“You have a little bit of cream on your…” She trailed off, pointing at his hand.
“Oh. Thanks.” A pea-sized blob had ended up on the side of his pinky finger. He twisted his hand around and licked the cream off with a tiny flick of his tongue. “It’s really good. Sure you don’t want to try?”
“No. I’ve had it before,” she said, but kept watching him as he bit into the brioche again. “It didn’t really do much for me.”
There was no way they were going to be able to meet in such a public place again—not if they were going to get any actual work done by Ellie’s standards. First, it was Simone waving from across the piazza while he picked up peaches and lettuce from the open market. Then it was Umberto, the guy who now owned the jewelry store on the opposite corner, who had been a teammate of Cris’s when they were kids. That should have taken only about five minutes of hugs and exchanging of phone numbers, except for Umberto’s inability to punch numbers into his phone, smoke a cigarette, and gesticulate at the same time. They lost an extra eleven minutes on that one. Then it was Giovanni, who ownedthe barbershop where the Conte boys used to shave their heads at the start of every season, and Loredana, who took care of the boys when their mom and dad would go out with friends. She needed two selfies and three hugs before she could be appeased. Between all that and the pigeons dive-bombing the brioche crumbs at their feet, plus Cris’s phone pinging from text messages every thirty seconds, Ellie was about to set her new notebook on fire and throw it in the ocean.
Of course, it didn’t help that every one of her pep talks with herself prior to this meeting was rendered completely useless as soon as Cris walked into the piazza. She’d told herself that he physically wasn’t her type—except, his retiree physique was right up an alley she didn’t even know she had. She tried a “Cris Diet” mindset, where she would say he was absolutely off-limits for her, even though it had never worked before. She told herself that her attraction to him was nothing but a figment of sentimentality, but then he had to go and lick pastry cream off his finger, giving her a very adult spasm in a place she didn’t want to think about.
“Hey, I’m sorry about all that,” he said, finally sitting back at their table after the last reunion. “They were all people that knew my dad. It feels weird blowing them off.”
“Well. This is probably not the right place to work, but I forgot about your… recognizability,” she said, making it sound like some kind of a disease.
“I’m not used to it. I usually avoid anywhere that I might be noticed.”
“Mm-hmm. I’m guessing you don’t get out much, then.” Ellie picked up her notebook and got to her feet. It was beyond weird that he seemed to accept attention from anyone who asked here when he was so against the same treatment in the States. They had spent the lasthour and a half at the café and barely got through two questions on her list of fifty. There was no sense trying to make this work now. It was almost noon and if they didn’t get out of there, they would be in prime position for the lunchtime version of the Cris Conte show.
“Where are you going?” Cris looked up at her like she’d just packed up her Legos.
“To my house. To the beach. Wherever is not here. I’ve had enough for today.”
Cris stood up from the table and gripped the sides of it. He leaned toward Ellie, and his eyes dropped to her dress for a split second. “Do you have a bathing suit on under there?”
“Maybe,” she said, though she wasn’t sure how to answer. He was close—too close—and the look in his eyes was the same one he got when he wanted her to go with him to put a lizard in someone’s purse.
“Let’s go.” Cris reached out his hand and Ellie just stared at it.
“Where, Cris?” she asked, trying to make her voice even.
“El. Can you try—just try—to trust me?”
“And why should I?” She didn’t know where he wanted to take her, but she had a feeling they’d been there before.
“Because you used to,” he said. She rolled her eyes again at him. “Okay, fine. Because I want the same thing you do.” His eyes went to her mouth. Ellie dug her thumbnail into the leather handle on her tote bag.
“Okay. But you’d better turn your damned ringer off.”
“It’s a deal.”
Twenty minutes later, Ellie and Cris were floating in the bay in a fifty-year-old wooden dinghy with a shark’s mouth painted on the bow. It was, of course, namedLo Squalo.
“Jaws, huh?” Ellie said, snorting.
“Even a dinghy can dream, El.”
“I suppose you have a point there.”
The midday sun was flaming hot, but a delicious breeze blew across the water, cooling them down. Ellie was glad to have a straw hat stuffed in her tote that was big enough to throw shade over her shoulders as she sat on the tiny wooden seat and hunched over her notes. Cris sat across from her, an oar in each hand, and gently maneuvered them out to the middle of the water. It was absolutely not the first time they had commandeered one of these little boats for a joyride. It was, however, probably the first time they asked for permission and offered to pay for the rental. The manager of the marina, another fan of the Pro Chiavari water polo boys, waved them off with a gesture that clearly indicated that Cris and Ellie would be insulting every member of his family, on up to their patron saint, if they even offered a single euro for the boat.
“So now it’s just us,” he said, securing the oars. “Let’s do it.”
“I want to know why you didn’t start with water polo like everybody else,” she said, because it was on the top of her list of official questions. It was also something she realized she never asked when they were kids and now wanted to know.
“Okay.” He cleared his throat. “We’re getting into ancient history already.”
“It’s an obvious question given your family history, and if I’m being honest, I don’t actually know the whole answer.”
“Yeah, well.” Cris scratched his scruff and adjusted his cap. “You know I was little.” Ellie shook her head. Just because she knew the intimate details of his growth spurts didn’t mean that the whole world did. “Right, right. Okay, well, my dear Dr. Beltrami, I was a rather small child, actually,” he said, launching into an attempt at a British accent.
