Page 144 of The English Bookstore in Bologna

She wasn’t done. “Okay, fine, I surrender. I want more from you than just being friends, and I have no idea how it would ever work, but I’d like to try. I want to try.” Something else occurred to her. “I’m sorry I lied about my son, by the way. I won’t lie to you again; it was this thing I kept doing, pretending, holding back the pain, burying it away.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

She raised a finger. “For the record, I’ve tried to spare you from me, but it seems you’re dumber than you look and maybe I am, too, and . . . Ugh, I’ve never talked so much in my life. Do you hear what I’m trying to—”

The taxi driver reached a hand out the window. “Andiamo!”

“Are you kidding me? Puoi aspettare.” You can wait. She said a few less ladylike words too.

“I do have a plane to catch,” George said sheepishly.

Her mouth fell open, wide enough to fit the whole damn collection from the Library of Congress. “I spill my guts and that’s all you have to say?”

“What do you want, Sandy? I tried. You can’t throw all this at me in the final hour.”

“The final hour? What are you, dying? Don’t be so dramatic. There are always more planes. Every day there are planes.”

Doing something that Sandy Cooke didn’t do, she reached for his hand and said, “I like you, George. And I don’t want you to leave.”

“I live in Arizona.”

“Which is dumb. You don’t belong there.”

“What else do you want me to do?”

“What do you think? Move to Italy.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t move to Italy.”

“What else do you have to do?”

He shook his head. “Sorry.”

“Okay, fine. Then how about you come upstairs? Don’t look at me like that. It’s not a brothel. I’m saying come up to my place so we can talk about it. Get a flight tomorrow. Or the next day. But give me a morning to work through whatever the hell has brought us to this moment.”

He laughed. “You’re a mess.”

“Got that right. But you do something to me, George, and I don’t want you to stop doing it. You hear me?” She squeezed his hand tighter. “You’ve broken through and now I’m all yours. I want to give us a shot, and I don’t give a shit if you’re living on a golf course in a state with such high temperatures that it cooks people in the summer, while I’m over here in paradise. We’ll figure that out. For now, let the taxi go, and let’s drink a cup of coffee, because I’m tired and you don’t look too perky yourself.”

George glanced back at the door to Bianca’s apartment, then at the cab and Sandy.

“That’s all I got, George. I wouldn’t blame you if you climb into that taxi and run from all that’s me, but what I hope you do is close the trunk and come upstairs for a coffee. I don’t do Nespresso. I make the real thing. You’ll never have another one like it.”

George held eye contact for a while and then turned back to the car. He lifted his bag out of the trunk. Sandy’s heart grew wings. That’s what she got for opening herself back up to love.

George set his bag down, slipped his arm around her.

“Good choice,” she whispered, moving closer to him, inches away.

“It better be great coffee,” he whispered, their eyes drawing each other in.

She pressed a grin into his lips. “The best you’ve ever had.” They kissed warmly, deeply, without any holding back.

The driver yelled through the window, “Andiamo!”

“Lui sta con me!” He’s staying here with me!

In the elevator, she said, “No one’s been up here, other than the plumber and electrician, since Jack.”