“Will you dance with me?” I ask, hoping I can distract him from his family’s plotting.
He puts his hand in mine and pulls me out onto the grass, where I kick off my sandals and melt into his arms. We move together through the sad lyrics, me doing everything to keep the tears from starting anew, him holding me so tightly that the rest of the world blurs around us. There’s nothing but the sound of the haunting music, the smell of James’s soap mingling with the chocolate cakes in the oven, and the feeling in my chest that nothing will ever feel as right as it does in this moment, in his arms.
CINQUANTASETTE
Ava
Sitting beside my mother, when shit got really bad, I used to watch the clock while she slept. I’d focus so hard on the ticking hands, trying to turn them backward to a time when she wasn’t vacillating between pain and being doped out of her mind to rest. I’d narrow my eyes, imagine all the energy inside of me pushing out through my pupils to send us back.
And though it obviously didn’t work, I’m trying the same useless trick again on James’s dashboard clock as we get closer to the Bologna airport.
“How far is ten kilometers?” I ask as the blue sign with white lettering passes by on my right.
He squeezes my hand across the center console.
“A little over six miles,” he says.
Oh God. Six miles.
Goodbyes aren’t my thing. When you’ve said goodbye to a loved one, every goodbye after that just puts you right back into that pain, like a reused tea bag. I nearly couldn’t let go of Nina this morning. James had to take my hand and sort of pry me off of her. Not that she was letting go either.
And last night, saying goodbye to the Urbino family I made, that was just as bad.
But this.
I look at James’s profile and he lifts the corner of his mouth in a half smile—an attempt to comfort me.
This is going to rip me to shreds.
“There’s something for you behind my seat,” he says, sensing I need a distraction.
I reach behind him and Verga immediately puts his head in my hand for scratching. James tried to leave him, but the dog saw the luggage and wasn’t having it. He hopped right into the car that he barely fits in and sat decisively in the middle of the back seat so I could see his giant head in the rearview mirror the entire drive.
I finish scratching and lower my hand to the floor behind James’s seat, searching for the “something” he was talking about. My fingers find the solid spine of a book, and I pull it into my lap.
It’s an album.
I flip the soft suede cover to the first page and see myself confronting James in the driveway that first day. He’s staring down at me with heated amusement and I am like a puffer fish—all my spines out and ready to poke. I run my finger along the edge of the page and laugh.
“That’s when you called me a villainous sponge,” he says softly.
My throat is too thick to respond so I just nod and turn the page. It’s a photo of my mother’s painting of Urbino in a storm, the one that hangs in James’s apartment over his kitchen table.
Then there’s me sitting on a blanket, my knees pulled into my chest, students spread out around me on towels covering the hilltop while we look down over Urbino.
Then there’s the market, me looking up toward a window while the people and colors blur around me in the stalls. I can hear the sound of the locals chattering in their beautiful language. I can smell the piadinas from Uvaldi’s truck.
I wipe away the tears that are streaming now, making sure they don’t fall onto any of the pages.
Me in the garden with Nina—the sunlight visible in streaks between us. A photo of my mom’s painting of Uvaldi and his dog, side by side with a photo of me being clobbered by Verga, his eyes looking into my soul. Me floating in the pool like a starfish, the color of the water so bright it pops off the page and eases my aching chest.
“James—”
The one of me spinning in Piazza San Marco knocks the breath right out of my lungs. He somehow managed to capture the reverence and awe I felt while staring up at the architecture. And the photo of me tucked into Uvaldi’s side with the fireworks exploding over Urbino—I can feel the warmth of his arm wrapped around me.
“Whenever you need a reminder,” he says beside me, “you can just open it up and you’ll be back.”
I realize, as his words pull me from the photos, that we are idling at the curb. We are here.
