“I’m sure there wasn’t,” I chuckle. “Well, my family is super boring compared to yours.”
Matt leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Tell me about your parents. Are they artsy and creative like you?”
I take a sip of my soda, now halfway done. “Maybe my mom a little, but my dad, not at all. My mom was a teaching assistant and my dad was an exterminator.”
“No way,” Matt says, genuinely excited. “I’ve never met an exterminator. What was that like growing up?”
“It was uneventful. Except one time when I went with him to a job site, and I accidentally fell into a cockroach nest. I wound up getting covered with them from head to toe, but I was fine in the end.”
Matt goes from delighted to petrified, and I mercifully only let it last for a few seconds before I put him out of his misery. “I’m kidding, Matt. Of course I never went to any job sites with him. What do you think? He gave me a juice box and some Goldfish and threw me under porches as bait?”
“I don’t know,” he says, seeming relieved but still running his hands up and down his arms. “I can’t even think straight right now because all I feel is phantom insects crawling all over my body.”
“Oh, relax,” I tell him. “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Regardless,” I go on, “I feel like his line of work did a good job preparing me for life. There isn’t a bug in the world that intimidates me. I’ve stared down a spider as big as a Chevy and I helped my dad catch a mouse at my grandma’s that you could probably saddle and ride down a city street. Pest-wise, my confidence level is as solid as it gets.”
Matt looks at me with eyes that are both frightened and impressed. “A rodent-catching fashionista. Who would have guessed it?”
I shrug and happily sample my pasta. “I like to keep people on their toes.”
“I can see that,” Matt says. “It’s also nice to know for future reference. I wouldn’t label my intense fear of bugs as a full-on phobia, but it’s reassuring that you’ll protect me if and when I next encounter one.”
“That’s assuming you encounter one in the next few days. In case you forgot, I’m leaving Friday.”
“I know that, but maybe we’ll meet up sometime in New York.”
I’m a little taken aback by Matt’s suggestion of seeing each other again, though I’m not against it. I guess I always assumed that whatever was happening between us had an expiration date, but maybe that’s not the case. Matt doesn’t seem to think so. I’m about to tell him that meeting up sometime would be nice when Marta appears beside our table, passports in hand.
“You’re all checked in,” she says pleasantly. “Thank you so much for your patience. If you’re ready, I can show you to your room, or I could return in a few minutes if you’d prefer.”
I shake my head, quickly taking another bite. Amazing as all of this is, Matt and I need to get moving if we’re going to be done with Capri by tomorrow morning.
“I think we’re good to go,” Matt says, seeming to sense my keenness to start exploring.
Marta smiles. “Excellent, if you’ll follow me, please.”
Matt and I promptly stand, walking behind Marta as she leads us toward a doorway that’s opposite to the way we entered. I cast a longing gaze over my shoulder at the relaxation lounge as we go.
I’ll be back, my love.
I look forward again to follow our guide, and she takes us around a corner and past the hotel’s in-house restaurant. We’re just moving through a small but tasteful hallway when an unmissable clacking noisejingle-janglesaround us. It becomes more prominent with our every step, and it doesn’t take long for me to realize that I’m the source, and the clacking we’re hearing is the two soda bottles banging together inside my bag. Matt glances down at me, forcing his lips together to hold in a laugh as I grip my bag to my chest to stifle the noise. It doesn’t work. Two steps later Marta stops walking and turns around to face us.
“Do you hear that?” she asks.
I continue to hold my bag in a death grip and look behind me in feigned confusion. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Are you sure?” she asks, genuinely trying to distinguish the sound.
“Everything sounds normal to me,” I insist again.
“Does it?” Matt asks. “For a second I thought I heard something, too.”
I shoot him anI will kill youstare, that I drop the second Marta looks at me. I give her an innocent smile and she shrugs before twisting around to continue walking. Matt moves forward with a smile, and it looks like I’m going to have to teach him that snitches end up in ditches.
Two minutes later we’ve reached the third floor via the elevator, and we once again follow Marta as she leads the way.
