A Place in the Sun

  I KNEW GEORGIE had a plan worked out in that stubborn head of hers. She showed up every morning at the bed and breakfast with an unwavering smile and a level of optimism that grated on my nerves. Each day there was a new pre-planned topic.

  “Tell me about fishing!”

  “Have you hiked between the villages much?”

  “What’s this tool called?”

  I wanted to find her insufferable, and I had in the beginning. She forced conversations that were uncomfortable, and she teased me about my hoarding habits. I thought it would make my life easier to keep her at arm’s length, to maintain a safe distance. There was no need for small talk. We could work twice as fast without it.

  We were working on clearing out one of the bedrooms one day. I was working in the closet, tossing things into a bin bag when I heard Georgie laughing. I turned around and she was rolling on the ground, having finally cracked, I thought. Good, better if she’s away in a loony bin; I’d finish the renovations quicker.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s…I…”

  She couldn’t even speak through the laughter, but she managed to hold up her hand. There was a worn photograph clutched between her fingers, and even from across the room, I knew what it was. I’d assumed I’d burned every image from that day years ago, but apparently Nonna had held on to a copy for herself.

  “You were a very pretty little girl, Gianluca!” she said, wiping at her eyes.

  I pushed to my feet and went over to snatch the photo out of her hands. Sure enough, a seven-year-old version of myself stared back at me, covered in makeup and wearing a dress. I’d lost a bet to Massimo and as retribution, I’d had to go around the village dressed up like that all day.

  “Laugh all you want. I was probably prettier than you were.”

  That only made her laugh harder. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were pinched closed. She held her hand up to shield her smile, telling me she’d get ahold of herself in just a second.

  I tried to fight the infectious sound of her laughter, to turn the spotlight on her and save a bit of my dignity.

  “You’ll get laugh lines if you keep that up.”

  She ignored me. “You were dressed like a GIRL. A tiny little girl with a bow and everything.”

  “Yeah, I can see them there, by your eyes.”

  “I think I even had that same dress!” she said through tears of laughter.

  Eventually, the sound of her laughter was too hard to fend off. A chuckle sort of erupted out of me like a knee-jerk reaction, and it made her eyes go round as saucers.

  “Holy shit! Did you just laugh? Or is that just some strange new sound you make when you’re brooding?”

  I turned then, trying to put more distance between us. I went back to work, shoving things into the bin bag with a tad too much force. She stayed on the ground.

  “I can’t get up. Every time I blink, I see the picture. I’m afraid you’ve scarred me for life.”

  “Shame you’ll have to lie there forever. I’ll build a door for the cats so you’ll have some company.”

  Her laughter filled the room, chipping away at my grumpy façade. She was experiencing that kind of laughter that hurts after a while, and even when we tried to go back to work, every time we’d meet each other’s eyes, she’d start the whole process over again.

  “Stop! Stop,” she insisted with a light groan, pressing her hand to her stomach. “My stomach can’t take it.”

  “You were the one looking at me,” I pointed out.

  “Right, well. You just stay on that side of the room facing away from me and I’ll work over here.”

  I shook my head, working at wiping the hidden smile off my face.

  …

  “Why do you insist on wearing those overalls?”

  She looked like an overgrown toddler in them.

  She grinned and patted her hips. “They’ve got loads of pockets. I stuff candy in them in the morning.”

  I didn’t reply, which I knew infuriated her.

  “Do you want to know why I stuff candy in my pockets in the mornings?”

  “You fancy a bit of diabetes?”

  “It’s a reward system. Every time I get you to talk, I reward myself with a piece of chocolate.”

  …

  “You’re doing it again,” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Singing.”

  …

  “GIANLUCA!”

  I jerked up and slammed my head against the bottom of the sink.

  “Fuck.”

  “HURRYYY! HURRY!”

  I pressed the heel of my hand to my head as I ran up the stairs to find Georgie cowering in the corner of the back bedroom, pointing to the opposite wall with a shaky finger.

  “What? Jesus, what’s wrong?”

  “There’s a tarantula over there! A massive one!”

  I shuffled around a few boxes in the opposite corner, trying to find the so-called tarantula. Georgie hovered behind my back, pointing me in the right direction.

  “Try that one,” she whispered as if the spider was keyed into the sound of her voice.

  I flipped it over and the spider scurried out.

  It was a tiny thing, no bigger than a coin.

  Georgie jumped a mile in the air and ran from the room. I caught the spider and released it outside. When I returned, Georgie was walking back up the stairs with a pair of gloves that reached her elbows and the protective glasses I used when I was woodworking.

  “You didn’t kill it, did you?”

  She seemed concerned, but with the glasses covering most of her face, I couldn’t be sure.

  “No, but that thing looked like it could scale walls. I’d lock my windows tonight if I were you.”

  …

  “Pizza?” she asked near the end of one workday.

  “I’ll eat later.”

  She let out an exasperated sigh, heavy enough to ensure I heard it across the room. “I know if I bring back hot, cheesy pizza, you’re going to silently plead with me to give you a piece.”

  “I’ve never done that.”

  She snorted. “Yesterday you practically salivated on my sandwich.”

