My breath caught. I was afraid to move, scared that whatever bubble we were in would pop and we’d realize we were out of our depth here.
His nose brushed mine, with his lips hovering close. He was almost there. It was so natural. I knew these lips. I knew what they felt like, how they moved over every inch of me . . . God, I wanted him! It was as if no time had passed, and the woman I am joined the girl I was then in wanting this to happen more than almost anything.
Because in that moment, there didn’t seem to be anything at all wrong with letting nature take over. Wanting so badly to take that final step, I brought my hand up to his hair, twisting a curl around my finger. The arm that circled my waist pulled me even tighter to his body.
I was always a girl who loved to be kissed. Sweet little pecks that said I love you quickly or deep, searching ones that you felt through your body like a live wire over your skin. It had been a long time since I’d felt someone’s lips against mine in such a needy way. It had been an even longer time since I felt a kiss that made my toes curl and that had me throwing caution to the wind.
Maybe because we were at a party filled with people he worked with and it happened to be in a building that used to be a monastery, but I was wild with desire and it was terrifying just how much I wanted this. But then I heard a tour group coming toward us and something changed, I changed. I didn’t think, I reacted and pushed him away.
I exhaled shakily, then took a much-needed breath. This was exactly what I didn’t plan to happen and I let it.
The twinkle in his eyes vanished and was replaced by that same hurt he had shown me that day at the café. “Marcello, I’m—”
“Sorry. I know.”
“Marcello, wait,” I called out, but he’d already taken off.
I searched the party for him, but much as I had that first dinner, he did everything he could to avoid me.
“What happened?” Daisy asked, pulling me over to the side.
“Things almost got out of hand. I have to apologize. Again.” I ran my hand through my hair, frustrated. “I feel like all I do with him is say I’m sorry.”
YOU’RE KIDDING ME, RIGHT?” she asked, eyeing the envelope with skepticism and disbelief.
“Listen, I don’t know where he lives. I’m not going to corner him in the office, either, so I need you to do this.”
“If there are check boxes in here asking if he likes you Yes or No, I’m kicking your ass when I get back.”
I didn’t dignify it with a response.
An apology was necessary, so I did what any self-respecting, practically divorced woman of thirty would do. I sent a letter with my best friend, asking him to call, email, or text me. I gave him every option.
Being in the apartment all day wasn’t how I planned to spend my time, but I didn’t want to miss him, so I caught up on email. My in-box was flooded with curious questions from friends, more leading questions from acquaintances still determined to get the dirt, and no fewer than four emails from my mother.
She hadn’t approved of me running off to Rome, even though both she and my father were 100 percent in my corner when it came to leaving Daniel. But leaving Daniel didn’t have to mean leaving the country, or so my mother’s first email told me.
Her second email wondered why I couldn’t have simply escaped to their house; I shouldn’t be alone right now. She’d make me my favorite brisket, she’d rent us some funny movies, she’d buy me chocolate ice cream (my mother’s problem-solving methods were all straight out of a Julia Roberts rom-com), and she’d get me through this crisis, by God.
The third email allowed that perhaps I did need some time alone, but that if solitude was what I needed, then I could move into the Cape house and not see a soul if I didn’t want to. Furthermore, if solitude was what I needed then why, for pity’s sake, was I in Rome, a place crawling with summer tourists?
The fourth and final email told me that she was ready to give me my space, that she and my father would continue to support me any way that they could, but for the love of all that is holy, could I please return an email like a good daughter should?
She had a point. I had sort of cut and run when I left, and I know it didn’t make much sense to her. I quickly fired off an email promising that yes, I was fine, and yes, I was settling in, and that yes, once they got their Skype up and running I’d love to have a “video phone call or whatever.”
I emptied out the rest of my in-box, painted my nails a beautiful shade of Roman Red—fitting—and then proceeded to ruin my new manicure by deciding to grab my easel and head outside to the courtyard.
I’d been experimenting with different mediums, mostly colored pencils and pastels, but on a second visit to the art store I’d invested in a set of new acrylic paint and some great brushes. Not yet knowing what I was going to paint, or how good I’d be after such a long time, rather than investing in canvas I opted to go with some less-expensive cardboard. Some I’d purchased, some I’d scrounged from around the neighborhood. When you wanted to capture an idea, a concept, an anything, the bottom of a shoebox, once flattened, can be a great canvas.
I propped everything up on a cheap easel I’d also bought, tucked it into the corner of Daisy’s guest bedroom, and spent time every day just painting whatever came to mind. The light on the tiny patio, the trash cans on the corner I could just make out from my window, anything and everything to get my hands comfortable holding the brushes again.
Today I needed to get out of the apartment, away from thinking about whether or not Marcello would accept my apology, so I gathered up my supplies and headed out into the courtyard, determined to capture the exact color of those potato vines cascading down the balcony planters.
By ten I had captured the color.
By noon I had successfully layered the purples for the bougainvillea planted alongside the potato vines.
By two I had painted the planter itself along with the two on either side, the bricks below, the sky above, and was starting in on another round of trash cans when I began to think he wouldn’t call. Or text. Or email.
