I turn the final page and see myself lying in white sheets, my back and shoulder bared to the camera as I stare out the openwindows overlooking the canal in Venice. It’s a photo I didn’t know he’d taken, but it makes me feel like a goddess.
I touch the page, wishing I could dive back into that moment—relive the last four weeks and feel everything all over again.
“The pictures from your mother’s trip are in the envelope on the back cover,” he tells me, and I softly shut the book and place it on the dashboard.
“This,” I keep my fingers on the soft suede. “This is everything, James. You are so unbelievably talented. I think you need to consider what Davenport has to say.”
He touches the side of my face and I put my hand over his.
“I think you should stay in Italy,” he counters, and I can’t help but smile at his deflection skills.
“I have something for you too,” I say, reaching into my purse at my feet, grabbing the cardstock and extending it to him.
He looks down at the white paper and back up at me.
“Your mom’s postcard?” he asks.
I nod. I can see in his face that he’s floored. He knows what this postcard means to me.
“Don’t read it until I’m gone,” I say, my voice so shaky it makes me dizzy. “I need you to stay in the car.”
“I’m walking you to—”
“James. I need you to stay in the car, okay?” I say again.
He lets out a breath and leans in, kissing me slowly and softly as if we have all the time in the world.
A man in uniform pounds on the passenger side window to let us know we have to move, but I stay put, my forehead pressed to his.
James starts to say something, and I know that if he tells me he loves me again I won’t be able to get out of the car, so I kiss him one more time and turn to Verga, who throws his tongue at myface, and then I twist in my seat and nearly roll out the door. James stays put while I grab my suitcases from the trunk and when I hit the back of his car twice hard. His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. I lift my brows and hit the bumper one more time, and I see him smile and shake his head, then shift into gear.
And just like that, the man who drove me to the best weeks of my life drives right back out of my life.
CINQUANTOTTO
James
The newlyweds are staring into each other’s eyes like they are alone in a honeymoon suite. The flowering vines hang around them and overhead, framing the residual evening light that illuminates the space through the glass sides of the green house. It’s a beautiful, candid moment. And I’m capturing it for them. But where my heart usually feels full and overflowing in moments like this, right now it feels like someone’s chiseling into my chest, splintering and chipping away at the ruins.
I shouldn’t have agreed to this job. Ava was still here when I accepted the gig, and I wanted more than anything for her to see a traditional Urbino wedding—to experience that unbridled happiness with the locals and, of course, with me. However; here I stand with nothing but my camera to keep me company. And that used to be enough. Now I only feel her absence.
“Va bene. È ora. They are calling you to the dance floor,” I tell them and they startle at the sound of my voice. Yeah, I’m still here.
“Grazie,” the bride smiles, yanking her husband out through the door toward the tent.
I follow. First dance, then cutting of the cake, and I’m free to go. When will other people’s happiness not feel like a wet towel smothering my face.
You could go after her, Nina had told me. As if the thought had never occurred to me.
And then what?
Drag her back to Italy? Set up shop in Philadelphia while she works eighty-hour weeks at her new firm?
That’s if she’s even happy to see me.
I reach into my suit jacket pocket and take out the postcard, running my finger around the worn edges of the once-white cardstock. I flip it, take in her soft curving letters and imagine her at the desk in the guest house, bent over the paper with narrowed, hyper-focused eyes. I don’t need to read the words again. They are carved deep into the folds of my brain. But my eyes pass over them anyway and her voice floods my skull.
James,
