“Hello,” Rose answers after several rings.
“Where are you?”
“I’ve just arrived back at my hotel.” There’s a clatter in the background.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, just my case.”
My shoulders drop as a sigh leaves my lungs.
“You know, I thought you’d be tracking me. You seem to know everything else.”
I imagine her rolling her eyes with a sassy smirk on her lips. One I want to kiss off her face. I smile, just a little. “Careful, fiore mio. Keep talking like that and I’ll start to think you missed me.”
“If I missed you, it was probably like missing a toothache,” she fires back, but her voice is softer than her words.
I glance at the still lake and lean against the rail, lowering my voice. “Keep giving me attitude, and I’ll have to do something about it.”
“Well, you already gave me a hickey. You’ve made a right mess of my neck.”
A chuckle escapes. “I didn’t hear you complaining at the time.”
“You ambushed me.”
“You loved every second of it.”
There’s a pause, then her voice drops, a touch quieter. “You’re exhausting,” she says on an exhale, and I hear the bounce of a mattress and a creak of a bed.
I turn, taking in the beautiful view of the rose gardens. The gravel paths. The old stone bench where she used to sit with her head buried in that battered paperback. “I’m in the Villa Borghese.”
Silence stretches on the phone. “You reminiscing about what a lying piece of shit you were?”
“I never lied to you.”
“Right,” she bites back. “You just omitted the truth. That’s the same thing, Dan.”
I close my eyes, letting our memories wash over me like warm air. “I am fortune’s fool.”
“Don’t think you can quote Shakespeare and I’ll fawn over you like I did before.”
“How about if I quote us?” I run a hand over my face, reminiscing, as if it was just yesterday. “You were always reading that damn book. You had no idea how poignant it was for us back then and even now. I can still picture you in your sundress, a smattering of freckles across your face where the sun had kissed your skin, and I wanted to kiss every single one.”
“D’Angelo, don’t.”
“Don’t what? Tell you how you were the most beautiful thing in that rose garden.”
“More lies. I was a chubby girl with no experience of men. I was an easy target for you to manipulate to your will.”
“You were a shy little thing, yes, and chubby, but that’swhat made me fall for you even more. You had no idea how adorable you were.”
She exhales. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make me forget how angry I am at you.”
“Too late. I can hear it in your voice—you’re thinking about the bench. About the rose. About that kiss under the trees.”
