Everything the Lake Reflects Back

“He always put the right people together,” Giulia said, refilling Jia’s glass without asking. “It was his gift. Terrible taste in paint, but excellent taste in people.” She looked between them with the particular serenity of someone who has decided something and is simply waiting for others to catch up.
Massimo looked at the lake. Jia looked at her wine.
The second sharp moment came near the end of the second week.
They’d been arguing about the terrace tiles — not badly, just the specific friction of two people who approach problems differently and know it. Jia wanted to match the original pattern. Massimo thought the original pattern was the problem. They’d been going in circles for ten minutes, both standing on the half-cleared terrace with the lake behind them and the afternoon warm and unhelpful, when Massimo stopped mid-sentence and said, “Why does it matter to you?”
Not dismissively. Genuinely.
She opened her mouth and then closed it. Because it had been his, she almost said. Because Renato chose every one of these tiles and I sat in his office for six years and he always knew what he was doing even when no one else could see it yet. Because some things deserve to be kept.
She didn’t say any of that. She said, “Because the pattern is good. It just needs care.”
Massimo looked at her for a long moment. “All right,” he said. “We’ll match it.”
And that was the end of the argument. But not the end of whatever the argument had actually been about.
Giulia left on a Thursday with her empty casserole dishes and a knowing look she distributed equally between them. She hugged Jia for slightly longer than necessary and told her, in quiet Italian, that the chalet had good bones. Jia understood she wasn’t talking about the chalet.
The last week was quieter. The walls were done. The tiles were laid, pattern matched, grouted neatly. The boiler had been serviced. Jia had started packing the few personal items they’d agreed to keep — some of Renato’s books, a ceramic lamp, a photograph from the 1990s that Giulia had asked them to hold onto. The estate agent was coming Monday.
On the last evening, Massimo built a small fire in the terrace pit even though the night wasn’t cold enough to need one. He didn’t explain it. Jia brought two glasses of the wine Giulia had left and sat down across from him.
For a while they just watched the fire.
The lake was doing the thing it did at dusk — holding the last of the light longer than the sky did, giving it back slowly, reluctantly. The mountains on the far shore were going dark blue. Somewhere below the terrace wall, water moved against the rocks in a rhythm that had nothing to do with urgency.
The third sharp moment was not sharp at all. That was the thing about it.
Massimo reached over and turned the ceramic lamp around in his hands — the one they’d packed for Giulia — looking at it the way he’d looked at Jia on the terrace that first time. Like he was working something out. Then he set it down and said, quietly, “I’m glad it was you.”
Jia didn’t ask what he meant. She knew what he meant.
She looked at the fire for a moment. Then she looked at him.
“So am I,” she said.
The lake held the light a little longer. The fire crackled once. Neither of them moved to go inside.

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About the Author

Clara Vance — a former corporate strategist, expert in the tension that builds between two desks. Her hobby? Morning coffee chats in the office where she collects ideas for her stories.

— Clara Vance

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Categories: Contemporary, Romances

Tags: 10min stories, Clara Vance, contemporary romance, cozy, Italy, Lake Como, second chance, short story, slow burn, workplace romance

August 23, 2026

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