Her face after that kiss, the way she pulled back as if it had somehow hurt her—it was enough to tell me exactly what I needed to know. It doesn’t matter how long she’ll be here if she’s not willing to give what I want. And now that I know what that is, I can see that it’s impossible.
“It’s safer this way,” I say, shutting my notebook and slipping it into my bag.
“Just like it is safe not to follow your dreams to London?”
I stand and slip the strap of my messenger bag over my shoulder, sliding my camera back into the center of my chest when it gets knocked aside.
London again. How do I explain to him that this offer that Davenport’s making is just a pipe dream? Yes, when he saw that photo I took in la Basilicata years ago and recruited me, I was interested then. But I was twenty-something—young and ambitious with no finger on the pulse of what really matters. Photography was a passion that consumed me—now it’s a slow burn that I’ve learned to control. That kind of passion is dangerous.
“I appreciate how much you care, Zio. You know I do. But everything I need is right here.”
He looks up at me, his eyes sad, and I have to turn away—look out the window into the courtyard—because I know he’s thinkingabout Nonna and my parents. Silently blaming them for all the chances I will not take.
His voice is low when the opening words of his favorite proverb reach me. “Chi non va non vede, chi non vede non sa e chi non sa se lo prende sempre in culo.”
If you don’t go you won’t see, if you don’t see you won’t know, if you don’t know you’ll always take it in the ass.
Charming, no?
“I’ll see you at dinner tonight,” I tell him, making eye contact one last time. Maybe this will keep him from tossing perverted proverbs at me.
He turns his mouth down and dips his chin, lifting his hand to shoo me away.
And I take the dismissal like a get-out-of-jail-free card and hurry out of Battista’s chamber before he changes his mind.
TRENTA
Ava
Who knew I liked dirt this much?
My cheeks feel toasty from the sun. My knees are dusted with earth. My fingers smell like Genovese basil. It’s fantastic.
Verga lies in the corner of the garden, stretched out in the sun like he’s a celebrity on a chaise lounge in Cannes. He’s moved so little that every now and then I walk over to check that he’s still breathing. Nina stands behind me, pointing to the tomatoes over my shoulder, explaining which are ripe and which need another day on the vine. I squeeze one to test it as she taught me and it explodes between my fingers, seeds and tomato guts spraying onto the apron with Michelangelo’sDavidstanding triumphantly on the front.
“Did il pomodoro offend you somehow? You must have something pent up in there, cara,” Nina murmurs as she turns to her eggplants. I know she’s smiling even as I stare at the way the falling sun makes the streaks of gray shine white on the back of her head.
I wipe at the goo on my hand with the hem of the apron and give a small grunt. I have so many things “pent up” in here, Nina. So. Many.
Perhaps it’s the newest image of Ethan and the Viking goddess in the background of Olivia’s campaign event—the way their heads are bent together like they’re sharing a secret. Or perhaps it’s the passive-aggressive email from my father reminding me that choosing a firm is one of the most important steps in a law career, and that he has twenty-five years of experience to help guide me. Maybe it’s the white side of my mother’s postcard demanding that I put a pen to it—fill it with what I’m supposed to be discovering here in Urbino. But all I’m finding is confusion.
Most likely the tension Nina senses is from dancing around the professor of the art history class I help teach each morning, being careful not to make eye contact at the wrong moment or inadvertently recall what his lips felt like on mine when he happens to be close enough to see me flush.
“Forse, you should do some exercise—to release whatever it is that is built up in there?” she suggests, waving her hand up into the air. “A swim?”
I squeeze another rich red San Marzano, and it feels just soft enough for picking. My thumb leaves a small indent on the side, the skin wrinkly and printed. Thank Dio for Nina. Gardening with her each evening has been the highlight of my shitty week, followed closely by the cooking lessons she’s been patiently enduring. Time with her has been the antidote to the anxious energy coursing through me.
“Maybe after dinner,” I muse. “I want pasta duty tonight. I think I’ve got it down.”
“Brava! The only thing left is milking the sheep,” she says, turning and pointing the eggplant my way.
I start to shake my head and she laughs.
“Sì. It is part of the experience,” she tells me. “You must milk the sheep or you cannot leave Italy.”
I run my thumb over another bright red pomodoro. Leave Italy. Of course I’ll be leaving Italy. But time has been racing by and I feel like I’ve only just arrived. “The tip of the iceberg,” as James told me. Just over a week and then life can resume the way that it was always meant to. With whom it was always meant to.
The calm of the garden is suddenly eluding me.
