spend the summer in a place where he wasn't fighting the cloud cover and the drizzling rain, like he'd been in Seattle?

More than nice to enjoy the kind of blazingly hot summer he'd grown up with. Spend a few days at the beach, soaking in the salt water and the sun?

If the old hardware store really had been restored, Giana wasn't wrong. It would be a great spot for a mural.

Enzo knew he could be stubborn, but he wasn't blindly stupid.

"Send the pictures," he said, resigning himself, while also reminding himself that it wouldn't be all bad to go back to Indigo Bay. He'd see Luca and Oliver again.

She must've known that would be his first request, because his phone beeped immediately.

"Not wasting any time, huh?" he teased.

"You're a very important man now. It's not every day you have an unexpected opening on your schedule," she teased right back, and for a second, Enzo felt swamped with love and something deeper and more binding. All the history they shared.

The history that kept tugging him back, when he'd been sure he'd cut the cord.

"Let me look," Enzo said, pulling up the pictures. And she hadn't lied. It was a gorgeous building. Not very big, easily completed in the empty slot in his schedule. He would have plenty of time to relax, too. The brick was nice and clean, not much damage, and whoever had remodeled the old hardware store had cleared out the ugly, broken-down dumpster that had become more of neighborhood trash heap and then scrubbed the sidewalk, removing even the most stubborn of the stains.

It boded well, and Enzo felt that little artistic tingle he always got when he began to get excited about a project.

"I told you, it's perfect," Giana said as he flicked through the pictures she'd sent.

He wanted to argue and say it wasn't, but she'd planned this well. It was perfect, and she knew it.

"I'll do it," Enzo said. "I'll even waive my normal fee."

Not that the town collectively couldn't afford it, but if he did this mural for free, it would give him some wiggle room and the kind of flexibility he normally enjoyed on a project, but that he knew his mother and her friends wouldn't concede easily the way his typical clients did.

"Oh, Enzo, that is wonderful ," she said. "I'll scrub out the guest room."

"Mom," he warned.

"Oh, fine, you can stay in the apartment over the garage. I do know you're a grown man and want your space."

"I need my space," Enzo reminded her.

When he'd turned eighteen, he'd insisted on spending his weekends and evenings turning the loft over the little garage next to his mom's house into his own place.

It had given him just enough space that he didn't scream the town down. Especially after she'd hemmed and hawed and ultimately convinced him that he didn't need to go to art school.

That he'd be happy, settling for running the deli.

But he'd never have been happy. He knew that now.

"Right, of course. I'll clean out the loft. Make sure it's all set for you," Giana promised. "You'll let me know when you'll be home? I'll come to Charleston and pick you up."

But if he didn't start the visit the way he meant to live it, it would be a disaster. He'd learned this very early on.

"No, Luca's always flying places. I'll text him, and time my flight with one of his."

She sighed.

"If you're sure."

"I'm sure," Enzo said.

He'd learned after the first few times he'd returned to Indigo Bay he needed to be protective of his space, or else he and Giana would end up fighting, and that was not the kind of vacation he had in mind.

"Alright." She didn't sound that disappointed, and he counted that as his first win.

"I've got to get to work, Mom," he said.

"Just . . ." Her voice softened, full of pure joy. "Just happy you're coming home, darling."

"I know, Mom." He hesitated. Staring at the lavender paint in his hand. "Me, too."

It wasn't even a lie.

The moment she hung up, he texted Luca.

You flying home any time in the next two weeks? he asked.

Luca's answer came through almost immediately. In a week. Why? She didn't, did she?

Hey, I wasn't the one who told her.

Sorry.

You're not.

No. Not really. There's living your own life, Enzo, and then there's avoiding your old one.

You're such a smug asshole.

But Enzo was laughing out loud, enjoying this, because despite what he'd once believed, he now considered Luca the brother he'd never had.

His phone rang again.

"I really don't have time but I'll make time for you," Enzo teased after he answered.

