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There's something so scarily fascinating about letting someone in, showing them all your dark corners, and watching them rearrange your life to fit them inside, knowing they're doing the same thing for you.
Wooden floors, walls and window sills
Tables and chairs worn by all of the dust
It was so easy when they were just sneaking around and finding ten minutes alone to kiss each other breathless. They could talk later, in his car or his room or her kitchen, but whenever he caught her eye passing in the school corridors there was no time to talk, especially with Silvia still clutching onto the remnants of her crush. Eleonora grew used to sneaking up to the taped off classrooms besides the radio and sliding her fingers through Edoardo's hair as he teased at her pulse point. Sneaking around was exciting and all kinds of thrilling, and talking was the last thing on either of their minds - and when they did talk it was guessing their favourite colours, how go-to take out orders, how old they were when they learned to tell the time and tie their shoes.
Now, after Andrea and the police and the fights, with Silvia firmly happy with Luca and no reason for them not to be public, they're talking more between rushed kisses. It's great, she loves it, but that part of Eleonora from a year and a half ago who refused to let people in and purposely pushed them away still comes out to play sometimes.
It should be as easy as kissing him. Telling him how much she actually likes his hair, how much she desperately wants to spend the night at his when he asks because the emptiness of her room without him makes her think back to pushing him away, how she's so completely terrified of the fact that he has the ability to walk away and hurt her and yet she still keeps him around. She should be able to tell her boyfriend that the stares in the corridor bother her and her chest starts to get tight and that sometimes, in the second where he lets go of her hand to sling his arm around her shoulders, she feels like she's back at her old school and that's more painful than anything she's ever been through.
But she can't. She's put things into separate boxes since she was ten years old, stamped them with labels, and tucked them neatly away never to be exposed to anyone else before. No matter how safe Edoardo makes her feel, no matter how hard he works to make sure she trusts him, she just can't bring herself to tell him certain things. Like the first night she'd spent the night in his bed, wrapped in his leather jacket and a pillow barrier between them, he'd mumbled something in his sleep and the gruff voice made her freeze with memories of the last boy she'd laid with. Like when he gets in those fights at parties she knows he's just protecting their friends, but it reminds her of sneaking into bars when she was fifteen to impress a boy and the girls that were with him.
Like whenever Silvia looks at her, Edoardo's arms hugging her waist from behind, Eleonora swears she can see a hint of betrayal in the blonde's eyes even when there is none.
And she doesn't understand why it's so difficult to get those worries into words. He seems to do it so effortlessly these days. He tells her how beautiful she looks any time of day, even when she's not wearing makeup and he says it so certainly she knows he means it. He tells her that the boys ask about her all the time and that his Nonna absolutely adores her just for willingly putting up with him. He tells her that he's not afraid of the dark but sometimes he finds it easier to sleep on the living room couch because the lights from the city are more soothing; that he misses his mother every day and it feels like it's never going to stop hurting; that his dad phoned and won't be coming home for a while and that hurts just as much. He tells her he has a scar in the crevice of his hips that he's insecure about; that he can breathe easier when Eleonora rakes her fingers through his hair and doesn't expect anything from him like everyone else.
He tells her that their relationship scares him because it's not like anything he's ever had before, that he's scared something's going to happen and they won't be able to make it through together.
It's everything she's thinking inside, and it's suffocating that he's found the right ways to say these things, and Eleonora can't.
Edoardo rakes his nails gently against her scalp now, drawing her back into the present.
He'd been grumpy about it but eventually, she'd convinced him to tell the boys about the classroom past the tape at the top of the stairs. They all needed a place to plan Luca's surprise party a few weeks ago and now it's their space. Edoardo still drags her up here to make out, and they never get disturbed without a text message first, but more often than not they all sneak up here as a group to get away from the stares and the whispers from the rest of the school.
Luca nudges her foot with his, raising an eyebrow to check-in and she manages to muster up enough of a smile to convince him. Edoardo's arms tighten a little around her shoulders as he laughs at whatever Fede said, and she can hear Sana and Eva argue about which characters on Game of Thrones are going to die next.
Eleonora's so completely exhausted that she hears everything around her, but nothing's sticking. Edoardo's heartbeat underneath her cheek is soothing and steady, and the gentle rise and fall of his chest makes Ele battle to keep her eyes open. She's cradled between his thighs at his seat on the desk, head tucked under his chin, and her chest against his. Silvia's in a similar position with Luca, both girls having just completed three grueling exams and all they really want is a nap, but the boys have insisted on hiding out up here until whoever Chicco had pranked got tired of waiting at the gates to retaliate.
