Keeping his eyes on mine, he pointed to the cross behind the promising couple and then took my hand, putting it over his heart. Real low, too low to be overheard, he chanted a noise that sounded like a heart beating.Ba thump. Ba thump. Ba thump.
I closed my eyes. “Il mio inizio,” I whispered—the same words we had said together at the beginning of our ceremony.
His lips covered mine, and after the kiss, he whispered, “La mia fine”—the same words we had said together at the end of our ceremony.
My beginning.My end.
A loud sniffle/going-on sob made us both turn to look. Abree, eyes and nose red, was not handling this well. Carmen had insisted that she be invited so that any doubts about her place in Dario’s life would be put to rest. Inviting Abree had been a brilliant idea, and I wished we had invited Jane Jones to ours. Brando squeezed my hand, grinning. He was good at reading my thoughts.
After the intimate ceremony, the reception swelled to a guest list that must have been close to a thousand. The Faustifamigliaknew a lot of people and had a lot of blood. It was a fun and lively crowd, though, and before we knew it, we had danced the night away, celebrating the first day of Carmen, Dario, and Diego’s lives together.
Seeing as the Faustifamigliatreated weddings as an everlasting celebration, before the couple rode off into the sunset for their honeymoon, the group closest to Dario and Carmen were invited to join in a post-wedding “celebration” held in Positano for the week, hosted by Lothario and Bela.
The villa had once belonged to Marzio and Grazia.
I had traveled along the Almalfi Coast when I was younger to visit a close friend of Maja’s, whom she had danced many apas de deuxwith. Our travels had taken us to his private island—Li Galli, which was shaped like a dolphin—by boat or helicopter.
But I had never explored Positano by car, andneverby motorcycle.
Brando insisted on driving his Ducati Monster, a matte-black beast that seemed like it had to be tamed every time he started it up. There were times when he would take me around Tuscany for evening rides, but the bike was built for speed, not comfort, and our journeys were usually for a short thrill, not for long explorations. Encouraged by Brando’s insistence on taking his bike, and me on the back of it, his brothers decided to travel the same way. Every bike was two-up. (Brando told me this meant two riders in biker slang.)
The winding two-lane street (it was really one road used as two lanes) was clogged with traffic and pedestrians stopping to take pictures of the steep cliffside. Our group was able to weave in and out of traffic, even when it was stopped, which meant venturing into the other lane, which sometimes had oncoming traffic. But some kind of accident had happened up ahead (no surprise—every car that we passed seemed to have some kind of dent on it) and our group stopped for a moment to breathe and to check out the sights.
We didn’t stay idle for long. Not after a group of American girls tried to flirt with our men. After they did, I shouted toward them, “It’s true what they say about Italian lovers in bed—worth the hunt!”
Brando got huffy and told me it was time to go. “Italian lovers,” he muttered, sounding irritated. “One lover.Me.”
Once we were past the clot of the heart, we started to fly even faster, the breath of the wind a welcome respite from the brutal heat. Rocco kept time with us, riding along side, and he made a hand motion after we had been traveling for a few minutes. Brando nodded in acknowledgment.
Rocco tore ahead, taking a swift left and zooming up a hill, leading us to a villa tucked into the arms of Positano. The villa was three stories tall, wide and long, with verandas that stretched from one side to another, welcoming the sun on the upper two levels. Its face gazed out at the receding sea and towering Monti Lattari. The color of the villa’s facade reminded me of a plump apricot stashed among the green foliage surrounding the hillside.
Brando and I, never being here before, stood around gaping at the surroundings, trailing aimlessly from one spot to another.
The inside of the villa was so vast that I had no idea where to even begin. Our bags had been delivered to our room earlier that morning—one of sixteen rooms. Most of the bedrooms seemed to have a view and their own private veranda to take a siesta or gaze at the stars.
Then there was the main terrace, which held a few different places to lounge around and a table that seemed to sit fifty in its long center. It was monstrous, surrounded by white stone pillars, overflowing purple bougainvillea, lemon trees, and vines that ran like veins from the outside in. Lanterns hung from the hands of marble boys facing the crystal water. An azure sky stretched for miles.
Birds added to the beautiful melody of the sea, though she was quiet, no soothinghush hushfrom a cooling breeze. Disembodied chirps and tweets seemed to flit from one branch to another on their own, small bursts of sound almost seeming to echo miraculously out of thin air, nothing but a twitch of a branch to prove their existence.
Painted Italian tiles created scenes along the floors and up the walls, when cream stone didn’t command the room. Chandeliers graced the high, vaulted ceilings, as well as angelic paintings done in oil. A few of Matteo’s paintings took pride of place, but those were not angelic, more erotic, with strokes of flesh and bone exposed in such a way that the curious mind wondered what he had been seeing past his canvas. Or who.
Doors were oversized, carved with intricate details and chipping with age and elements—I couldn’t imagine the salty air being friendly to any wood, except for perhaps drift or cypress, which none of this seemed to be. But they were all old enough to have seen earlier days. The iron details and handles on some of them proved the point.
We passed rooms that boasted terra-cotta planters as tall as me, their inhabitants reaching out to the summer sky, filled with indolent heat.
Two pools graced the property. One was an infinity that seemed to spill over the cliffside. The other was set into an alcove surrounded by hundreds of candles that would share their fierce but small glow come darkness.
One of my favorite rooms came next.
“It’s almost natural that your inner compass would point you here,” Brando said, taking in the massive kitchen as I was—with his eyes wide and bright, fingers sliding over surfaces to feel texture and temperature.
The lower part of the house had no air conditioning, only circulating fans, but the marble tables used for prepping, which were filled with bowls full of vibrant lemons, somehow felt cool to the touch. The chrome stoves and appliances were lukewarm. Someone had been cooking recently.
Perhaps because the air was filled with heat and no breeze, it made scents more intense, and they seemed to linger. The citrusy vibes of lemons, the leaden scents of olive oil and garlic, the fresh and light aromas of cherry tomatoes and—basil? Some spritely scent capered in the air too, something in the mint family. I inhaled and the scent shot up my nose, that first taste of peppermint candy or a chew of gum.
“Look at this,mio angelo,” I stepped under a perfect arch in the stone, around an island that spanned from where my feet were to the stove, forming a little alcove in the kitchen. I ran my hand along the smooth tiles that recreated a religious scene. “Is that baby Jesus with Joseph?” Surrounding the focal point was more tiles, starbursts that alternated between navy blue, burgundy, and gold.
Brando narrowed his eyes. He fixed the bag he took from me on his shoulder and the jacket over his arm. “I think so,” he said, but he mostly stared at me.