"And you call me a smug asshole," Luca said, sounding equally amused.

"Takes one to know one."

Luca chuckled. "It sure does. So how did she convince you?"

"It wasn't actually that hard." Enzo sighed with resignation. "She wants me to paint a mural."

"Oh, on Will's building? Yeah, I can see that."

"Who's Will?" Enzo asked absently.

"A new guy in town. You'll like him. And his ice cream."

"Guess you didn't open that gelateria you'd been talking about," Enzo said.

"You know how busy we are, how were we gonna do that justice? It wasn't going to happen. And then Will showed up with all these plans, and you know, Oliver said it best. Why would we try to do something when he's such an expert at it, already?"

"You're a huge sap."

"Guilty as charged."

There'd been a time when Enzo hadn't exactly been thrilled that his smug asshole of a cousin had met, fallen in love, and then married his old teenage crush. But that was water long under the bridge.

He and Oliver would've been a disaster.

Had been a disaster. The worst first date both of them had probably ever been on.

"Let me guess," Luca said, "you're trying to avoid Giana driving into Charleston to pick you up."

"If I let her, she'll stop by every antique mall between there and Indigo Bay, and you know how I feel about antiquing."

"It's baffling to me why Giana moved back to Indigo Bay when she was so into the antique scene in Charleston."

"You know it was too big for her. Not enough room to be her natural busybody self," Enzo joked.

Luca laughed again. "You know her well."

"Better than anybody else," Enzo agreed. "So I'll catch a ride back with you. Text me your flight info."

His phone dinged again. "Done," Luca said. "And if for some reason that doesn't work for you, either Oliver or I can come into town and pick you up. No problem. Consider it karmic justice."

"Done," Enzo said.

"Ugh, that's exactly what you intended, wasn't it?"

"A happy accident," Enzo suggested instead, and Luca scoffed.

"Sure," he said, but he still sounded amused. "I am happy you'll be home for a little while, karmic justice and all. I'm sure Oliver will be, too. And you know our cousin Rocco's in Indigo Bay for the summer, yeah?"

"Rocco?"

"I'm sure you've met him before. At Chiara and Ilaria's place, maybe? He's a . . .second cousin? Third cousin? Anyway, Oliver's teaching him everything he knows about the bakery, and he's working at our place sometimes, and down the street at Rudy's. Saving up."

"Oh, yeah. Rocco." He remembered the guy now. A real chip off the Moretti block. A fun, cheerful guy with a big smile that seemed to permanently reside on his face. "What's he saving for?"

"Wants to buy his own place. Coffee shop slash bakery of some kind, somewhere."

"He'll be good at that."

"He's already good at that," Luca said wryly. "I said Oliver was teaching him, but I think they're teaching each other ."

"Aw, feeling a little left out?" Enzo asked knowingly.

"Maybe I'm not happy you're coming home, after all."

But Enzo knew he was, and he realized, again, that he hadn't been lying to his mom, when he'd told her he was happy, too.

This was going to be good. He could reconnect with Luca and Oliver. Hang out with Rocco. Paint a mural. Indigo Bay should have an Enzo Moretti mural. It only made sense.

Yes, the deli had the interior mural he'd done, before he'd even gone to school, but this one would be for the whole town, in a spot everyone could enjoy it.

"Liar," Enzo said jokingly.

"Smug asshole," Luca retorted fondly.

"Just a Moretti."

Luca laughed.

"See you in a few weeks, cousin," he said.

"Uh-oh," Kate said under her breath to Will as she scooped ice cream into a banana split dish.

"What?" He was distracted. He had two ice cream cones to scoop, a sundae to build, and a milkshake to blend. Cherry's was busy, maybe busier than they'd been since they opened, full of customers enjoying his ice cream and his frozen concoctions. It was only about an hour til closing, but the weather, warming up every week since he'd been open, had finally started to draw the town in like insects towards a lamp.

"Giana's here."

