Day two at the fair was busy in that particular way where time just disappears.
By late morning, the aisles were again thick with people. Claire and I had already done three meetings back-to-back when a familiar voice floated over the low murmur of the hall.
“Good morning again.”
Matteo stood at the edge of the stand with a fresh stack of catalogues under his arm. He looked more awake than I felt. Dark hair still slightly untidy, sleeves rolled, that same easy half-smile.
“You found us,” Claire said.
“It was not difficult,” he replied. “I followed the English voices complaining about Italian coffee,” he chuckled.
She laughed, and it did something low and warm in my chest.
He glanced over the shelves, then at her. “How was your evening?” he asked. “Did you manage to be sensible?”
“Not entirely,” she said. “We shared a bottle and tried to remember that we have to stand up all day. I suspect we will pay for one of those choices.”
He smiled. “Some things are worth a little pain the next morning.”
“I am beginning to think you might be one of those people who encourage bad decisions,” Claire said.
“That would depend on the decision,” he said. “Professionally, I am very serious.” His eyes held hers a beat longer than necessary. “After hours, perhaps less.”
To anyone listening, it was harmless, fair banter. On our side of the table, the air felt a shade thicker.
Claire slid one of our catalogues toward him. “Then let us be serious for a moment,” she said. “You mentioned yesterday you might be interested in co-editions, reviews…”
They bent over the pages together, heads close. She pointed out a few titles; he asked questions, jotted a note on the corner of his list. Their shoulders almost, but not quite, touched.
“Have you been working all morning?” he asked at one point.
“Yes,” she said. “Standing, smiling, making polite conversation. It is very tiring.”
“You hide it well,” he said.
“That is years of practice,” she said. “And good shoes.”
“And him?” Matteo nodded lightly towards me. “Does he work you very hard?”
Claire’s mouth curved. “He keeps me busy,” she said. “Mostly in good ways.”
I felt that land in both of us.
Matteo chuckled. “Then perhaps tonight you let someone else buy the wine,” he said. “There is a small bar not far from here, quieter than the hotel. A few of us are going after the hall closes. You would be very welcome. Both of you.”
“Colleagues?” Claire asked.
“Friends,” he said. “Colleagues. People who pretend to talk about books and actually talk about everything else.”
She looked at me. It was a small look, but unmistakable: consultation, not permission.
“One drink,” I said. “We are trying to be sensible.”
“Of course,” Matteo said. “One drink is how every good story pretends to start.”
He left us with a smile and a promise to send directions.
When he had gone, Claire stacked the catalogues with unnecessary precision.
“Well,” she said.
“Indeed,” I said.
“You heard him,” she said quietly. “Friends. Colleagues. People who talk about everything else.”
“I heard,” I said. “And I saw the way he looked at you.”
She did not pretend to misunderstand.
“Do you think he would not come back here?” she asked. “If I invited him. If I made it very clear that you and I are… together?”
“I think you would not have to ask twice,” I said.
She nodded, thoughtful. “Good to know,” she said.
That night, after the hall closed and the last visitor had drifted away, we did go for that drink.
***
The bar Matteo had mentioned was small and tucked away, all dark wood and low light. There were three or four people from his company there. At some point, after a second glass of wine we had not strictly planned, the group thinned. Someone had an early breakfast; someone else wanted to check emails. Eventually, it was just the three of us at a corner table: Matteo with his chair tipped back slightly, Claire opposite him, and me between them, watching.
He was relaxed now, coat off, tie abandoned somewhere, top button undone. His English, already good, had softened at the edges with the drink. He had that Italian way of making eye contact feel like both an invitation and a compliment.
Claire was leaning on one elbow, her hand wrapped loosely around the stem of her glass. Her shoes were off under the table again. She looked comfortable, warmed from the inside.
“You two travel together a lot?” Matteo asked.
“Often,” Claire said. “Too often, perhaps.”
“It helps,” I said, “to have someone you can rely on when you forget which city you are waking up in.”
“And you are… how do you say… a package?” he asked. “Always together?”
“Something like that,” Claire said. There was a new note in her voice now. Lighter. Testing.