She wants to curl up in bed, her's or Edo's she really doesn't care, with the TV on in the background and more food in front of her than she could ever eat by herself, and preferably with Edoardo next to her playing with her hair like he's doing.
He presses possibly the world's softest kiss to her cheek and swipes her baby hairs off of her forehead, "You ready to talk about it yet?"
He means the exams because all she had done was grunt and bury her face into his chest when he asked the last time, but for a moment she's ready to spill absolutely everything she's worried about onto his lap - you're going to America in six months and I don't think I'll ever be able to let you go. You're not afraid to hold me close like this in front of all of our friends and it scares me how much I love it. Filo thinks you're perfect for me and I didn't know I needed his approval but I do. I want you to meet my mother and show her I managed to do something right. Help me find the words to tell you how much I want you to stick around.
"I think I did okay," She swallows down the troubles and places a kiss to the hollow of his throat, "The biology paper was difficult but I don't think I panicked too hard."
The hand he doesn't currently have in her hair slides up to cup her cheek and he gives her another kiss on her forehead, "Good."
"Can you come home with me?" She whispers, doesn't give him a reason. This she can do. Accept that they're at that stage of their relationship now where they can ask something selfish of the other and not feel bad about it. She wants him close for the rest of the day or the thoughts are going to eat her alive, and Filo's not home so if she lets them get the best of her she doesn't want to be alone. Edo knows how to calm her down. He knows when to touch her and when to stay away, and either way will have tea and cookies and a movie ready for when she's stopped crying and opened her eyes long enough to see she hasn't scared him off.
"If I ever turn that down," He mumbles and the gust of his breath against her ear makes her giggle quietly, "Shoot me."
When Chicco finally feels safe enough that someone won't ambush him with a water gun outside the gates, Edoardo bundles her up in his jacket and slings an arm around her shoulders as the group disperses.
"You know," He sighs against her temple, fingers playing with the strap of her bag, "I prefer your apartment."
"Your house is quieter," She points out, sidestepping around him as he opens the car door for her and throws her bag in the backseat. That cookie tin's on the floor and after the day she's had, she doesn't feel the least bit embarrassed at the way she all but dives for it.
"Yeah but yours feels more relaxed."
She hands him a cookie and scrunches her eyebrows together, "How so?"
He shrugs and rubs at the back of her neck with his thumb as he reverses out the parking spot, that same hand falling to her thigh once they get onto the main road.
Ele swallows down a dry lump in her throat and drops her fingers to play with the leather band around Edo's wrist, "It's not because of... you know? Because of what happened when you were in Milan?"
Edoardo flips his hand around to grip onto hers tightly, "No," He says firmly, then softens, "I think it just feels like somewhere you want to be, you know? It just feels like you and Filo, and I like that. My house... it gets kind of cold when no one else lives there. Even before everything happened."
She can't blame Andrea for her inability to talk to Edoardo, but it helps, sometimes, being able to pin something on him after everything he'd put them through. Eleonora thinks about it less and less, especially now that Edoardo doesn't seem to want to leave, and now that she can finally feel safe in his home again - but she would be lying if she were to say there hadn't been points where they were lying in his bed and her mind threw her back to being handed shots of liquor she couldn't name and pictures taken when she was unconscious.
She's spent the past three days at Edoardo's, taking advantage of his endless supply of food and flavored tea, stealing his clothes to sleep in, and laughing as Edoardo gets her shirt stuck on her wrists when he tries to take it off. Filo's won't be back until late tonight, and Eleonora hates being left alone in their apartment. It reminds her too much of finding her own way to the hospital when she had appendicitis, reminds her that her parents choose their new families and careers over her and her brother. Edoardo's place may not have the same lived-in feel that hers does, but she loves it all the same.
There's dust on her windowsill and her lamp's been left on this entire time, her bedsheets in a tangle in the laundry basket by her door. Edoardo sets about making them tea and finding something to snack on whilst Eleonora gets her plants some much-needed water and starts hunting for new sheets for her bed.
It feels so domestic when Edoardo helps her make the bed - how he sidesteps her to find the missing pillow on his side (he has a side now) and when he catches her looking at him and sends her a wink - that it almost doesn't matter that she can't find any words to tell him all of this.
This is a place where I don't feel alone
This is a place where I feel at home
For some reason, completely unexplainable to Eleonora, every time they sleep in the same bed they wake up with the blankets and covers over their heads, sheets molded around them. Edoardo's still half-asleep, blinking it from his eyes and reaching across space towards her already, and it feels like coming home when he slides his chest to her back and slots their fingers together.
