“Neither,” I tell him, crossing my arms over my chest. He tilts his head. Narrows his eyes as if I might be hiding something.
I could add presently. I don’t draw or paint, presently. Or even since. I could clarify with since. But that just opens up this li’l moment for further conversation, and we are already well beyond our daily limit of pleasant words betwixt us.
Nina leans in from beside me and whispers, “You seem exhausted, cara. If you’d like to head out early, I can make your apologies to Vincenzo and bring you home the tiramisu.”
Mio Dio. Tiramisu. The Italian word for mouthgasm.
Sit across from James’s questioning and intense gaze for the rest of the evening and avoid awkward conversation about my mother, or have Nina-room-service deliver billowy clouds of mascarpone being drowned in fresh, hot espresso after I take a triple-headed shower to wash off Ethan’s potential betrayal?
Though the idea of being left alone to my thoughts is almost as terrifying as the way James is looking at me.
I lower my eyes to my lap, and Nina sees right into my exhausted, battered brain.
“Ava, I think you need to go rest,” she says loud enough for all to hear.
Not a single person argues with Nina. In fact, they all say their goodbyes as warmly and casually as possible, and get right back to their food.
My apologies and gratitude are waved away, and I’m almost to the archway when I hear Nina’s decisive tone pipe up again.
“James, you will walk her, no?”
Oh, Nina. You sneaky, sneaky woman.
“And miss dessert again? I don’t think—”
I keep moving, pick up the pace, too emotionally exhausted to witness the standoff behind me between James and his aunt, but I can’t help regretting my decision to not look back when I hear the distinct and gratifying sound of someone being smacked in the back of his hollow head.
Naturally, that joyful noise is followed by unwanted but familiar footsteps.
DICIASSETTE
James
We are one hundred meters from the guest house when Ava finally breaks the silence between us.
“Can you stop looking at me like I just told you I’m the queen of Genovia?”
“I didn’t realize I was looking at you at all,” I lie. She has this trail of freckles along her chin that reminds me of Orion’s Belt. “And what the hell is Genovia?”
Ava murmurs something about me being culturally illiterate and focuses her attention back on the road. I study her profile.
Annette Barrett’s paintingUrbino Under Stormwas my first memory of art—of beauty, really. It hung in Nonna’s small kitchen in Brooklyn—watched us eat dinner together every night beside the empty place setting my grandma left out just in case, ever-hopeful that my mother would join us. That painting with the ghostly white pallor of the palazzo against the deeply bruised sky that I’dcatch Nonna gazing at while she stirred the marinara—that staple of my childhood. That had been Ava’s mother’s work? Until I was eight, I had believed that Urbino was surrounded by walls of snowy ice because of that painting. And, of course, my Nonna did nothing to dispel my beliefs. She’d encouraged them.
To this day I smell her marinara when snow falls in Urbino.
“Really, James?”
My viewfinder goes black and I realize she’s put her hand in front of the lens. I hadn’t even realized I’d been taking pictures.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, but she’s already stormed off. “Ava—”
“What?”
She’s got her shoulders pulled up to her ears, her chest pressed outward, her elbows akimbo. All puffed up like a house finch taking on a hawk.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I tell her, taking a step into the shadow of the cypress trees. Ava seems to command light and darkness according to her mood.
“It was a long time ago. I’m fine, really,” she says looking upward. I keep my hands in my pockets to resist the pull of my camera. I know that time doesn’t heal a wound like that. The loss of your mother is something you feel over and over again, like a circle of Dante’s Inferno.
