Chapter 44
age NINETEEN
44
Evie
Whenever I imagined Rome, it wasn’t like this.
I saw myself and Bree tearing around the city on mopeds, in vintage dresses à la Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday . We’d attract the attention of two sophisticated Italian boys who’d order us pizza and wine and entice us into hot holiday flings that we’d brag about to our grandchildren in seven decades’ time when we’d totally lost our filters in the nursing home.
Instead, I’m crying in front of the Trevi Fountain in the heat of the Italian sun, under perfect blue skies, with the perfect boyfriend. Miserable. I sold out on our gap-year dream.
“If he really loved you, he’d wait,” Bree had argued when I first broke the news. “That’s proper romance! Putting you first …” It had sent me into a defensive spin that ended with us both in tears.
“I guess Italy will always be there,” she’d added more softly, trying to fix it a while later. “We can still meet up and do Pemberley, Evie. He wouldn’t want to go to that bit, anyway.”
“The Trevi Fountain was our dream, though,” I’d conceded. We’d infused some sort of incantation into it, as if tossing in those coins together would cement our friendship for the rest of our adult lives. I just feel so guilty about ditching her. And age so torn, because Oliver has otherwise been handing me the trip of my dreams. The entire itinerary has been thoughtfully planned to maximize all the things I want to do, with hardly any of the stuff he’s into.
“I’ve been before,” he’d argued. “I want your first time to be special. This is all about you, this trip. I want you to be happy.”
Water splashes from the fountain into the pond, hundreds of coins glinting in the sunlight. All those wishes. That hope ! A busker plays an Italian folk song on the accordion nearby, as tourists make wishes and cram in for photos. Eventually it’s our turn. I sit on the stone wall of the fountain and pose for a photo for Oliver—an experience that should be so iconic—but instead I burst into tears.
“Sorry!” I gasp, crying. “I love you.”
He pulls me up and into a hug. “It’s okay, I get it.”
But does he? I feel like if he really understood, he wouldn’t have insisted we travel to Italy, knowing how much it meant to me to do this with Bree.
All I can think about is my galloping fear of what I’m missing out on right now in London. Bree is there with Isabelle, Ella, and Olivia—friends whom we weren’t deeply entrenched with at school but would sit with in classes if one or the other of us wasn’t there. Seeing the photos she posted earlier of the four of them at a pub in Soho—beers full, smiles wide, arms draped around various hot strangers—made my heart hurt. She looked genuinely happy beside some new girl she’d gravitated toward, like she wasn’t even missing me.
My photos probably look like that too. Shiny, sparkly photos of Oliver and me soaking up summer in Rome, devouring chocolate gelatos outside the Colosseum. Images of us in a gondola in Venice, my head nestled on his shoulder. Standing beneath the Juliet balcony in Verona. A seemingly blissful week in a tiny B&B in a Tuscan village near Florence, crumbling stone walls, vineyards, glasses of crisp white wine on white tablecloths—glamorous trappings disguising the true difficulty of that whole experience.
Candles.
Rose petals.
A four-poster bed.
Me scrunching sheets in my fists.
“Oliver, stop!”
Technically, he applied the brakes when he realized. I’m sure he did. Not long after, anyway. Maybe he didn’t hear me the first time …
“You should see a doctor about this pain,” he suggested when my unreliable body thwarted a second attempt. Maybe I should? “Or just try to get out of your own head, Evie.”
Of course, the more out of my head he instructs me to get, the more inside it I seem to go, worrying he’ll soon be sick of me if I can’t fix this. I twist the sapphire and diamond ring that he splashed out on the next morning in a tiny jewelry shop on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence. It’s on my right hand. I mean, obviously it is! I had a moment of panic when we started looking at rings, and a whoosh of relief when it became clear that this was just a gift and not something more.
“Just enjoy it!” he’d said, hugging me when I complained that it cost too much. “You overthink everything!”
He wipes the tears from my face now at the fountain. He hates to see me sad.
“Aren’t you meant to make a wish?” he asks, fishing around in his jeans pocket for a coin. What more could I theoretically want? He’s everything I always imagined. Or he should be. I mean, it’s normal to have some doubts, isn’t it? Traveling together in close quarters is hard work. Even for people who’ve been together for years. I read that in an online quiz I did the other day after I made too much of a fuss about his absence for a few hours and ruined the dinner he’d planned at a secluded little bistro near the Spanish Steps.
His mention of the wish sets me off again. Because this is Bree’s moment. We were meant to stand in this exact spot, hold hands, and make this wish together.
“Close your eyes,” Oliver says softly. The Italian sun is punishing. He’s staring intently at me, wanting me to believe in the magic of this experience, and I just feel hot and tired and sad and—“Trust me, Evie.”
I close my eyes as he presses the coin into my palm. He maneuvers my body so I’m standing with my back to the fountain. And he takes my hand.
“Okay, make a wish,” he instructs, and even though I know I’m totally wasting this opportunity, I wish Bree were here. And that I were more assertive, and that everything would be okay. Is that greedy? It’s three wishes for one coin, and I’m starting to feel like there isn’t enough magic in the world to whisk away my anxiety. I know I had it before, in Australia, but over here, away from my moorings, it’s taken on a life of its own. It’s not so much about unfamiliar places, or the understandable challenge of being in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language. I’m anxious about making mistakes. Taking wrong turns, figuratively and metaphorically. I’m beginning to feel as though everyone around me—all these locals and tourists, Bree and the others, the entire cohort of gap-year travelers in Europe—has their act together. Except for me.
When I open my eyes and wipe them, Oliver is standing in front of me. Not beside me. And he’s got a silly grin on his face. I’m dazed by the harsh sunlight and wondering whose hand I’m holding if it’s not his.
“Surprise!” Bree says, throwing herself at me so hard she threatens to tip us both into the water. I can hardly speak, as Oliver captures it all on video and all my fear just evaporates in this one incredible moment. She is here. The relief . She tries to break away from our hug and I won’t let her. I pull her closer and hold her harder.
“How did you … What is happening?”
She laughs. “It was all Oliver’s idea!”
I stare at her, and then at him.
“Isn’t this exactly what you wished for?” he asks.
All my doubts seem to rush away in this instant. “You did this?” I ask him, still in shock that she’s really here.
He smiles and pulls me into his arms. “I love you, Evie. I’d do anything to make you happy. You should know that by now.”