"What's on your mind?" His voice is gruff and scratchy with sleep, shooting right down to Eleonora's toes as he presses the words to the exposed curve of her shoulder. She's in his sweatshirt that she'd stolen from him weeks ago, and the material of his sweatpants feels warm and fuzzy against her bare legs. Together, they're wearing a full outfit - her in his sweatshirt, him in sweatpants he's stolen from Filo - and it reminds her that there was a point in time where the thought of exposed skin on either of them had made her want to scratch at her arm and bury herself in a mountain of blankets.
She hums as he leaves an open-mouthed, gentle kiss to her neck. Her fingers flex against his briefly and he smiles against her in that sleepy way that only she gets to see.
"I'm not afraid of this," She manages to get out, squeezing his fingers once more, "I'm... there's a lot I want to say and I don't know what words to use or how I want to say them but... I'm not afraid of this."
He shuffles to his stomach and she turns to her back, so they can turn their heads and look at each other. His eyes look almost golden in the light from the lamp, curls dark against his forehead, teeth white when he smiles reassuringly at her.
"You have a lot to say?"
"I'm pretty sure you've already said most of them."
It's his turn to hum, "I want to hear it from you, though, whenever you're ready."
"That might take a while."
"We have more than a while," He says so confidently. It's stuff like that, the things he says, that Ele wants so desperately to be able to say as freely as he does but can't seem to. He looks at her like he knows all of that, that he's been waiting all this time and he can wait a little longer if that's what she needs.
"I don't feel alone when I'm with you," She finds herself blurting out, half an hour later as he's making them dinner. She freezes, not knowing where the words came from, but Edoardo doesn't seem to falter. He turns the flame on the stove down low, sets down the spoon he'd been stirring with, and moved around the kitchen towards where she's been chopping tomatoes.
She hops up on the counter before he can lift her, but that's fine because from here she can wrap her arms around him quicker, can find the comfort that he radiates when he circles his arms around her waist and kisses her senseless.
"Got any more words for me?" He whispers as if they're in their own private bubble.
His curls bounce when she runs her fingers through them, the repetitive movement surprisingly soothing for her, "I don't know how to let people in sometimes, so I push them away and I make myself lonely because it's easier than explaining everything that's happening. I've never had to let people in before. Filo's just always been there, always been my rock and I never thought I'd need anyone. And... I don't. I don't need anyone else, you know? But I want to let you in, and I'm just not letting myself because I'm scared you're not going to like what you see. I feel like I need to push you away and close myself off, but I don't feel alone when you're around and I want to hold onto that just as much."
"If you need to push me away, push me away. Just tell me where your head's at. Okay?"
"Okay. But don't ever let me push you too far away."
'Cause, I built a home
For you
For me
Eleonora doesn't know if Edoardo's aware that all of his friends made copies of his key whilst he was away in Milan, she just knows that he never seems to question it when they stumble out of his room to find the boys sprawled around his living room yelling at the TV screen, Fifa on and causing arguments.
When she wakes up Edoardo's already gone, but she hears Ricco curse his name and knows he hasn't gone far. There had been mornings, for the first few weeks after they had established what their relationship was to all of their friends, where Edoardo had stayed in bed with her anyway. They'd listen to the boys yell and curse and throw tantrums, laughing quietly to themselves, and he would only go join them when Eleonora agreed to go with him. Now, he just goes - the temptation of kicking Fede's ass in their pretend matches too great to pass up.
She gets it, seeing as she'd done the same with the girls. They would crash in her living room, messing around with Filo as Edoardo and Eleonora try and wake up enough to keep up with the rapid conversation bound to be waiting for them. Ele goes by herself now because Edoardo's no morning person and tends to try and kick her out of bed if the girls get too loud anyway.
There are still times, however, when she wakes up alone in his bed and has to bury her face in his pillow, breathing in his scent and reminding herself that he's just two doors away, and not all the way over in Milan.
Andrea's not been in this house since Edoardo had convinced her to report him. Everything that had reminded Edoardo of his brother had been locked away or thrown out, all surfaces scrubbed down and the key to Andrea's locked bedroom thrown in a pond somewhere. He'd done it for her, he says, but she knows he still puts some blame on himself for not being there, not texting her that he was away so she wouldn't have gone looking for him, for walking away when she told him, closing her off when she really needed him. She knows that he hates himself for thinking he could trust his brother to not pull anything again, trusted him enough to drive six hours away and that he wouldn't try and pull out his usual bag of tricks.
He may have done it for her, but he'd also done it for himself.