“We work well as a pair,” I added. “We know each other’s habits.”
Matteo smiled. “It shows,” he said. “You move like people who have done this many times.”
Claire’s eyes met mine, a small spark passing between us. Then she set her glass down and shifted slightly in her seat.
“Matteo,” she said, “may I ask you something a little… personal?”
He raised an eyebrow, amused. “You may ask,” he said. “I cannot promise I will answer, but I am curious.”
“You are single?” she asked.
His smile crooked. “Not exactly,” he said. “I have a girlfriend just now. It is… complicated. She does not really understand what this life is like. The strange hours. Always being around people. I try to be careful. She lives here in Milano, so I need caution.”
She nodded. “We understand that very well,” she said.
He glanced between us, reading the air more carefully now.
“And you?” he asked. “You are… how do I say… flexible?”
Claire’s lips gave a little warm smile. “We are adults,” she said. “With separate lives at home and a shared one when we travel. We handle it as honestly as we can.”
Matteo considered that. “Honesty is rare,” he said. “And valuable.”
Claire let that sit for a moment, then leaned forward slightly.
“Matteo,” I said, picking up the thread, “suppose we invited you back for a nightcap. Would you accept?”
He studied Claire for a moment, then glanced at me, including me in the answer.
“I would think you were not just thirsty,” he said. “And I would hope I had understood you correctly.”
He did not hurry his answer. He looked at her, then at me, then back at her.
“I would think you were being very kind,” he said. “And that I would be foolish to misunderstand.”
There was nothing crude in his tone. No wink, no swagger. Just a clear acknowledgement of the possibility.
Claire nodded once. “I thought so,” she said. “Good. I prefer clarity.”
She glanced at me again, as if checking a dial on equipment we were both operating.
“That is enough for tonight,” she said then, standing. “We have an early start.”
***
Matteo checked his watch, a small crease appearing between his brows. “I should go as well,” he said. “My girlfriend is already not happy that I am in town all week. If I am too late, it will not help.”
“Then we will walk you back,” Claire said easily. “We are heading that way anyway.”
We fell into step without discussing who went where: Claire in the middle, Matteo on one side, me on the other. Our shoulders did not quite touch, but the awareness walked with us like a fourth person.
They talked about nothing urgent. Food. The fair. Bad coffee in good countries. At one point, Matteo said, “It is nice, you two travelling together like this. It must make the work feel less lonely.”
“It does,” Claire said. “Makes the evenings more interesting too.”
He shot her a quick look at that, half amused, half wary, as if he had heard more than the words.
At the hotel entrance, we stopped.
“Then you had better go and be good,” Claire said, smiling. “Thank you for tonight.”
Matteo checked his watch, then the dark street, then us. I could almost see the little calculation play across his face.
“I have a couple of hours before she expects me to call,” he said slowly. “The trains are not so bad tonight. I do not have to rush back yet.”
Claire’s smile deepened just a fraction. “In that case,” she said, “would you like a nightcap? The hotel bar is loud. Our room is quieter.”
His eyes moved between us, reading, weighing. He was not stupid. He saw more than the words.
He breathed out once, a small huff of air that might have been a laugh. “If I say no,” he said, “I will go back to my tiny room and lie awake thinking about what might have happened. If I say yes, I still have time to go home and be good later.”
He looked at me, not just at her. “You are all right with this?” he asked.
“I would not be standing here otherwise,” I said.
He considered that for a heartbeat more, then nodded. “One drink,” he said. “And we see how it feels.”
We went inside together.
***
The lift ride was short and quiet, full of unspoken things. In the mirrored wall, I could see us as someone else might: Claire between two men, one young and trying not to look too excited, one older, watching both with a calm that was not entirely calm.
Our room looked smaller with three people in it. The bed, the small table, the two chairs by the window. Claire closed the door softly and turned the key without making a point of it.
“Wine,” she said briskly, as if this were nothing more than a continuation of the evening. “Sit, both of you.”
Matteo put his jacket over the back of the nearest chair, then hesitated.
