You'd come over to return something, which had taken approximately forty seconds, which should've been enough time to leave before you saw it.

It was not enough time.

Matteo was standing at the counter with the expression of someone who had completed a task and was satisfied with the result. In front of him was what he apparently intended to eat for dinner — a bowl containing chicken that had been cooked to a texture that suggested structural integrity was the primary goal, plain rice, and something green that had been boiled past the point of having opinions about it.

You looked at the bowl. At him. At the bowl again.

Something in you that had been cooking since age thirteen made a decision that your mouth hadn't approved yet.