I run my thumb below her bottom lip until she lets it go.
“What are you thinking, dolcezza?” I ask, leaning down and pressing a kiss on the top of her head.
“I’m thinking that I want you so badly it hurts.”
Her words tighten every muscle in my body, and I wrap my arms around her back and pull her closer to let her know that I feel the same way. I’ve wanted her from the moment I saw her and every impossible moment after that.
She leans the side of her face against my chest and continues. “But I’m also thinking that once I have you it’s going to hurt even more—to leave.”
I squeeze her tighter against me. She’s right, of course. Being with her will just make it harder to say goodbye. But there’s not a single cell in my body that can resist her if she’ll have me.
“Let me show you Venice,” I say down into her hair.
She nods against my chest and says, “Is there going to be an art lecture?”
I squeeze her more tightly. “Undoubtedly.”
She laughs, the vibration of it sending warmth through me.
“And you promise we can do that locked in a bedroom thing later?”
“Ava, when we get back here, we aren’t making it to the bedroom before I do the things I want to do to you.”
She leans back and looks up at me, eyes wide and cheeks flushed.
“Let’s get out of here before I physically can’t,” I say. She swallows hard, then nods.
I grab her hand and pull her toward the door before I change my mind and do what we both really want.
QUARANTADUE
Ava
This night will forever be branded on my senses. Every time I hearPhantom of the Opera, I’ll be transported back to this table, the pianos on either side of the square softly pulling the notes of the “Music of the Night” back and forth across the piazza. Every time I see a candle, I’ll be transported to the square, hundreds of arched windows above me, a single flickering flame in each creating the most haunting glow. And every time someone touches me, I’ll feel James’s fingers tracing circles on the inside of my wrist. This night has ruined me.
And the day was no less ruinous.
I climbed books into a bookstore—actual stacks of novels made into a staircase to get inside the most amazing and unorthodox shop I’ve ever seen. Canoes and kayaks hung from the rafters, all inundated with books kept aloft to prevent acqua alta from damaging the goods. It was unreal. Much like the dozens of bridges and alleys James and I wandered down with no place to go and nowhereto be. And dinner—squisito—the word dinner doesn’t do it justice. Mind-numbingly delicious cioppino aside, the setting was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. We ate a foot from a narrow canal, nestled in the archway of the loggia of some ancient building that apparently housed Vivaldi for some time. I couldn’t have invented it if I tried. Walt Disney couldn’t have invented it. The whole day was enchanting. Pure magic.
Through all of it, James smiled beside me, pointing out this or that, explaining some delectable piece of Venetian culture or history, and taking pictures of me like I might float away in the Adriatic with the vaporetti. The way he looks at me now, the candlelight catching the flecks of amber in his dark eyes, makes me want to drag him back to our palazzo and finish what we started today.
“The first time I came here the square was flooded,” James says, tugging me from my trance. “It was up to my knees. There were makeshift plywood bridges and walkways everywhere. It was a mess. The couple I was photographing were so upset.”
“I can imagine. She’d probably bought engagement shoot heels and an adorable dress and had to wear muckers instead,” I say, grimacing at the thought of rubber overalls.
James smiles, and that familiar slow spread of heat creeps through me. I don’t know what it is about his mouth that makes me melt into something resembling the leftover gelato on my plate. Which, if we’re counting, is my fifth gelato today.
“The photos ended up being gorgeous. The candles’ reflections in the floodwater added another dimension to the shoot. It was surreal,” he says, picking up the pitcher of house red and topping off my glass.
“All of your photos are gorgeous, so no surprise there. And everything about Venice is surreal.” I gesture to the crisp white awnings that run around the piazza, then to the bell tower stabbing at the blackness above. “All of this is like a dream.”
James laces his fingers between mine and squeezes my hand as the couple at the table beside us stand to join the others dancing on the gray stones in the middle of the square. It’s all incredibly romantic. The sort of scene you create for yourself to escape to when you’re stuck behind a desk reading case law.
The thought smacks into me so hard I flinch. Is that how I feel? Stuck?
James stands, flicking my inner questioning off into space, and I think he’s going to ask me to dance, but he doesn’t. He tells me he’ll be right back and disappears inside the restaurant leaving me to do my new favorite Italian thing. People watch and drink wine.
The melody shifts to “It’s a Wonderful World,” and I watch an older couple spin slowly, the woman’s gray head bathed in gold as she rests it on the man’s shoulder. They are perfectly at peace; I imagine years of this exact sort of intimacy is ingrained in their movements as they step in unison. Spin in unison—until a random man pushing through the dancers makes them misstep and open their eyes.