“Before anything,” he said, “I must ask. I told you I have a girlfriend. If I stay, I am not only risking myself. I need to know what this is.”
Claire nodded. “All right,” she said. “Let us be clear. He and I are together. At home, we each have other ties. We are not here to pretend otherwise. We are careful with what we do and who we touch. If you stay, it is because you choose to, knowing that. If you decide this is not for you, we will say goodnight, and you can go with no drama.”
“And nothing happens that any of us would be ashamed to say we agreed to,” I added. “We use protection. We stop if anyone wants to stop. No one is pushed.”
Matteo looked at me, then at her. Something in his shoulders relaxed.
“All right,” he said. “Thank you for saying it.”
Claire poured the wine and handed him a glass. For a few minutes, we talked in the ordinary way again: about the fair, about the city, about the girlfriend at home who did not like Milan but liked his job. The conversation settled in, easy on the surface, taut underneath.
After a while, Claire set her glass down.
“I am going to ask a very direct question,” she said.
Matteo gave a short, crooked smile. “Ask,” he said.
She turned slightly so that she faced both of us.
“If I tell you that I would like to sleep with you,” she said calmly, “and that I would like him to be here while I do it, are you still comfortable staying in this room?”
The line landed between us and stayed there.
Matteo swallowed once. His gaze flicked to me, checking, and returned to her.
“Yes,” he said. “If he is truly all right with it. If you both are, then I am.”
Claire looked at me. It was not a test; it was the same check we had promised each other we would always make.
“I am all right with it,” I said. My voice came out steady. “I want to see you.”
She held my gaze for a second longer, then nodded, satisfied, and turned back to Matteo.
“Then put your glass down,” she said gently.
He did. His hand was not quite steady.
She stepped closer, close enough that he had to tilt his head a little to meet her eyes. One hand came up to rest lightly on his chest. She did not rush. She let him see what she was doing. She let me see it.
“If you want to stop,” she said quietly, “at any point, just say so.”
“Va bene,” he murmured.
She smiled at the Italian, then leaned in and kissed him.
It was not a dramatic thing at first. Just a soft testing of shape and warmth. His hands hovered, then settled carefully at her waist. I watched his fingers curve in a place my own hands knew by heart, and something in my chest tightened and loosened at the same time.
After a moment, she drew back, checked his face, then crossed to me.
“You,” she said softly. “Come here.”
I stood. The room felt oddly distant under my feet. Claire reached for my hand and pulled me in between them so that she had a man on each side. She kissed me then, deep and familiar, tasting of wine and something newly sharpened. Matteo watched us, his own breath catching at the difference.
When she let me go, she took one of my hands and one of his, joining them briefly.
“There,” she said. “Now no one can pretend the other is not part of this.”
She let our hands fall and stepped back towards the bed.
“I do not want to rush,” she said. “If we take off our clothes tonight, I want it to be because we all meant it, not because it seemed to happen by accident. So here is what I suggest. We stay like this for a while. We touch a little. We see how it feels. If anyone is uncomfortable, we stop. If we are all still here and still wanting more, then we decide together how far we go, and we do it slowly. Piece by piece.”
Her eyes moved between us. Neither of us said no.
What followed blurred, as certain moments do when they are lived more in the nerves than in words. Clothes loosened and were set aside, not flung. There was no performance, only three people trying to be careful and brave at once. New hands learning familiar skin. Familiar hands watching new responses. The sound of breathing changes with each reverberation. small, noticeable increments as each of us adjusted to the sight of the others.
Claire looked at me, then Matteo. “You,” she said, looking directly into my eyes. “You sit there like a good boy, make yourself happy, I am not yours for now.”
That hit me harder than I thought, but this was for Claire, for us.
Claire then paused, looked from his face to mine, and I realised she was doing exactly what we had promised: checking that this was still ours, not something carrying us away.
***
She eased back onto the bed, settling on the pillows with her legs just slightly parted, an unspoken invitation that both of us could see. Matteo followed, kneeling beside her, and she wrapped her hand around him with easy familiarity. She toyed with him at first, guiding him against her cheek and along her lips in a slow, teasing path, breathing him in and letting the scent of him settle over her. Only then did she really start to give him her attention, her movements growing more deliberate as he slipped a hand behind her head, steadying her with a gentle, wordless encouragement.
