“Give me a fucking break, Eileen.” Paul was screaming, and I rolled up my window on the off chance that we’d pass someone we knew. “It’s like you are trying to get me fired.”
“I am not.”
“And what the fuck is that journalist doing drawing pictures of you in a bathing suit?Eileen Archer dives for nacchere… what the fuck is that?”
Ireallydid not want to talk about Teo right now, but I also didn’t see a way around it. “I went out on the boat with him and the CNEN guys. Last summer.”
“And you fucking dove for nacchere?”
I paused a beat. “Yeah.”
“Where was I?”
“On the cruise,” I said.
“Fuck me. Really?”
I nodded.
“Did something happen between the two of you?”
“No,” I said, as adamantly as I knew how.
“He didn’t try anything?”
“No, Paul. He didn’t.”
“Why’d you go out on the boat in the first place?”
I shrugged. “He asked me to. And I was bored. It was a hot day, and I thought it’d be fun.”
Paul digested this, but I could tell he was still pissed. “So, you’re out on this boat, and he never so much as offers to rub your suntan lotion in for you?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Well then, what was it like?”
I thought back to the day we’d spent on the water. “I don’t know.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“I liked learning something new.”
He took this in.
“Paul, I was thinking. Maybe you and Teo just got off on the wrong foot. I mean, he wasn’t the one who said all that crap at the bar. It was that friend of his, and he was just drunk and mouthing off.”
“Right,” Paul said with a laugh.
“I’m sorry if it came off like I was flirting that night. I really wasn’t. Or I wasn’t trying to, anyway.”
Paul ignored my apology, but then he said, “It was just the one boat ride?” That gave me hope he was softening.
“There was just the one boat ride with Teo,” I said, hesitantly. “But I’ve probably gone out on theAlessandrawith Luca and Bruno a dozen times.”
“Jesus, Eileen.”
“I’m being honest,” I said, a little defensively. “They had a bunch of current meters I was helping with. And they let me tag along while they were doing the Rhodamine B testing.”
