She looks up at the building again.
“This is the apartment?”
“Sì. My apartment,” I correct.
“Yourapartment?” she whispers. And I can see the range of emotions that pass over her face as she reddens. What is she picturing in that beautiful head of hers?
I turn my gaze away and focus on twisting the key in the door, then push it open to reveal the narrow stone staircase that leads up to the studio. I put out my hand for Ava to lead the way and she meets my eyes for a moment, breathes in deeply, then looks back at the inside and brushes past, just barely grazing my thigh with her hip. And I know the moment that whisper of a touch sends a shock up my spine that bringing her here was a very,verybad idea.
TRENTATRE
Ava
There’s no way in hell I could have stayed in this apartment.
It’s not the size. Nope, I’m used to tiny. My apartment at home is barely more than a studio, and I love that I can hit up the coffee machine in less than four strides. I knew the square footage I’d signed up for here.
And it certainly isn’t the original problem with the air-conditioning because I have to wrap my arms around myself to keep the chill from spreading deep into my bones.
It’s the—the James-ness of the place.
His photographs are everywhere. I’ve barely been able to make it past the first wall on my left without feeling like I was tossed into his mind to play a game of “Who is James Massini?” Every black-and-white moment oozes with emotion—a child holding an injured bird beneath a tree, her tears leaving a streak of shimmering light down her cheek—an older woman sitting on a bench lookingout over Urbino, her face filled with memories of what she experienced on the streets below her.
It’s all too much.
As I turn away to escape his work, my eyes lock on the painting that hangs on the wall above the small kitchen table, and it’s like a sucker punch straight to the diaphragm. Layers of white slide over the hills surrounding Urbino, pooling and slipping up over the walls, up over the rooftops and the dual towers of the palazzo. The sky is a layer of bruises, purples and grays splitting across the canvas like the painting itself might be bleeding internally.
“When I was little, I believed that Urbino was made of ice because of this painting.”
His low voice finds the back of my neck and seeps into my brain, anchoring me back to reality.
“How did you get this?” I ask, keeping my eyes fixed on my mother’s work.
“Nonna,” he says.
“She knew my mother?”
“She did. Before my grandmother moved to New York to help my mother with me, she worked in admissions at the university,” he explains. “She met your mom there. This painting hung in our kitchen in Brooklyn. She’d stare at it while she cooked. Told me it brought her home.”
I’m imagining a young James rolling rice balls with his grandmother in the kitchen beneath my mother’s painting, and the thought of it has me reeling. It’s as if my mother painted it with a purpose, to keep a piece of herself connected to all of the people she left behind. Like she painted it to connectmeto the people she left behind.
I’m not sure how much time passes before James’s hand finds my shoulder, sending so much warmth through my limbs that Ithink the AC may be broken again. He turns me slowly, studying my face as I spin. I’m a mess. I know I am—cheeks burnt, eyes swimming, hair God knows what—but he’s looking at me like I’m beautiful and that look—Gesù Cristo, that look makes the tears escape.
“Too much?” he asks, putting both hands on my face, sweeping a tear away from the corner of my mouth with his thumb.
Too much is an understatement. At this point, my synapses are so overloaded they’ve frozen the signals to my brain in an attempt to keep my central nervous system from frying like a fork in a toaster.
I shut my eyes and tilt my face against his palm.
“Way too much,” I whisper, and he chuckles softly.
I want to ask him what we are doing. Why he’s not running for the hills like he did last night and the week before? But I don’t want his hand to leave my face.
And before I can think of anything to say, his lips are on mine, barely touching at first, just brushing lightly, as if they are getting reacquainted or asking for permission. My body responds, pushing me onto my toes to deepen the kiss.
Permission definitely granted.
This week without kissing him must have left me starved for this, because I’m pulling him against me, one hand in his hair, the other gripping the fabric of his shirt at the bottom hem. I need him closer. And I need this kiss to go on forever.
