The days began to slip away unnoticed.

A month had seemed so long, yet the last week of the internship arrived without me even realizing it.

Work occupied my mind all day, and Gioele occupied it all night.

Cesare was pleased with me; after the first week, he entrusted me with some small tasks without supervision. Bianca was slightly envious; apparently, when she was an intern there, her pastry chef never left her alone for a second.

Occasionally, the chef would pass by the pastry section, muttering a bit with Cesare, then come to inspect mine and Bianca's work. He never said anything to either of us, just looked and moved on.

Chef Ettore Bernardi was a calm and reserved man.

The stereotype of the chef shouting at his cooks as if they were his slaves isn't quite accurate. Or rather, those places exist, but they don't last long. The chef is the captain of the ship. If the captain starts shouting and causing panic, it means he has lost control. Rather, a good chef knows how to stand aside, intervene only when necessary, and let his brigade move like the perfectly fitting gears of a machine.

The Barone's machine would have been pure efficiency if it weren't for the small speck of dust that was Gioele.

Oh, compared to the first few days, he had found his spaces and his rhythms, but it still seemed like he had to cause at least one disaster a day to be able to go to bed feeling serene.

For this reason, one evening when he had gone through the entire service without Michela's screams reaching the pastry section, I expected to see him appear from the stairs any moment seeking help for his daily dilemma.

I was sanitizing the tables when I saw him passing along the corridor. He wasn't coming towards me, he was walking calmly straight ahead.

A whole day without problems, I thought with a strange sense of pride, before noticing what he had in his hands. At first, I registered it as a tomato, but when I realized that what he was cradling in his hand was actually his other hand, I jumped up, overturning the bowl of sanitizer water.

"Ah, sorry!" I yelled to Bianca, running out of the pastry section. "I'll clean it up later!"

Gioele had already passed my door and was continuing to walk forward.

"GIO!"

He turned around and said, "I cut myself. I need a band-aid."

"I can see that you cut yourself! You're dripping blood everywhere!"

"Oh!" Gio looked at the little stains he had left on the stairs. "Oops, didn't notice."

"Let me see!" I grabbed him by the wrist and gently lifted his hand. I couldn't even figure out where the cut was; it was all covered in blood, I was seriously about to lose it.

"Hey, little chick!" A voice shouted from the stairs. Flavio, the appetizers chef, was climbing the steps two at a time, panting heavily. "Come here, I'll help you."

He reached us, smiling as usual. He took Gio by the shoulders and pushed him forward. "You've got yourself a nice cut, eh?"

"Yeah," Gioele replied, at the peak of calmness. "I need a band-aid."

"A band-aid won't be enough for that, you need a bandage."

At the end of the corridor, we stopped in front of the first aid box, from which Flavio extracted bandages, disinfectant, and everything else. I stayed behind Gio's shoulder, trembling with anxiety, while Flavio dabbed at his blood with a cloth to reveal the wound. It was a nice deep cut in his thumb, between the first and second phalanx.

"Looks bad," I said. "Is it bad? Maybe you need stitches."

Flavio laughed with his deep laugh. "Nah, a bandage will do. In no time, you'll be good as new, little chick."

Gio smiled at him and let him wrap the wound without even flinching.

"You're a real cook now," the chef sang. "If you're a blacksmith who's never smashed a finger under the hammer, it means you haven't hammered enough. The same goes for us."

"Oh, but I've already cut myself plenty of times," Gio replied.

"I had no doubt, little chick."

Gioele looked at the bundle of bandages trapping his thumb. He moved it a little, observing it closely, as if he were curious about it.

"Can I go downstairs now?"

"Of course," Flavio replied, standing next to the first aid box while Gio started walking towards the stairs.

His shoulders were narrow and thin. He walked swaying, like a thin tree in the wind.

"That kid is super weird."

I kept my response to myself, mostly because I didn't know what it was.

...