Edoardo looks more at ease now, back to how he looked that night she lied about Filo being away and he offered up his bed. He catches her eye after she's been stood in the doorway for a little while, just watching the boys jab at the controllers and yell at the TV, and his eyes watch her as Fede pulls her down to sit beside him and take over because everyone in that room knows Edoardo's going to let her win.
Just a few months ago she couldn't be in this house without clinging onto Edoardo, trying not to think of the party and how everything may have changed since then but that wall where she'd been leaning against when Andrea found her the first time is still the same, the corridor to Edoardo's room still gets dark in all the same places, and the windows of the kitchen still look out to the same backyard she'd desperately searched for him. Now, it doesn't matter how far away he is. It's a choice when she reaches him, a preference when she chooses to only leave his bed to get breakfast when he's hungry too.
"What does she get if she wins?" Ricco asks, rolling onto his back on the floor to kick at Edoardo's ankles.
"To kick you all out," Edoardo quips, winking at Ele when the boys around them groan.
"Don't worry boys," She laughs, taking advantage of Edoardo's distraction to score, "If I win, Edo's cooking breakfast."
She does win - much to the chagrin of Edoardo because he'd actually started to try and beat her - but she got dragged into the kitchen to help him cook anyway. It's so easy, moving around each other to find ingredients, to set the table, to make out against the fridge before the guys start filing in. There's not enough seats, so Edoardo pulls her onto his lap before the boys can try and reshuffle everyone around.
Breakfast is loud with what seems to be thirty different conversations at once. Chicco forces her into a thumb war for the last croissant, and she entertains him as Edoardo sneaks it onto Ele's plate without him noticing. By the time the boys are too full to carry on eating they've decided on a spontaneous trip to the beach.
"Are the girls coming?" Edoardo asks, hair wet from the shower and trailing down the side of Ele's neck as he lavishes her with hot, open-mouthed kisses.
He'd cleared out a drawer for her in his room, some space in his wardrobe and in the bathroom too, so she has clothes here but she knows that they both prefer it when she wears one of his shirts anyway.
"Yeah, Fede's organizing who's going in what car."
She presses back into him, warm and fuzzy as he continues his lazy exploration of her neck, his fingers tapping out a tune on her stomach. They're going to be late meeting the boys out front, especially considering they both have to get dressed, find towels, find sunscreen and food, but Edoardo doesn't seem to be in a rush to go anywhere and she's just really enjoying what he's doing to her skin.
"I'm happy," He murmurs suddenly, never lifting his mouth off of her. The words reverberate through his chest to her back, curls around the curve of her shoulder and she feels them all the way to her toes.
"I'm happy, too."
Out in the garden where we planted the seeds
There have been times when she's had to reorganize everything she'd done just to fit Edoardo into the picture. She used to sleep directly in the middle of the bed, but now can only sleep on the left side; she would never forget to take her makeup off before she fell asleep, and now she's had to add two extra steps into her skincare routine to make up for the number of times Edoardo had lulled her into a nap after school; she used to be able to leave her lipstick at home, now has to make sure she carries it everywhere (and it has to be a smudge-proof one). She likes green tea, pears, almonds, maple syrup on her oatmeal, to get her homework down as soon as it's set, to plan everything out before she does it. She can't stand the taste of the espresso shots he downs every morning, or the raisin cookies he's obsessed with, the juice he keeps in the fridge without a label, the way he'll come up with a plan for the day as he goes about it, never worried about timings or clashes; and yet she puts up with it all because Edoardo puts up with all of hers.
She never thought she was the only one making sacrifices and alterations for their relationship, but it still took her far too long to realize what his look like.
He hates early mornings, but he wakes up at dawn with her when they're at her place just to water the plants, and he drives her two hours away from Rome to check out a greenhouse that has a sale. He helps her study for her Chemistry class even if he doesn't understand a word of what she's written on the flashcards, he dresses in that blue button-down he detests when they skype with her mother every other month. He lets her steal the tee shirts that he really likes for when they sleep apart, forces her to study when she wants to do literally anything else, distracts Filo with video games when she has tests coming up she needs to prep for. He lets the girls crash their movie nights when one of them has a crisis, listens in when they complain about whatever their boy has done, and drops hints to the said boy the next time he sees them.
And then there's the one that he says out loud, "Do you think you can do something with that? Like plants or some shit?"
"What?"
He's propped his elbows on the counter with a mug of tea between his hands, staring out the window above the sink, but pushes himself up now and reaches for her until she throws down her biology flashcards and tangles their fingers together, following closely as he slides open the glass doors and steps out.
She's never really paid attention to his backyard, has always been more focused at the people crowding it during parties, but she can see now that it's mostly just wooden decking, some garden furniture dotted here and there, tarp covering something shaped a lot like a grill tucked into the corner. He leads them towards the decking steps and stops, pointing to the back wall.