  “That was drool from boredom. You were taking so long to eat it.”

  …

  “What were you like as a child?”

  I was down below the sink on my back, trying to repair a minor leak in the first-floor bathroom. At some point, Georgie had walked in to watch me.

  “Shy. Stop hovering over me and go work.”

  She grinned, reached into her overalls for a piece of chocolate, and unwrapped it as she walked away.

  AFTER THE FIRST time we ate together at Massimo’s restaurant, my relationship with Gianluca changed. We’re talking miniscule amounts of change here, not even discernable to the naked eye, but change nonetheless. We continued working together clearing out the bed and breakfast. He always arrived before me, chipping away at the work so that by the time I arrived, he already had a task lined up for me. It was an unspoken agreement that I would stop off at The Blue Marlin and get us breakfast and tea, sometimes an espresso if I was really dragging. When Antonio found out I was working with Gianluca he stopped accepting my money, but I always left a fat tip.

  When I arrived with our breakfast, Gianluca would take a break and we’d sit somewhere: on the floor of an empty bedroom, on top of dusty countertops in the bathrooms, on stacks of wood in the front foyer. At first, he’d pick a spot across the room from me, but over the last few weeks, I’d been able to coax him closer with flaky croissants. Just like the boat cats.

  We’d talk about the progress we hoped to make that day. Well, I did most of the talking. I loved to tell him about the decor I envisioned for the rooms. Sometimes he’d humor me and offer up a hum, a grunt, a nod. It was all very caveman-esque, and without a translation guide, I was left in the dark. In general, I could guess he didn’t much care what sort of bedding I wanted to buy for the guests.

&nbsp
; We worked hard after breakfast, sometimes in the same room, sometimes on opposite sides of the building. I’d borrowed Katerina’s spare stereo so I could play music in the background. We had to switch off on that too. Gianluca, as expected, quickly grew sick of my pop music, but I swore I saw him singing along to it one day. He denied it adamantly.

  For lunch, I’d gently suggest (read: force) him to take another break and we’d head out into the square. There were so many restaurants and shops, but I liked having a light lunch and usually talked him into some sort of salad or veggies. He always snuck in a slice of pizza, though I had no clue where he put it. He was in such good shape; I figured he was the type who could eat whatever he wanted, especially while he was working like he did.

  At the end of the fourth week, I realized we’d started sticking together for dinner as well, but every couple of days, I’d beg off with plans to meet Katerina.

  “Haven’t you just seen her yesterday?” he protested one day.

  “Not since Saturday.”

  He frowned. “I was planning on taking you back to Massimo’s restaurant. I’m craving seafood pasta.”

  “So go up and have some then.”

  “It’s okay. I’ll wait and we’ll go tomorrow.”

  It took more than a month of us working together before I realized that Gianluca and I had eased into a friendship that suited us. He might have labeled his growing affinity toward me as a symptom of Stockholm syndrome, but I think a part of him (a part hidden deep down inside, probably near his bowels) had become genuinely accustomed to my company—which was good, because I wasn’t going anywhere.

  I loved Vernazza, and though I’d originally envisioned traveling all over Italy, I knew I wouldn’t leave this corner any time soon. I was beginning to sink my roots in, and I felt comfortable. In my free time, I walked through all five villages, hiking from one to another when I felt up to the challenge. I swam in the ocean in the evenings and on the weekends. I did long laps back and forth along the shore and I could see a real change in my body because of it. My arms and legs were toned and my skin was golden. Every day, my hair had a few more sun streaks, and it was growing long.

  Massimo, Katerina, and Gianluca were still my only true friends, but I stopped and chatted with Chiara whenever she was working in the hotel, and most of the locals nodded and smiled when I walked along the main road. They knew Gianluca and I were fixing up the bed and breakfast, and I think they were starting to see me as a worthy visitor, if not yet one of their own. I really felt it too, this sort of confidence in my place there. I wasn’t one of the silly tourists stumbling out of the train station in the late morning, with their rigid visors and their chunky cameras hanging round their necks. I truly belonged. I knew the best spot to watch the sunset was right at the edge of the breaker, on the granite boulders, and I knew the best restaurant—Massimo’s—wasn’t in the main square, but up past the train station, in a part of Vernazza most visitors never even ventured.

  Katerina was always quick to remind me to keep an eye out for good-looking blokes around the village, but it wasn’t the most important thing on my agenda or anything. More accurately, it was just this constant longing in the back of my mind. It’d been ages since I’d had sex or even had a decent make-out session with a man, and I was starting to go a bit stir crazy.

  One morning, I arrived with breakfast and called out to Gianluca to come down and eat, but he didn’t answer. I dropped my things on the counter and took the stairs two at a time, following the sound of a hammer up to the top floor. I rounded the top of the stairs and froze, staring. I’d seen Gianluca shirtless in his villa, but that was during our war of words. Now in the context of our temporary peace, watching him tug the front of his shirt up to wipe his brow nearly made me trip over myself. My brain played the images in slow motion as if to safeguard my heart from bursting at the sight of his hard body in real time. He was facing me, wearing these low-slung jeans. His Calvin Klein underwear peeked out from the top, and from there it was nothing but tight, golden abs leading up to his toned chest.