I brought my things inside, washed my hands, checked my phone one last time, then began to circle my laptop.
Should I? Should I not?
I had just sat down to email him when there was a knock at the front door.
Pulling off the apron, I held my breath, and my hope, in my chest. I opened the door, peeked around the corner, and let out a sigh when I saw him standing there.
“I was starting to think I wouldn’t see you for another nine years,” I said, stepping to the side so he could come in.
He stayed on the stoop, hands in his pockets. He looked every bit the boy I remembered, and the man I was beginning to know. Confident, handsome, and happy to see me?
“Am I interrupting?” he said, glancing at the colors splashed against my arms. “You have some”—he waved his hand near my cheek—“just there. Painting eh, melanzana?”
“What is that?” I asked, wondering what color was on my face. “Melons?”
He smiled, taking his thumb and smudging the still-wet paint from my cheek. “Viola, big, uh—purple vegetable.”
Then it dawned on me. The bougainvillea was purple. “You mean eggplant.”
Nodding, he rubbed his painted thumb between his hands. “Avery,” he began, but I stopped him by pulling him into the house.
“Can I say some things? First? Before you say anything.”
He thought a moment, then nodded.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you away,” I explained, choosing my next words carefully. “I wanted you to kiss me. At the bank. Below the bank. Whatever.”
I could feel the blush rising but I didn’t care. I needed to get this out and make sure he knew why I stopped him, why I had to stop him. His eyes were searching, piercing; they always could level me. I studied my hands instead. If I didn’t look right at him, I could say it. “I got spooked when it sounded like someone was coming. I kind of panicked, I guess.?
??
How there was skin left on my hands I will never know, the way I was wringing them. But I went on.
“I didn’t want you to kiss me, I mean I did, but not for the first time anyway, with people right around the corner. It’s been a long time since . . . well . . . since anyone looked at me the way that you did. At the bank.”
“Below the bank,” I heard him say, his voice full of teasing, but warmth, too. My eyes swung up to find him smiling at me.
“I thought you were embarrassed,” he said, glancing down to my lips.
“What? How could I possibly be embarrassed of you?”
He nodded and his mouth curled up in the tiniest of grins. “I’ve got an idea.”
“Hmm?” Was I forgiven? Again?
“You take off the apron, wash off the eggplant, and you and I? We take a walk.”
A walk. Yes. I could walk. I had a request, though. “I’ll go wherever you want, but I want you to do something for me.”
“What is this you ask?”
“Talk to me while we’re walking. Explain everything. Where we’re turning, how old something is. All of it. Left, right, north, south. Don’t leave out any details.”
* * *
DAISY AND MARCELLO had very different methods of showing me their city. Daisy’s was an adopted sense of pride, so she prattled on incessantly as if it were a travel show. She loved Rome’s beauty and history, but she explained everything in an academic way.
“Did you know that Rome has over three hundred fountains?” she’d said as she tossed a coin into one on the outer wall of a McDonald’s. It was one of those instances where I was contemplating the fusion of old and the new. “And something like nine hundred churches? That’s a lot of holy.”
“Maybe you should get a part-time job as a tour guide.” I’d been teasing her one night when we were walking past a guide with a lime-green flag and a trail of eager tourists. “I’m sure that tour group Dark Rome would take one look at your résumé and hire you in a second.”
Everything she told me was interesting, sure, but sometimes you just wanted to wander and lose yourself.
And this was how Marcello played tour guide. We lost ourselves in the city, wandering wherever we wished, with me asking occasional questions and him answering, more often than not with a story accompanying. I took everything in, tried to take mental pictures at every turn, willing myself to remember so that I could re-create it later on. Even the roofs of the surrounding buildings were something I never wanted to forget. Slate gray, brick red, some were tile, some were shingle, nothing matched so everything matched. And the doors were something else that I found myself enamored of here. Santorini blue, vermillion, and evergreen—this world was saturated with color.
We eventually headed down toward the Tiber, where we walked along the tree-lined sidewalk and enjoyed the breeze coming off the river.
“Left, right, or straight?” he asked when we came upon a magnificent stone bridge filled with foot traffic.
I stood in front of one of the ornately carved pillars to read the marker: Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II. It was something that I was growing to adore about the city. Everything had a name and not just Blah Blah Street or Someone Circle. Beautiful, historic names that I butchered with my pronunciation, but I loved hearing him teach me what I was doing wrong.
“Say it again?” I asked, pointing up to the bridge’s oxidized plaque.
“Ponte Vittorio Emanuele.” He embellished the syllables for my benefit. Either because he genuinely wanted me to learn how to say it properly, or more likely, because he knew his accent made me swoony.
“Why angels?” I pointed to the top of the great stone plinth where an angel held a shield and raised a sword proudly.
“These are for victory. They are named for Victoria, Roman goddess for triumph in battle. You will find them all over the city; jewelry, money, architecture. At one time she was worshipped on one of the Seven Hills.”
In that moment, it didn’t matter what he was talking about, I just wanted him to keep talking, and I told him as much.