He drew back for a moment, his expression slack with pleasure, then slowly lowered himself to her again and kissed Claire deeply, as if he meant to memorise the taste of her. She ran her fingers through his hair, a soft sound slipping from her as his other hand moved over her body in ways we both knew very well. There were sounds I recognised instantly, and others that were new.
He traced her collarbone with his mouth, a line of careful kisses that drifted across the curve of her breast. She arched into him as he lingered there, giving each tightened peak its turn, patient and intent. Then he slid lower, his attention travelling down the length of her until he settled between her thighs. I saw the familiar catch in her breath when pleasure climbed too fast, and then an unfamiliar, higher note when something different surprised her.
There was a moment when I heard her say, on a breath that was half laugh and half groan, “Yes, like that,” and realised with a jolt she was not speaking to me. To my own surprise, the realisation did not slice. It settled instead as a fierce, complicated pride. Look at her, I thought. Look at what she is like when someone else makes her forget herself.
Then came the sound of torn foil – small, but it changed the air in the room. The condom Claire had left quietly by the pillow earlier was suddenly not theoretical anymore. Matteo picked it up with steady hands and, for the first time that night, it was unmistakably him taking control. No going back. No pretending we were only flirting with the edge.
He rolled it on in a quick, practised motion, then moved closer, guiding her gently down the bed until she lay where he wanted her. Claire said something – his name, perhaps, or a half-formed joke – but the words dissolved between them. He leaned over her, bracing himself with one hand, his face close to hers, eyes searching. For a heartbeat, everything held: breath, doubt, anticipation.
Then he closed the last small distance, easing forward, and I watched the exact moment she let him in – not only into her body, but over a line we had been circling for a very long time
By the time the sharpest of it had passed, the room was full of the soft after-sounds of people returning to themselves: small sighs, the creak of the mattress as someone shifted, the whisper of a sheet being pulled up.
Claire lay on her back, hair damp and tumbled, chest rising and falling in fast, shallow breaths. Matteo’s head rested against her shoulder, his hand spread across her stomach. After a moment, she covered it with her own, a quiet, almost absent gesture. They lay like that in a loose, tangled silence.
Eventually, Claire laughed very softly. It was not hysteria; more something close to disbelief.
“Well,” she said. Her voice was rough around the edges. “That was… not very sensible.”
“Probably not,” I agreed.
Matteo let his head fall briefly to the pillow beside her arm. “I am dead,” he said, muffled. Then, clearer: “If I miss my train, I am dead.”
Claire turned her head to look at him. “What time is it?” she asked.
He fumbled for his phone on the bedside table. The screen lit his face, making him look younger for a second.
“Just after midnight,” he said. “I have time, if I run. Maybe.”
He looked at us then, properly, as if stepping back into his own life.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and it struck me he meant it sincerely.
“I am,” Claire said. She sounded faintly surprised. “You?”
He nodded. “I did not know what to expect,” he said. “But you were clear. Both of you. I am grateful for that.”
“We meant what we said,” I told him. “We did not bring you here to use you as a prop.”
“Even if you were a very attractive one,” Claire added, smiling.
He laughed quietly at that, some tension easing out of his shoulders.
“I should shower,” he said, glancing at his phone again. “I need to clean up. I cannot go home like this.”
“Of course, you know where the bathroom is,” Claire said at once, then caught my eye. It still surprised me how natural it had become for her to make these small offers for the two of us.
He slipped off the bed, and I took his place. He gathered a few clothes out of habit, then clearly abandoned the attempt at modesty and padded to the bathroom. The door closed gently behind him; the fan started; water ran.
***
Claire and I were alone for the first time in hours.
She rolled onto her side to face me, wincing in a way I recognised. Not pain exactly, but the body’s protest after being well used.
“How are you?” she asked again, echoing the question from earlier.
I took a moment to check: jealousy? Not quite. Relief? A little. A strange floating contentment underlaid with a jittery edge of adrenaline.
