James
Market day in Urbino has always been my favorite day of the week. It’s the time to catch up with the neighbors, make our all-important dinner plans for the week to come, and spend time with Zia while she sells her handmade casciotta. When I was a boy, I’d travel with her for market day from town to town, learning about each village’s local culture, soaking in the art and architecture like a vacuum hose let loose in a dust cloud, sketching and shooting everything in sight. Markets in Italy are a work of art in their own right. The colors. The smells. The energy. All strokes of the brush that create living, breathing beauty.
But today, the patrons, our friends, some students, and a few tourists on day trips, are interrupting my view of the blonde in the short floral dress as she strolls through the tents touching the goods, smiling and talking to the locals. It’s next to impossible to sit behind a table full of casciotta and engage in small talk when she’sthere, bare tan legs just asking to be touched. Especially now that I know how soft they are—how she looks when I touch them. Getting her home last night without kissing her against every priceless tapestry was a herculean task. All of the reasons I pushed her away seem to have set sail across the Adriatic, leaving me with the memory of how she felt pressed up against me—her fingers wrapped in my hair and her soft lips pressed against—
“Mio Dio, Gi. You just gave Gaetano the wrong change!” Nina says, jabbing me with a bony elbow between my ribs. She gestures out to where Ava is studying a table of antiques. “You are useless. Like having Verga here with his bone across the room. Just go. Vai.”
I let out a sigh. She’s right. Always right. She lifts my camera from the table beside her.
“Gaetano owes me from poker anyway.”
She nods at my justification and I hesitate, unwilling to break our tradition. “Sei sicura?” I ask.
“Vai!” she yells, making change for another patron with one hand.
I take my camera from her and kiss her temple.
“Grazie, Zia.”
She shoos me away like a mosquito. I make my way around the table, loop the camera strap over my neck, and lift the viewfinder to my eye. She’s at the center of the crosshairs, as if the lens has been preprogrammed to capture her. Her head is back and she’s talking to someone above her—Signora Antonelli, who is hanging out her kitchen window. It’s dizzying how easily Ava has become a local even with all that armor and obstinacy in place. She’d deny it wholeheartedly—say something self-deprecating about how out of place she is here—but Urbino has accepted her with open arms.
Ava laughs, and I can imagine the breathy, joyous sound even through the murmur of conversation and movement all around me.The smell of fresh olive oil mixes with the scent of fine leather from the tents on my left as I make my way behind them to avoid the crowd. I click away as the older woman above Ava points down Viale Bruno Buozzi, and her golden head turns with a wave goodbye.
And once again, I’m following her, though this time through a much thicker crowd—a much safer situation than the museum.
She stops beneath a white canopy, points to a basket of pepperoncini, and then opens her oversized bag while Signore Zannotti drops them inside. Who needs that many chili peppers? She probably got her Italian numbers wrong again. She fiddles with her euros, smiling and blushing at something the old man has said, and I wonder if he’s flirting with her. No doubt he is. Why wouldn’t he?
A light breeze finds its way down the street from the hills, and Ava’s hair flies across her face. She turns her back to the breeze, her hands occupied with money and her overstuffed purse, and her eyes settle on me. She shakes her head and lifts a brow.
I snap one more for prosperity and lower the camera with a shrug and a smile.
“You’d have a police report filed by now if we were in America,” she says as she heads back toward me.
“We aren’t in America. And if I recall, you gave me permission,” I remind her.
“I believe I was under the influence.” She tilts her head, exposing the soft skin beneath her ear. I consider stepping forward to brush my lips there, but after how we left it last night, I still don’t know what the hell she wants. And at least four locals are staring at me and the beautiful American woman. Small towns love to talk. Small Italian towns love to get involved. I put my arm out for her to take.
“Can I show you the best the market has to offer?”
“Are you insinuating that that’s you?” she says, looping her arm in mine.
I dip my head down just close enough for her to hear without a thousand rumors popping into circulation, and whisper, “I was not, but if you have figured out what you want, dolcezza, I do know a place nearby.”
She swallows and lets out a long breath, color rising from beneath the scalloped neckline of her dress up her neck. The color of her blush—softer than the bushels of tomatoes behind her, but deeper than the rosé being poured at Franco’s booth—is enough to make me need to look away.
“What happened to this being a bad idea?” she murmurs beside me.
A group of students pass and we politely greet them. Ava looks up at me, nibbling on the lip that I nibbled on last night.
“Did I say that?” I know I did. And I know I need to say it again—to myself. My alarm bells have been going off since that kiss, but I can barely hear them when Ava is here in front of me. I want her. She wants me. And as complicated as that might be, it feels unavoidably simple when she’s here with me.
“No. You said ‘this is a bad fucking idea, Ava,’” she says, the last part in a deep voice that is supposed to be me. I can see the wall go up behind her eyes at the memory.
“We should talk,” she adds, worrying at her lips.
Here we go. She’s probably been up all night making PowerPoints about how to navigate this situation. This isn’t going to be good.
“Do we?” I ask, pointing to a pair of gloves at Marco’s leather stand. He nods and I lift them, taking Ava’s hand in mine and slipping one finger at a time into the glove.
