“Oh, I keep forgetting. You know that Dr. Russo, who welcomed us to the first night’s dinner?” Mom nods, curiosity in her eyes. “I ran into him a few days ago and he mentioned that he used to work with you and Dr. Danny here. Was he living in Villa Russo at that point, or what?”
Mom turns and begins walking toward the next room in the complex maze of Villa di Bronzo, shaking her head. She leaves space for me to fall into step beside her.
“No, John Mark—I mean Gianmarco, but back then, we knew him as Johnny—is the grandson of the Russos, who owned and resided at the family villa at that time. Gianmarco’s father married an American woman, so little Johnny was born and raised in Ohio—contrary to what his accent might lead you to believe.” She winks, then takes a quick look around as if to ensure no one else is nearby.
“He was visiting his grandparents on a ‘gap year’ from his grad studies when we discovered Villa di Bronzo, but from the get-go, he was way more difficult to work with than his sweet grandparents, who actually owned the property. He wanted to have a hand in every little thing happening on the dig, none of which he was qualified to do, and tried to buddy up to the archaeologists like he was equally responsible for unearthing Villa di Bronzo. Then, when he asked me out and I turned him downmultiple times, well”—she grimaces—“it was like he retaliated by making our working relationship miserable.”
My nose scrunches with distaste. “He asked you out? He looks so much older than you.”
Mom chuckles and kicks a pebble across the dirt with one of her boots. “He’s a handful of years older than me, but aging hits us all differently, I guess. It wasn’t inappropriate. I just wasn’t interested, and he couldn’t accept that.”
We come to one of a few atriums in the villa, where there’s a ledge about knee height that Mom turns to sit on. I sit besideher and when I look straight ahead, I almost choke on my own spit.
“Is that…?” I start hesitantly.
Mom nods as we both peer up at the fresco, which depicts two men smoking out of an indisputably phallic pipe. I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle my inner twelve-year-old’s snickers.
“It sure is.” She sighs. “The world’s always been obsessed with penises. Ancient Romans were just a little more direct about showing it.”
I continue to gape, both at the wall and at my mother, who I don’t think I’ve heard utter the name of that particular organ since I got the sex talk.
She tilts her head. “From the little time I’ve spent with them, I haven’t decided if this field school group can handle seeing this room yet. Only some groups earn Penis Painting Privileges.”
I let out an uncomfortableaaaahhhand clap my hands over my ears melodramatically. “Did I do something to earn this? It feels more like punishment than privilege.”
Mom’s belly laugh echoes through every ancient nook and cranny of the villa.
“Speaking of field school,” she goes on once she’s composed herself, and I’m so relieved she didn’t go with “speaking of penises.” “I should probably grab some lunch before I give a lecture to the group this afternoon. Thanks for giving me the morning. Or giving it to the film crew and me, I suppose, but it’s way more fun doing this with you around.”
“Of course,” I say with a breeziness I don’t exactly feel. “It was fun.”
She eyes me speculatively as we stand. “Everything’s good with you, yeah?”
I nod, maybe too quickly. “Yep! I’m having a good time here so far.”
She reaches out and brushes my hair back behind my shoulder where it’s fallen forward on one side. “I’m glad to hear it, Cam. Just don’t be a stranger, okay?”
As we start back out of the villa the way we came in, I nod decisively. “You got it. I won’t follow Hades to the underworld, either, even if I’ve heard great things about their pomegranate seeds.”
Chapter Twelve
West
Getting a life since I’vebeen in Italy has really cut into my time sitting on the computer and ignoring the outside world.
The guys back home have noticed, too. They’ve all reached the hundreds in Project Euclid problems over the past few days. I’m still stuck on seventy-two and have barely touched it since before Cammie told me about the dad search. The jokes at my expense are piling up in the group chat. It’s brutal, and makes me feel loved, in a way that can only be understood by those with a close circle of emotionally stunted nerd friends.
Still, I’m past due for a night of my particular brand of self-care. It just happens to work out that I also need a distraction from Cammie, who I’ve barely seen since we returned from our Capri excursion.
I’m still afraid the cornicello necklace was a bridge too far—the bridge, in this case, being the one with all those “lovelocks” that started to collapse under the weight of Too Much Love. She gave me an ounce of understanding, forgiveness, friendship—whatever one could call our talk about our past—and what did I do, mere hours later?
Smothered her under the weight of thousands of cheap, heart-shaped padlocks inscribed with “CL + WJ 4EVR.” Or under one tiny necklace, that—in terms of romantic symbolism—might as well have weighed the same.
I’ve considered a multitude of ways to try to talk to her about it but worry I’d only end up making things even weirder. Like if I was all, “You know that was no big deal, right? I wasn’t trying to tell you I’m in love with you or something,” it kind of just sounds like the opposite.
If there is any hope left of upgrading from free-trial friendship, Cammie cannot see me this unhinged. On the train back that night, she sheepishly admitted that she no longer had my phone number and asked me to give it to her so we could easily talk about any new plans or ideas for our search—and it does feel like ours now, for better or worse.
So far, we’ve only exchanged a couple texts about dad-hunt-related things—me requesting the list of names she’s assembled so I can keep looking into them, and pictures of her notes from the journal so far; her sending all of that back to me, adding that she was still thinking about next steps and would let me know when she came up with anything. I’ve done my own brainstorming, too.