Will glanced up and sure enough she was winding her way through the shop, between the bright white spindly chairs and the magenta enameled tables, shoes clicking purposefully on the black and white checkerboard tile.

"I gotta finish this order," he hissed.

"She's not gonna want to talk to me," Kate retorted as she sliced open a banana and nestled each half on either side of the ice cream.

"She might," Will theorized. But sure enough, he could see out of the corner of his eye that she was heading right in his direction, bypassing the line of customers, Mari, his newest employee, was taking care of.

"Will! Will!" Giana said excitedly, trying to get his attention loudly.

She hadn't had to shout. He was right there, just on the other side of the long ice cream case.

He looked up, bowing to the inevitable. "Sorry, Giana, we're slammed," he said apologetically, giving her one of his best "customer service" smiles. "It might be a while before Mari can get to you."

"Oh no, I'm not here for ice cream." She beamed, and if Will thought he'd been treated to a Moretti smile before, he was floored by the one she was wearing now. "I'm here for you ! To tell you Enzo will be home soon. For weeks!"

"That's great. I'm really happy for you," Will said, meaning it. Clearly she loved her son a lot, and considering he'd been in town for six months and hadn't met him yet, Enzo didn't come home much.

"I am too. And of course, happy for you , because you will finally meet him."

"Giana," Will warned. He scooped ice cream into the aluminum milkshake tin and added milk from a carton he grabbed from the mini fridge below the counter.

"I know, I know, you are too busy to date. But the first time I saw you, I knew . You were perfect for my Enzo. Big and strong and handsome, and you work hard. You made this place beautiful, when it was a dump before. Only someone with a little bit of art in their soul could do that."

Or someone who was desperate to carve something out for himself , Will thought rebelliously.

It had taken a lot of long, hard hours to turn the dirty, dusty, partly dilapidated old hardware store into the bright, shiny white and cherry pink ice cream parlor with its white lacy-backed chairs, magenta-topped tables, and long soda counter with a curved glass ice cream case punctuating the middle, stretching the entire length of the big room.

Then there was the meticulously laid out, sparkling clean commercial kitchen in the back. He'd spared no expense, because he'd wanted a place he loved coming to work every day, and Cherry's had become all of that and more.

"I don't know about that," Will said. He set a hand on his hip. "I just know I'm super busy. But of course, you'll have to tell him to stop by for some ice cream."

"Oh, I will," Giana said and her eyes were glimmering with mischief and promise.

He supposed he should've been more afraid of that look of hers but he had two more sundaes to make, and the line in front of Mari was nearly to the door now.

"See you around," Will said, turning away and whipping up his milkshake. He spooned it carefully into one of the clear fluted glasses that he'd already prepped with a caramel drizzle and then topped it with a beautiful swirl of whipped cream and more caramel. He nestled a snickerdoodle in and a bunch of his signature cherries next to it.

He was just pulling out two more dishes for sundaes when Kate wondered, "Gonna stop by for ice cream, is he? Or maybe something else?"

Glancing up, Will rolled his eyes. "I was trying to be nice. Friendly. Welcoming."

"You gotta be careful," she said. "You're too friendly. Giana's gonna take that as a positive sign and never give up. She wants you."

"At least it's not for herself?" Giana was still beautiful, sure, but she was definitely at least twenty-five years older than Will, and the wrong kind of sex for him to be interested in.

"It might be easier to dissuade her if that was her end goal," Will continued with a reluctant sigh. "But hopefully Enzo is just as weirded out by his mom's matchmaking as I am."

"I'm sure he's gonna be thrilled to find out that she's been coming around, pimping him out," Kate said with a grin. "Or maybe he'll actually be glad. You never know. Maybe he has trouble getting dates, just like you said."

"Maybe." But Will wasn't convinced. He was sure the first time he met Enzo Moretti, the two of them would share an awkward and uncomfortable moment, hopefully be able to laugh about it directly after, and then move on.