And just as I requested, Marcello explained why each bridge was named what it was, and how the streets that intersected all had something to do with the bridge and the town. Each little nook had its own bit of history. It was fascinating and intoxicating listening to him.
We continued along the Tiber, the streets tree lined and crowded with couples, families, runners, tourists, and locals alike, out and about enjoying their city. Another strong breeze whipped through, giving me the perfect opportunity to lean into him for warmth. He casually slung his arm over my shoulders as he told me we were about to pass Circus Maximus.
“Oh, you mean like Gladiator? I love that movie.” I sighed.
“You are teasing me?”
“No! You’ve seen it, right? Russell Crowe kicking ass in the Colosseum? So hot.”
He harrumphed. “Historically inaccurate.”
I laughed, poking his side when he scowled. “Don’t be jealous. Russell has nothing on you. Show me more of your Rome.”
He did just that. We continued to wander, making decisions about where to go on a whim, wherever we wanted to go.
When I mentioned feeling a bit hungry, he bought me a bag full of little fried fish tossed with lemon and salt. Delicious.
I wasn’t warmed by just the beautiful weather, but by him; how could I not be? His bolder-than-life presence, the confidence that didn’t fade a day in the years since we were together. When he caught me staring, his chest puffed up in such a self-satisfied way I couldn’t help but smile.
All afternoon he’d been careful not to get too close to me. Only an occasional shoulder brush or maybe his hand in the small of back to steer me around something, but always a respectable arm’s length. A few times I’d feel his hand accidentally brush mine, and then it would flex and get tucked into his pocket.
As the light began changing to something more akin to candle glow, it became harder and harder to ignore the powerful draw that was still between us. That string was still there tethering me, us, to the memories of Barcelona.
I felt an invisible hand at my back nudging me toward him. It was like the walls behind us were pushing us together. I wouldn’t be backing away as I had last night.
“Marcello?” I asked, reaching out to touch his forearm. I loved the feeling of the muscles tensing. His hand flexed into a fist before laying across mine. This was the first time he purposely touched me, and even though it was innocent, nothing about it felt that way.
He was struggling. His eyebrows bunched and his eyes went to my hand on his arm, studying it. The right side of his mouth quirked up, and I was desperate to know what he was thinking about in that second.
He nodded, swallowed hard, and then he took a step back this time.
“Let us walk a bit more. I want you to see something before it gets too dark,” he said, pointing in the direction of the less-crowded cross street.
“Tell me how many stamps you have in your passport,” he asked suddenly as we rounded a corner.
“Stamps?”
“You had so many plans for traveling the world—you couldn’t wait to fill all those blank pages up with stamps. So tell me all about the places you’ve been since you left Spain. I’ve been talking for hours now, it’s your turn.”
I remembered the conversation. We were in bed—where most of our deep conversations took place—and I used his torso as a map of the world. Each kiss I placed on his body was a country I planned to visit. To explore their lives, the culture. The art.
“Oh. Well . . .” I stalled to snap a photo of the sunset behind the ancient amphitheater. It’d make for a beautiful sketch later.
“Avery, you are avoiding the question, yes? Tell me.”
I sighed and leaned against a bus stop. “I’ve traveled. A lot. An incredible amount really. Let’s see . . . Hawaii, Grand Cayman, Maldives, Belize, the Seychelles.” I ticked the sandy-beach vacations off my fingers. Let’s not forg
et the dozens of golfing vacations or trips to Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles.
As I went on about the gorgeous blue waters and stunning resorts, the wind picked up. Unbidden, he slid an arm around my shoulder, tucking me into his side to shelter me from the suddenly strong breeze. Once I was done prattling on about the limbo contest I’d won in Grand Cayman, he looked down at me thoughtfully.
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course.” Church bells dinged in the distance. Eight o’clock. We’d been walking for hours.
“These trips. They do not sound like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“These are places that someone else chose, yes?”
“Yes,” I admitted, contemplating if I should explain Daniel and truly what was going on back home. I opened my mouth at least three times, trying to get the words out, but I just couldn’t figure out how to tell him. How to open that box again of what had happened, all those years ago, when I left him and went home.
He waited, patient and quiet to see if I’d elaborate, watching as I struggled and finally putting me out of my misery. “Avery, it is okay. You tell me what you can, when you can, yes?”
“Soon, we’ll talk about my life in Boston.”
Appeased, he kept us walking forward. “So you never went anywhere that you liked?”
“Once.” I took a deep breath and looked into his eyes. “Spain was somewhere that I liked. Spending hours on a sketch of Sagrada. Swimming in the same sea as Dalí had, all those years ago. Getting lost in the Gothic Quarters.” I dropped my gaze. “You.”
He lifted my chin. “That sounds like the Avery I remember.”
He hurried me along a pedestrian walkway, past the busy intersection filled with honks, screaming traffic, and a few near misses with Vespa drivers. We were walking and chasing the dying sunlight just over a giant dome in the distance. I began walking faster, eager to see whatever it was he was taking me to.
And I was speechless.