I like that plan almost as much as I like frozen strawberry desserts. Finally, I get the website to load and consequently add its revamp to my mental list of things I’ll do if Tony Campbell-Costa is my dad. The main page looks like a basic calendar that someone made in Windows 95. I find today’s date and click the link, then have to reassure my phone three different times that this sketchy-ass web page won’t give it a virus before it’ll finally let me view the class info. The title of the workshop on the calendar said something like “Pizza Making 2,” which I assumed might mean that there is a “Pizza Making 1” prerequisite. But the additional info on the class says that it’s open to beginners and only requires that participants register as a pair.
“It’s forty euros,” I tell West, because I do need to check that he’s cool with that part. “I think we can swing that.”
He nods. “Sure. I’ll add it to your tab.”
I sign us up and pay successfully. With several hours to kill before the workshop starts, we take our time at the gelateria, each updating our respective parents on our later-than-anticipated return to the villa tonight, followed by some googling of what to do for fun in Naples.
In the end, we decide to get tickets for one of those hop-on, hop-off bus tours, as an easy way to get to different parts of the city with sites to see. We board a double-decker bus by a big piazza in front of the medieval Castel Nuovo, and both immediately head for the open-air second level.
“Wait,” West says once we choose two seats in the front row—and in direct, blazing sunlight. He studies my face with concern. “The sun is intense today. Maybe we shouldn’t—”
I wave off this concern. “I’ll be fine,” I say. “That’s what sunscreen is for.”
For most of the day, this holds true. We don’t spend much time on the bus, anyway, never riding for more than one stop before we “hop off,” sometimes winding through the city streets on foot when a few places of interest are close together.
We start by checking out a few different churches and cathedrals, each somehow uniquely breathtaking. They’re practically galleries, with art covering every surface, from stained-glass windows to marble statues to intricate carvings and painted biblical scenes on every ceiling. At one point, while we sit in a pew in a quiet chapel that predates the oldest buildings in the US by at least a couple centuries, West leans over to say in my ear, “This place is so beautiful, it almost makes me wish I wasn’t so sold on evolution.”
I make us leave before my snort-laugh can disturb the reverent atmosphere, or before West gets lured into priesthood by the pretty marketing materials.
We arrive at the Teatro di San Carlo just in time to join a tour, where our guide encourages the group to split off and sit in our own private box seats that circle the theater floor while she tells us some of its history.
“I’ve never been in a theater box before,” I whisper as I take in the elegant trappings, all red velvet and gold accents, keeping with the color scheme of the rest of the magnificent building.“Doesn’t it feel like you’re a historical romance character, awaiting a night of scandalous handholding with your secret lover, protected from the view of your fellow patrons of the opera?”
In his own damask-upholstered chair beside mine, West grimaces. “In all honesty, I was getting more of an Abe Lincoln vibe.”
I gasp, then sputter as quietly as possible, “Oh my god, what is wrong with you?”
He holds his hands out to his sides. “What, like it’s too soon? Not every historical figure had positive experiences with theater boxes, Cam.”
Shaking my head, I try to turn my attention back to our guide and try harder to push the twitching corners of my lips downward, muttering out of the side of my mouth, “Forget I said anything, please.”
“But I guess in both our versions, the night ended with a ba—”
“Weston!”
A quick jog across the street—seriously quick, to avoid the many motorbikers who apparently believe stoplights don’t apply to them—takes us to the Galleria Umberto I, a massive Industrial Age structure housing shops and cafes at street level, offices and residences higher up. Sunlight streams through its glass-domed ceilings down to the mosaic floors and countless eye-catching, neoclassical-style details on the walls and windows in between.
It’s the most spectacular location I’ve ever seen for a McDonald’s.
West and I have just been to a bakery a few storefronts away, where we bought sfogliatelle, delicious Neapolitan pastries made from thin layers of dough stacked into a clamshell shape, filled with sweet ricotta, and topped with powdered sugar. We agree we aren’t going to be Those Americans who get McDonald’s in a city with such a rich cuisine…but then he sees a menu item called a “Parmesan snack” and can’t resist.
“I don’t know what I expected,” he deadpans a few minutes later, returning to the table where he left me, holding a small, half-unwrapped brick of solid Parmesan cheese.
I pause in brushing off the powdered sugar and flaky pastry crumbs that now cover my shirt, then laugh at the outcome of his investigation. “The name didn’t lie.”
With some of our energy restored, we decide on a whim to join a Naples Underground tour. Neither of us knows what to expect as we descend over a hundred feet below the city streets, and at nearly every other turn in the long wooden staircase, I check in on West. He insists that he’s fine, that he’ll tell me if that changes, but a part of me has begun to worry that this day has gone too well, relative to our last time in Naples together. If he decides to make another break for it, I don’t want to chase him up hundreds of stairs.
And unlike the last time, I would very much chase him. Just about anywhere, I’m beginning to think. It’s like now that we’ve cleared up the reasons for our distance the last few years, I’ve fallen hard and fast back into the effortless friendship West and I had, rediscovering how much fun life can be when we’re together, and I never want to lose this again. It’s hard not to runa dozen steps ahead and imagine all the adventures we could have in the future, when we’re back at our respective school homes and get to bring each other into these separate lives we’ve built. To imagine how much brighter mine will be, with him back in it.
It’s beyond exciting—and beyond terrifying, because I’m still not quite convinced I get to keep him.
But all my complicated feelings and fears fade into the background for a while as I’m swept up in the unexpected highlight of my whole day. Our Underground tour guide leads a dozen or so of us through the long and complex history of Naples by way of the rocky earth beneath it all. We walk through cavernous rooms with walls that still bear markings from ancient tools the Greeks used to mine rock to build the city they called Neapolis; narrow tunnels that were part of the ancient Roman aqueduct system, which was still used into the nineteenth century; and finally, the makeshift bathroom stalls and anti-fascist graffiti from the tunnels’ time as World War II bomb shelters.
I feel breathless, invigorated by the time we exit to the tour company’s gift shop, but instead of hitting the city streets for fresh air, I want to return underground. To spend much more than one brief hour retracing my steps and those of everyone else who used these spaces for all number of purposes over thousands of years. To run my eyes and hands over every scratch in the rock walls, every marking on the floor, learning what I can about their meaning, who made them, what else they tell us about life at the time they came into existence. Tohear every story that’s been long buried deep under the bustling city.
“Doesn’t it just blow your mind?” I say to West, raising my voice to be heard as we navigate a busy shopping street, working our way toward the nearest bus stop. I can feel myself talking his ear off, see his eyes getting glassier, but it’s like I can’t stop. “That we were occupying spaces carved out of the earthbefore Ancient Rome existed? The way a place like that can endure and evolve as civilizations rise and fall right above it, and humans continue to find ways it can meet their needs, tying them to all the other humans across the centuries, it’s—Hey, you good?”
West blinks back to focus on me from where his gaze had gone distant and, if I’m not imagining things, a little panicked. His nod is too quick, his “yep” too squeaky. He can’t hide that his head is doing the swivel thing that I noticed last time we were in a crowded part of town, like he’s trying to take in the overload of sensory details around him but not really absorbing any of it.
