“No way. Didn’t we just establish that the sun is too sunny?”
“I’ll take you to the shadiest beach on the island.”
“Literally shady or, like, sketchy shady?”
“Mostly the former,” she teased. “It’s a tiny beach, but it’s way out of the way. Hardly anybody knows it’s there.”
“Yeah, okay. That sounds cool.”
“Can I come?” Pete popped up from the couch in the front room.
Claire jumped back in surprise.
“What?” he demanded.
“How long have you been there?”
“I dunno, like an hour?”
“Justlyingthere?”
“Can I come to the beach or what?”
Claire gave Akemi a pleading look, but the hope in Pete’s eyes won out.
“I don’t see why not. Run and ask your mom if she wants to come too.”
“That’s it,” Claire said as Pete thundered up the stairs. “I’m out.”
“No way I’m leaving you here to languish indoors and wait for a text to come through.”
Claire gave her a dirty look, and Akemi laughed.
“Glare at me all you want, but we’re getting you out of doors. There’s more to life than your viola player, I promise.”
Claire stuck her tongue out at her, but there was a playfulness to it.
“Go get changed.”
“Sir yes sir!” She saluted and ran up the stairs.
Akemi was gathering her things to put them away when a goodnight text came in from Lorenzo. He was twelve hours ahead of her, so they mostly spoke at the beginning or end of each day. She sent him pictures of the golden ocean sunrise that she woke up to each morning, and he replied with pictures of the sun setting over the Arno or a snapshot of the vista he had taken his tour group to that day.
She had tagged along with him to work almost every day of her short trip to Tuscany – easily done, given that he worked as a tour guide in one of the most beautiful places in the world.
She missed him. More than she had thought that she would. More than she had ever missed anyone she’d met in her travels.
Akemi had fallen in love a number of times. Some of those travel romances had lasted months or years… but each time the relationship ended, she’d moved on quickly. She had wondered if she even had the capacity to be in a lasting relationship, or if she was too flighty. She’d been quickly approaching middle age without ever coming anywhere close to marriage or motherhood, and she had just about accepted that neither one was in the cards for her.
And then she met Lorenzo. In Pualena, of all places.
They’d met in her own family home, in fact. He’d been renting Halia’s old bedroom. It was after Kimo’s heart attack, and her parents had taken in a short-term boarder to bring some money in while he recuperated.
Lorenzo was there to spend time with his daughter, Rory King. She was an adorable little six year old with her father’s eyes and a sun-bright smile. He spent every moment he could with her – and when she went back to her mother, he’d looked suddenly lost and adrift.
And so Akemi had swooped in. She showed him the local trails and her favorite spots to eat. They swam with wild dolphins, cooked together, and stayed up late into the night talking.
Things had escalated quickly. Just another travel romance, she told herself, but even from the beginning there was something different about her connection with Lorenzo. A depth that had been missing from her other relationships.