That evening we closed early; it was the first time that Gio and I left together with everyone else. Normally, by ten o'clock, the chef made us drop everything and, regardless of how chaotic the situation was, sent us out. This was because a renowned place like that received many inspections, and two underage interns working after ten in the evening equaled hefty fines.

But that evening, we all left the kitchen together, with Manuel and Rick admiring Gioele's giant thumb like it was a war wound.

"We should celebrate!" Rick announced when the chefs had walked away. "Let's go for a drink."

"They're underage, idiot," Manuel retorted.

"And you didn't drink at seventeen?"

Manuel kept to himself what he had or hadn't done at seventeen.

"Hey, Bianca." Rick intercepted her before she could slip away to the locker room. "Let's go for a drink? The kids are coming too."

"No, Richi. And you shouldn't either. You'll come to work tomorrow with a hangover, and the chef will eat you alive."

Rick just snorted when Bianca was far enough. "But you two should come," he stated instead of asking.

Gio gave me a lost look. He didn't seem like someone who wanted to go out to the pub.

"Uhm..."

"In twenty minutes, we'll come to pick you up in your room." Rick left, taking Manuel with him towards the locker room.

"We don't have to go if you don't want to," I hastened to remind Gioele during our gloomy walk to the elevator. The killer clown didn't catch us that time either.

"If I don't want to, you can still go," Gio retorted.

As if I cared about going out without him.

We arrived at our room door without having decided anything. Gio held his breath as soon as I unlocked the door with the magnetic key. From the threshold, he stared out the window, and in an instant, he hopped onto the windowsill.

Outside, it was dark and raining.

From the kitchen, it had been impossible to hear the noise, but there, the pattering of the raindrops beat with a wonderful melody.

I loved the sound of rain.

Tut tut.

It was an instinctive call, like a little bird diving into a fountain. I joined him on my knees on the bed, resting my elbow on the windowsill and my chin on my hand.

For those twenty minutes, Gioele and I stood there, motionless, watching the rain cut through the lamplight.

Gioele didn't say anything.

There was often silence with him, a silence that didn't embarrass him. He lived in it. I couldn't understand how in one person there could be peace and chaos mixed in that impossible balance, like water with oil.

"I really like you, Nico." His voice broke the tut tut of the rain.

My heart stopped beating, and my lungs stopped breathing.

Gio continued to watch the drops in the lamplight. "I hope we'll remain friends even after we go back home."

Friends.

My heart and lungs registered the false alarm and continued their usual monotonous work.

Fuck. I don't want to be your friend. I want you to grab me by the hair and kiss me.

Rick opening our door without knocking put an end to that painful conversation. I didn't know whether to be grateful to him or throw something heavy at his face.

The two of them looked at us, kneeling by the window, staring at the rain, they looked at the mess that was our room, unmade beds, clothes thrown everywhere, plushies on every surface, and exchanged a suspicious glance.

"What's going on?! You haven't even changed yet?! Hey, that's Treecko! It was my favorite Pokémon when I was a kid!" He bent down to pick up one of the abandoned plushies on the floor, the one that looked like a bipedal frog.

"Grass starters are the best." Gio replied without missing a beat. Then, with all bright eyes, "Do you like Pokémon?"

"I played a lot of it," rick replied. "I even collected the cards."

"And you don't collect them anymore?" Gio jumped off his bed and ran to the suitcase. I knew he was pulling out his deck even before I saw it.

"Well, you know... work." Rick explained, gesturing vaguely to everything around him.

"Who's your favorite?"

Rick answered a name that I immediately forgot, and Gio immediately picked the character from his cards. "Here, I'll give it to you."

Rick responded with a "wow, that's nice, thank you" of those you use when a kid shows you his drawing. I felt a jab sharp annoyance. I had been over the moon when Gio had given me mine. Rick didn't deserve it. Sometimes I felt like he treated Gio as if he were a bit slow or something.

"So we change and we'll be there," Gioele said.

"What? I thought you didn't want to go." 

"Yeah, I want to go," he replied confidently. "I'll grab my rainbow umbrella."