“Then learn Italian, dolcezza,” he says just before stepping through the front door and closing it behind him.
“Good night to you, too. Stronzo!”
But he doesn’t hear me. The porch light turns off and I’m left with a burning anger in my gut and nowhere to release it as I make my way to the guest house through the dark. Somehow this anger still feels better than the rest of today’s emotions. So when I plop into bed, my eyes on the single square of light coming from the second-story window of the villa, I turn the heat up under that anger and let it simmer.
DICIANOVE
Ava
Everyone is being too kind. I suspect it has to do with the Mom conversation at dinner the other night. Or maybe I’ve grown unaccustomed to random acts of nurturing.
Nina keeps sneaking extra baked goods and fresh fruit into my purse.
Leo has interrupted class twice in the last two days to steal me away, once for a tour of campus that was long overdue, and once to show me a photograph he found of my mother and her art history professor sitting at a picnic table with a bottle of wine between them. The man looked vaguely familiar to me, but Leo assured me he was no longer residing in Urbino.
Even Massimo has been on his best behavior, barely leering when five of his tweeny buds came over for some pool soccer yesterday afternoon. He even swatted one of them when the littlebro said something under his breath in Italian as I walked by. I will definitely bring head swatting back to America. Best souvenir ever.
And then there’s James, who is pointedly ignoring me in all ways possible. If I catch him watching me in class, his eyes are narrowed and he looks like he wants to throw the projector remote at me. If I could flip him off in a professional manner, I would. But I refuse to add to his arsenal.
He’s also been absent from family dinners. Nina hides it well, but I know she’s pissed about it. Apparently, James never misses dinners, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s working hard on the apartment so he can get me the hell out of his family life. All of this in mind, you can imagine my surprise when his MacBook Air appeared on my desk with a note saying:Until you get a new phone.But maybe Leo forced him to play nice. Or maybe James was kicked in the head by a sheep and forgot he despises me.
I turn my focus from the paper I’m supposed to be grading and run my fingers over the keyboard of his Mac, pulling up the email Tammy wrote to me yesterday to reread it for the thousandth time.
Aves-
I’m not speaking to him. He swears up and down that he’s not seeing her and I wish I could tell you I believe him, but I feel like I don’t even know him right now.
It’s time for you to stop thinking about him and focus on you. Go. Get. Yours. If you haven’t already …
Lost without you,
T
She knows full well I’m not getting mine. I scroll down to my reply email—a screenshot of flights from Philly to Bologna in the hope that one will somehow fit into Tammy’s crazy schedule. Between photo shoots and galas for Olivia and her volunteering at the children’s literacy camp, it’s a miracle she even has time to email me.
A huge glob of drool lands on the essay to the left of the keyboard. After checking my own lip, I look up to find Verga reading over my shoulder. I’ve been grading these godforsaken papers for eight hours, lying on the floor on my stomach picking at the bread and cheese I brought home from town. I’ve gone through two of my favorite ballpoint pens. Still I have at least thirty left to go.
I remind myself that this is nothing compared to the endless hours I’ll put in at Grant and Stanley when I start there in September. Of course, I’ll be getting paid for that. Handsomely. I’ll have told my dad by then and he will accept the fact that I’m not working at his firm. And I’m sure Ethan will have worked whatever this is out of his system by the time I get home, and life will be moving onward according to the original plan. I just have to get through these next few weeks without losing any more of the little dignity I have left.
I picture James’s narrowed eyes as he asked me what I loved—as he accused me of caring only about veneers. It’s not a crime to be ambitious. And wanting finer things doesn’t make me greedy. Why am I thinking about this again?
I roll onto my back and look up at my canine companion.
“Could you tell your dogdad that he’s a pompous prick, Beasty?”
Verga tilts his head, then lies down on the stack of papers.
“Maybe you could bite him!”
I scratch his ears the way he likes and he immediately lolls backward to give me access to his belly. Verga has slept with meevery night this week. I’m thinking of booking him a flight back to Philly with me. In a seat. As my comfort animal.
“Bite who?”
James is watching me from the porch like I’ve conjured him. He steps inside, and I almost pull out the vampire rules and tell him he can’t since he’s uninvited, but it’s too late. Ugh. This is why you don’t leave doors open. But the weather has been too gorgeous to shut out. Maybe I should make a pros and cons list. Crisp air vs. threat of James.
“Am I ever going to get my dog back?” he asks.
“Verga prefers to avoid possessive pronouns. ‘My’ is objectifying to him,” I say, using my nails along the dog’s barrel-sized rib cage.
