Chapter 2
James
When I pull to the curb at Bologna International, there’s a clock hanging just over the arrivals entry above the oversized automatic glass doors. The neon red digits are flashing, berating me with the time. It might as well just spell out “you’re an asshole” in all caps. I shift into park and leave the Fiat idling with the AC blasting so as not to make this girl’s trip any more hellish than it already must be—thanks to me.
An hour late. Traffic around the coast had been unrelenting, even though I’d left before dawn. Not that I had a choice, with Zia Nina nearly dumping espresso down my throat as she shoved me out the door. Somehow, this girl was important to my aunt and uncle—a friend of a friend or something—which translated to me nodding immediately at their request and a three-hour drive through two regions of eastern Italy. Not that one can complain about driving through Emilia-Romagna. Unless one is a moron.
I grab the sign Zia made from the passenger seat, mouthing the name written in my Zia’s loose cursive—Signorina Ava Graham. Decidedly American. Not that James was much better. But the moment I step around the back of the car, I can see the sign was an unnecessary touch.
“You are over an hour late.”
It takes my eyes a moment to connect to my brain as I relate the unforgiving voice with the soft curves of this—woman. This is not a girl. Not some eighteen-year-old college freshman studying abroad for the first time. Hadn’t Zia said she was in college? I trail my eyes down her bare legs to where one sandaled foot is tapping hard against the concrete then back up to where her arms are crossed tightly beneath her chest.
“Mi dispiace,” I manage to choke out, wondering why my tongue chose Italian when the woman before me is so unabashedly American—phone in hand, taking a picture of my license plate like she’s a detective at Interpol.
She checks the screen, nods once to herself, then slides the phone back into her pocket and turns on me, eyes narrowed so I can barely make out the color. Flecks of bronze in patina green. It reminds me of the fountain outside Palazzo Ducale in the late afternoon when the light catches the oxidized metal …
“Do you speak any English?” she asks slowly, her irritation with me growing by the moment.
I open my mouth to tell her of course, but I hesitate when she lifts a brow and tilts her head, loosening a bead of sweat that trails its way down her clavicle and under the dip in her neckline. Her buttons are askew and I start to point it out, but she shakes her head and makes a frustrated grunt, then yanks her bag off the curb with a thump as she bends to find the open button on the Fiat’s trunk.
What the fuck, James? It’s been a while since I’ve had to move on American time, but cultural pacing is not the issue here. This—she—is not what I expected. Yes, she’s a woman. A beautiful one at that—which she clearly knows by the way she holds herself and the look of genuine disdain she’s giving me over her shoulder as she waits for the trunk to open fully. Yes, it’s been a solid dry spell since Aleanna last spring. But there’s something else about this woman. Something making my fingers itch for my camera.
I smile as I imagine her response to me requesting to photograph her right now. Have I ever been slapped by a woman besides Zia Nina?
I reach for her luggage to help, though honestly I don’t know if this load will fit in the Fiat, but she beats me to it, shoving the thing in and making her way around the side as she murmurs to herself that “It’s for the best we can’t communicate because then you won’t understand me when I call you an incompetent asshole for making me wait for over an hour after an eight-hour flight from hell.”
I have to bite down hard on my lower lip not to laugh when she throws me a saccharine smile over the roof of the car, then slips out of sight into the passenger seat. I scratch at the stubble on the side of my cheek—no time to shave with Nina shoving at my back—and wait for a car to speed by before opening my door and sliding inside. I should tell her that I can understand her—apologize for my lateness in a language she can speak. Perhaps explain that I am not her hired help, but an actual, living, breathing human being. But something about the way she turns all the air-conditioning vents toward herself and widens her eyes at me as if to say fuck off makes me stop.
Instead, I buckle up and ask her profile, “Pronto?”
She pulls her nose up a little and then turns her body toward the window, shutting her eyes—the universal signal for shut up and let me nap.
And I can’t help but smile as I shift into gear.