And for the first time in two years, Lena laughed—the real laugh, the one she’d left behind in this city. The Nutella was sweet, too sweet, and utterly ordinary. It tasted like a second chance. It tasted like home.
“It’s not the same,” he said.
Afterward, Matteo looked at the empty glass, then at her. “Now what?”
Some people save the last jar.
“We have to open it,” she said.
“It’s our Virginoff,” he said one evening, his hand tracing her spine. “You don’t eat the last jar. You just… know it’s there.”
Two years later, she returned to Genoa. Not for him. For closure. She told herself that. She walked into the deli. Matteo was behind the counter, older now, with a small scar above his eyebrow (olive-pressing accident, he’d later explain). He didn’t smile the knowing smile. He just looked at her. Virginoff Nutella With Boyfriend
“For the Virginoff,” she lied.
They finished the jar in twenty minutes, sitting on the cold stone floor, licking their fingers, saying nothing.
The empty Virginoff jar now sits on their nightstand, holding dried lavender. Every so often, when one of them has a bad day, they unscrew the lid, inhale the faint ghost of cocoa and old love, and remember. And for the first time in two years,
But time, unlike Virginoff, is never in short supply. The year ended. Lena went back to Boston. Long distance turned into long silences. The calls became emails. The emails became likes on Instagram stories. Matteo got a job at his uncle’s olive farm. Lena got a promotion and a therapist. They broke up twice—once over FaceTime at 4 AM, once via a passive-aggressive Spotify playlist.
“No,” she agreed, taking the spoon. “It’s better. Because we’re not saving it anymore.”
The first time Lena saw the jar, she thought it was a prank. It sat on the top shelf of a tiny, dust-choked delicatessen in the Genoa backstreets, its label a faded, almost heretical twist on the familiar blue-and-gold. Virginoff Nutella. The font was the same. The promise of “hazelnut cream” was there. But the word “Virginoff” hung above it like a surname, suggesting a lost, purer lineage. It tasted like home