They're only a few paces away from, but where the last step meets the ground there's very little space for more than one person, surrounded by three huge slabs of dark wood and mounds of dirt.
"My mother liked to garden before she died," He shrugs, leaning up against the deck railing and tugging her into his chest, "And Nonna does, too. She doesn't have enough strength to keep it up though and I don't know shit about whatever it is you're supposed to do." There's a kiss dropped to the back of her neck and then he tucks his chin on her shoulder, "Would be a shame to see it go to waste."
"You're going to let me garden?" She grins, feeling warm all over.
"Knock yourself out, babe."
He drives her around Rome looking for greenhouses and doesn't complain once when Eleonora spends hours trying to find the best plants for his garden. Her apartment is full of plants she found on the brink of death that she's nurtured back to health, but no one really goes into her apartment and never had to see the original product. Edoardo constantly has people over, the least he should be able to do is not feel embarrassed at the dying plants at the end of the garden.
"You know," Eleonora can't see him through the greenery between them, but he sounds bored, "I expected you buy the dying ones. I was ready to explain to everyone your obsession with playing plant-doctor."
"I'm almost done, shush," There's a grunt from him before she picks up another pot and starts heading his way, "Besides, your Nonna's coming over next week and I want her to see something nice after she has to see the graffiti you and the boys left on your wall."
He posts a picture of her online that afternoon, right after he'd swiped dirt on her cheek and nose, her tongue stuck out at him, but he does help her plant each and every new plant with minimal whining.
I held on as tightly as you held onto me
Edoardo Incanti can slow dance and it's something that she'd immediately told her girls' group chat as soon as she found out. He'd invited her to his second cousin's wedding, and honestly, she'd just expected them to dress up nice for some photos, eat their free dinner, exploit the open bar and go home.
She definitely did not expect his Nonna to wake them up at five-thirty in the morning for dance practice in his kitchen the day before they head out to Trento. It's cute watching him twirl his Nonna around the kitchen playfully, even cuter seeing his smile break across his face when she shows him the video she'd gotten of it all, but then it was her turn to get twirled around.
"Don't step on my toes."
"I didn't!"
"I didn't say you did, I'm saying don't."
"Edoardo!" His Nonna barks, flapping her hand at the back of his thigh, "Leave poor Ele alone."
"Yeah, Eduardo." He shoots her a warning look that screams 'wait until I get you alone', but doesn't retaliate. There's a slow musical number playing on his phone from his back pocket, and when his Nonna tells them to relax and feel the music, it's so easy to rest her cheek against his chest and close her eyes. His hand cupping hers moves as he plants a kiss there, then rests it comfortably so her hand flattens on his shoulder and he can wrap both of his arms around her waist. It's mostly just swaying back and forth, sometimes a slow shuffle of their feet so they move a little, but it's nice and she knows he's enjoying it too when his cheek drops to the top of her head and he lets out a relaxed sigh.
"What's the point of this again, Nonna?"
"So you don't look a fool."
"You're a few years too late there," Ele teases, muffling a squeal into his collar when he pinches the small of her back.
"Don't I know it."
"Nonna!"
Eleonora lifts her chin up towards him, laughing at the look of betrayal on his face. When his Nonna insists they keep dancing, despite Edoardo grumbling about his two girls poking fun at him, Ele squeezes his middle with the arm wrapped around him. She doesn't get a chance to settle back against him because he taps their foreheads together and starts swaying them again, humming the tune under his breath as he does.
She can picture it. Dancing with him just like this at the wedding tomorrow, him in that tux she'd peer pressured him into buying, her in that green dress he refused to let her put back on the rack. She can picture dancing with him just like this in his kitchen when they can't sleep, her room when they take a break from his college applications, movements sturdier, more fluid the more they do this. She can picture teasing him about being possibly the one bad-boy who knows how to slow dance for years to come, and knowing that she can see him still in her future further down the line doesn't scare her anymore.
His hand comes up now to tuck the hair falling from her hasty bun behind her ear, and then he curves it around her jaw.
"Got any new words for me?" He mumbles gently, so only they can hear it. His Nonna seems pre-occupied with heating up some tea, and Ele doesn't know if they're supposed to keep dancing or not but finds she really doesn't want to ever stop.
"A few," She sighs, stealing a barely-there kiss, "I'm totally keeping you."
"Yeah?"
She hums in the affirmative and matches his bright smile with one of her own.
"Good," He whispers, trailing his thumb over her lip before spinning her out into a twirl and then back into his chest, "'Cause I'm totally keeping you, too."