“Still excited,” I said. “Still nervous. Less curious, more… overwhelmed.”
“Overwhelmed good or overwhelmed bad?” she asked.
“Good,” I said. “Very good. You?”
She considered. “I thought I would feel more guilty,” she said slowly. “About him. About her at home. About you, even. Instead, I feel…” She searched for the word. “Known. In a way, I have not felt for a long time.”
I brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. “You were beautiful,” I said simply. “And terrifying. In the best way.”
She smiled, eyes soft. “You managed very well,” she said. “I did not feel abandoned. You staying made it all the easier for me. I did not feel like you abandoned me with him.”
“Good,” I said. The fear of that had been sitting under my ribs the whole time.
“You know he will go home and have to decide how much of this was a mistake,” I added.
“Yes,” she said. “He has more to lose than we do in some ways.”
“We did not force him,” I said.
“No,” she agreed. “We gave him choices. He took them.”
She shifted closer, tucking her head under my chin. I wrapped my arm around her automatically. Our bodies fit together in that familiar way that had nothing to do with the last two hours and everything to do with the last two years.
“You know,” she said after a moment, voice muffled against my chest, “The thought of you watching me would undo me.”
“And did it?” I asked.
She lifted her head, looking at me properly. “A little,” she said honestly. “In a very particular way. It is one thing to imagine. It is another to see someone else touch you. To see your face when you let them. Part of me wanted to climb on top of you and remind you who you belong to. Which was inconvenient with him in the room.”
“I would not have objected,” I said.
“I know,” she said dryly. “That is half the problem.”
We both laughed quietly. The sound loosened something.
“And you?” she asked. “Seeing me?”
“It did something I am not entirely sure how to name,” I said. “I did not like seeing you unsure. There were a couple of moments where you looked for me, and I wanted to pull you away. But when you were enjoying it, when you were clearly choosing it… that was different. That was mostly… beautiful. And very, very arousing.”
Her mouth quirked. “Good,” she murmured. “Then perhaps we are not entirely broken.”
“No,” I said. “Just strangely wired.”
She rolled closer again, pressing herself along my length, her leg sliding over mine. We both winced a little, then laughed at that too.
“I had better sort this out,” she said softly, her hand drifting down between us, “or there will be no sleep tonight.”
What followed was brief and gentle, more about easing us both down from the height we had been holding than about starting anything grand. A few shared breaths, a quiet, shuddering release that felt more like relief than spectacle.
After a while, she looked at me, eyes half closed.
“We should sleep,” she said, sinking back into my chest.
“Yes,” I agreed. “We are not twenty.”
“Speak for yourself,” she muttered.
Eventually, sleep did come. It was not simple. There were jagged edges to it, pockets where my mind tried to replay scenes in higher resolution, adding details it might have missed. Each time, I forced myself to remember the other parts too: the check-ins, the questions, the fact that at no point had I felt truly pushed out.
When morning seeped in around the curtains a couple of hours later, I woke to find Claire still pressed against me, one arm thrown over my waist, her fingers curled in the sheet as if she had been holding on in her dreams. My body ached in familiar and unfamiliar ways. My head felt thick, but not from drink.
She stirred as I shifted, blinking up at me.
“Still alive?” I asked.
“Barely,” she said. Her voice was rough and sleepy. “Muscles I did not know I had are complaining.”
“Complaining in a good way?” I asked.
She considered that, then smiled slowly. “Yes,” she said. “In a good way.”
We lay there a little longer, letting everything catch up.
“We will have to see him at the fair,” I said eventually.
“Yes,” she said. “And pretend to talk about books while we are both thinking of everything else.”
“Are you all right with that?” I asked.
She nodded against the pillow. “We knew that when we invited him in,” she said. “Actions have consequences. That is what makes them real.”
She looked at me then, properly awake, properly present.
“We did not break,” she said quietly.
“No,” I agreed. “We did not.”
She reached for my hand under the sheet and laced our fingers together.
“Then whatever else happens,” she said, “we start from there.”
The end of Milan.
