“That’s okay. I am not marrying just your arm.”
“Lucky. You’d be very disappointed.” Graziella turned her face up to Ellie and Cris. “Are you coming with us? We’ll go to the restaurant around the corner. Theirspaghetti al nero di seppiais divine!”
“No thanks, Grandma. I am feeling a little nauseated right now,” said Ellie, not waiting for Cris to respond. There was no way she wanted to spend another hour with him, delicious cuttlefish or not.
“Told you, it’s the heat,” said Renata. “Your blood is still cold from New York!”
“Maybe.” Ellie turned her gaze to Renata and smiled a bit. She knew it would seem rude if she didn’t. Being distracted by this Crissituation was one thing, but being so distracted that she forgot how to be polite was another. “I think I’m going to go for a little walk. I’ll catch up with you later, Grandma.” Ellie smiled again and waved. She stood and placed her notebook back in her bag.
“Are we done?” Cris asked, still sitting.
“I think so. I need a little bit of air.”
“We’re outside,” he said, glancing around. “There’s not enough air here?”
“I need different air,” said Ellie. She pushed the strap handles up her shoulder and headed for the exit.
CHAPTER 14
Cris wasn’t sure which task was more difficult: trying to figure out how to get Ellie to talk to him again or trying to explain to the grandparents why he wasn’t interested in lunch. Once he was finally able to convince everyone that he deeply understood the mistake he was making by skipping thespaghetti al nero di seppiahe ducked out of the tennis club to look for Ellie. She couldn’t have gotten too far in flip-flops, but he walked quickly past the sugar-scented jasmine bushes and out to the street just the same. If he were her, where would he go? He tried to think of the places she used to run off to if she was upset about something. All he came up with was parks and playgrounds, but he wasn’t looking for a kid this time. Finally, he looked out to the farthest end of thelungomarewhere it merged with the marina. A lone figure sat with one leg curled under her on a bench while she stared out at the sea. A squeeze pulled behind his ribs. He couldn’t see her expression, but he was pretty sure she would have that vein on her temple and he hated it. He sloweddown, not wanting to show up next to her a sweaty, breathless mess. Why was he out of breath, anyway? Did he lose all of his fitness in three days? Why did he feel like he was crouched on a diving block before the 400 IM? And what was he going to say to her? He was only a few feet away when Ellie turned her head and saw him walking toward her. She broke the ice for him.
“Oh,” she said.
Cris stopped walking, thinking she was going to say something else. She didn’t.
“Are you busy? Can I talk to you?” he asked, edging forward. She didn’t turn toward him but waved her hand at the tiny space on the bench next to her and her enormous tote bag. He sat down and followed her gaze out over the marina. The glossy boats bobbed in the shimmering water, their masts tilting back and forth. The clanking of the halyards joined the seagulls crying out as they dipped across the water in search of snacks. A breeze ruffled the hem of Ellie’s dress, exposing a few inches of tanned thigh. His vision blurred. “I know that I am not making this easy, and I am sorry.” He paused, turning to face her.
“No, actually, you’re making this very easy,” she said after a second or two. “It turns out you are exactly what I figured you might be from the beginning. It’s great for me because I can still say my initial instincts were correct.”
“What do you mean? What happened to all of that ‘open mind’ stuff?”
“Well, I was wrong.”
“Good, that means we can fix it.”
“No. I mean that I was wrong to think I could do this. I can’t. That doesn’t mean I won’t do the interview. It means that I will accept thefacts for what they are and stop trying to like you. If people had to like their interviewees in order to get a good interview, Christiane Amanpour would have been out of a job long ago.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Cris said, holding up his hands to halt the conversation. Was it weirder that she was trying to like him? Or that she was trying to like him but failed? “Look, I know I haven’t always been the best person, but I am trying to be better. Do you know what I mean?” He leaned over slightly, attempting to get her attention, but she stayed staring at the boats. “Ellie. Can you look at me for one second?”
“I don’t need to look at you to understand what you are saying.”
“Okay, fine. But I need you to look at me at some point, because I am not as good as you at understanding someone without seeing their face,” he said. Ellie turned slowly, and he was so grateful she didn’t have sunglasses on, even though it made her squint in the midday light. Her eyes blazed that honey-brown color he knew so well. Even if he wasn’t supposed to know her, he knew there were more dark-brown flecks in her right eye than her left. “I know I deserved that email all those years ago. I know you were right to cut things off between us. You said all of those things about me needing time even though I didn’t know it. And you were right. But I should have never accepted it. I should have fought you.”
“Fought me? For what? You just said half an hour ago that you follow through on everything important in your life. So I know where I stand—where I stood.”
“No. You don’t. And that’s my fault. I should have told you how I really felt. I was scared and stupid. I just couldn’t figure out what to do with you,” he said, flinching at how ridiculous his teenage thoughts sounded coming out of his thirty-two-year-old mouth.
“What to do with me? We were friends first. You could have at least been a friend,” she said.
“I don’t know if I understood how to be just your friend after that summer,” he said. It was the truth. But even he knew that wasn’t good enough. “The night I saw you at the ESPYs—I was a mess after that. I could barely read the teleprompter, and I sweated right through my suit. I came back to find you after that, but you were gone.”
“I left. I told Omar I was getting a migraine and I got a cab back to my hotel. I felt like such an idiot.”
“Why didyoufeel like an idiot? I was the idiot!”
“I’m the one who let a ten-year-old kiss kill me. Do you want to know the worst part? I didn’t even realize how much it hurt until I saw you. So I guess we can both be idiots.”
Their kiss that summer was tattooed on his brain. It was pouring rain and the Ping-Pong table seemed like the only option for shelter. Her lips were warm, but her nose was cold. Kissing her felt so good that it confused him, almost as if the feeling of excitement in his heart was a betrayal of the heavy rules of mourning that had hung over him for months. But he did it anyway and would have stayed there all night if the storm hadn’t blown out as quickly as it blew in. That feeling stayed with him from the summer clear through his first semester, and he’d wanted to see her, too.