  I wanted to throw up. Cry. Stomp my feet.

  He dropped his shirt, caught sight of me, and let loose a devastating smile.

  “Morning G.”

  He’d taken to calling me G, which in that moment, nearly made me cry from the unfairness of it all.

  “Here, you go,” I croaked, dropping his coffee onto the floor and sort of toeing it toward him so I wouldn’t have to step closer. He could definitely see how severely I was blushing. Most blokes would have smirked and spouted off something crap like, Enjoying the view?, but Gianluca wasn’t like that. He was quietly confident, the kind of man who knew he was handsome, but didn’t make a real show of it. His chocolate-brown hair was wavy and tousled because that’s how it dried on its own. I knew because I’d asked him about it once. He didn’t know what pomade was, and said he hadn’t owned a bottle of gel since he’d quit his job in finance, which made me smile.

  “Have you brought any of the croissants? Or did you end up eating both again, like yesterday?”

  He was teasing me then with that smile of his, and it was the same teasing and the same smile I’d endured the day before, but for some reason that day my knees were weak and I was scared my voice would break if I tried to speak.

  I nodded dumbly and turned on my heel, aware for the first time in months that I was maybe, possibly, most likely getting myself into real trouble. I gripped the railing on the stairs, annoyed with my shaking hands. Gianluca followed after me—for his croissant, of course—and I tried to push myself back into my comfort zone, back to the early days when we would just work together in silence.

  “Are you all right? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Did that spider come back?”

  “I’m fine,” I squeaked, tearing open the brown paper sack and pushing it in his direction.

  “None for you? I normally have to pry the bag from your fingers.”

  “No. Not hungry.”

  I’d been starved up until a few minutes ago.

  Instead of accepting my answers and tucking into breakfast, Gianluca circled the front counter and came to stand in front of me.

  “I don’t buy it. You’re never this quiet.”

  “You’ve only known me for a few weeks, remember?”

  He narrowed his dark eyes, studying me.

  “I’ve known you for nearly three months, but it only took a few days to learn that words are not something you lack.”

  “Yes, well, maybe I’m feeling a bit off today. Lay off, will you?”

  He smiled. “What was it you said to me in Massimo’s restaurant? That most people keep private things private, but you don’t operate like that. Wasn’t that it?”

  I pinched my eyes closed, annoyed with him for having listened to me.

  “C’mon, just get on with it so I can go back to eating my croissant.”

  “Okay fine, let’s lay it out.”

  There were a hundred warning bells ringing in my head, but words spilled out of my mouth anyway.

  “You know how I first came to Vernazza because I wanted to get out of London and meet new people, maybe find a nice Italian man, all that?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I’ve been traveling for over three months and have yet to go on a date with a single decent bloke. And before you say anything, the blind dates Katerina and Massimo force me into don’t count.”

  His eyes narrowed gently.

  “At this point it’s not even the relationships I’m missing. It’s that I’m a bit…”

  “Lonely?”

  Sure, if lonely was a euphemism for desperate, horny, burning up inside.

  “Yes, sort of.”

  He chewed a bite of croissant, mulling over my dilemma before turning back to me. “And you’ve worked out this list of all the things you want in a man, right? He’s got to read and all? Specifically Dickens, if I remember?”

  I blanched. “I didn’t think you were listening to that co
nversation.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “It’s better, really, that you’ve got this list, because I nearly suggested that you and I—”

  A little squeal escaped my mouth, like I’d swallowed a mouse and it desperately wanted out. I masked it with a loud, aggressive coughing fit and only stopped when I was sure he hadn’t noticed my slip.

  “We what?” I stammered.

  He shook his head. “It’s just that we really happen to get along—though I didn’t think we would at first—and any guy would crawl on his hands and knees to spend this much time with a woman like you…”

  Oh my god. Have I died?

  “But, you’ve got this list a mile long of what you want in a boyfriend, and frankly I don’t meet many of the requirements—I mean, I didn’t make it even halfway into Great Expectations—and that’s good, really. I don’t quite feel ready for any sort of relationship right now. It’s good to know that you and I can be friends without the other stuff getting in the way.”

  Our conversation was giving me emotional whiplash. One minute I was soaring on the back of a miraculous unicorn, so prepared to say, YES! YES! TAKE ME TO BED, YOU LOVELY MAN! and then in an instant, he’d slapped me across the face and stabbed my unicorn, reminding me that regardless of the feelings I’d developed while working on the B&B, he and I were a million miles away from having any kind of romantic relationship.

  I recovered quite quickly though, so fast in fact that I was pleased with myself for how cool and calm I could be under such extreme circumstances. “Yes. I couldn’t agree more.”

  He smiled, looking very relieved to find I wasn’t pining for him. Miserable arse.

  “I have an idea though,” he continued. “You hate going on these double dates with Katerina and Massimo, but you’re spending the rest of your husband-hunting time cooped up with me.”

  “So what are you saying?” I asked.

  “What if we plan a beach trip instead? I can invite a few people and Massimo knows a ton of lads. You’ll have all the men to choose from, with none of the pressure of a formal date.”