42
For the weeks that followed, we fell back into our comfortable routine as though nothing had happened. We didn’t mention the photos or anything that had to do with them. But sometimes, I’d notice Lucas staring at Giulio with something like worry. Watching us when we were together, with emotions parading across his face that I struggled to identify.
I didn’t want to bring it up, so I let it go, imagining that as time passed, he’d stop worrying about it so much.
Then I got up one morning and found him staring at me. I had started sleeping in his room—more and more, my room—again every night. He was smiling at me, and I smiled back. Our eyes roved each other’s face, and I felt something new there, a vibration, an emotion that was emanating from our bodies and suffusing the air around us. Something soft, something pretty, something you could almost reach out and touch.
A warm expression appeared on his face. He bent over and kissed me, and I knew we were feeling as one. The world disappeared. But alas, time didn’t stop, and I murmured, “I’m late, I’m late,” as I stood and jumped up and down, trying to pull on my pants.
“‘For a very important date! No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late, I’m late, I’m late!’”
“What?” I asked.
“Come on, you know. The White Rabbit,Alice in Wonderland?”
“Oh, that,” I said after a second. “Sorry, I never read the book and I only saw the movie when I was a teeny-tiny kid.”
“Isn’t there a ballet version?”
“Sure is,” I said, bending over and kissing him. “Gotta go.”
“Bye,” he grunted.
I ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs, but before I left the building, I knocked on Giulio’s door. I’d gotten an idea and I didn’t want to let it slide. A few seconds later, Dante opened the door, still in his pajamas, hair a mess.
“Buongiorno,” I said to him.
“Buongiorno,” he responded.
“Is Giulio home?”
“Chi è?” Giulio said, walking up behind him. “Oh, Maya, hey. Everything OK?”
I nodded. “Remember how you said something about a performance at the Teatro Tasso for Christmas?”
“Yeah, of course,” he responded.
“We should doAlice in Wonderland! There are lots of characters, so we can be sure every kid gets a part. We can draw on Wheeldon’s choreography for the Royal Ballet, it was like clockwork and full of beautiful colors. What do you think?”
He took a minute to consider my proposal, but soon I could tell he was more overjoyed than I was. “I love it!” he exclaimed.
I could tell he was imagining the same things I was: the costumes, the stage, the steps…
I pedaled off to the florist with the sun on my skin and the sea breeze on my face, smiling like an idiot, feeling wonderful. Full ofrelief, full of gratitude for the life I was enjoying so much it was hard not to shout it out to the world.
I was learning not to ask myself questions there were no answers to. To stop doubting everything. To stop trying to fill every little hole in my life, to realize I needed those empty spaces to make room for the unexpected. I was learning to let myself go, to let things be.
Lucas came into the shop in midmorning with a coffee and a box of pastries. I hadn’t expected it, and I was excited to see him there in his sunglasses and his wrinkly T-shirt. He almost always dressed carelessly, and I loved it.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“Yeah, Monica just left with Tiziano. They’ve got a doctor’s appointment.”
“Is she OK?”
“Yeah, it’s just an ultrasound to see how the babies are. She’s getting close.”
He smiled a little awkwardly and put the coffee and pastries on the counter. Then he took out some sugar packets and stirring sticks. I could see he was tense. It was something in his movements. I wondered if it had to do with Monica.
