Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 7

Ava

Someone has tipped over the fuck-with-Ava dominoes, and I’m wondering how many more are left to fall.

I lick the chocolate from my fork and try not to groan—especially with Massimo across the table waggling his bushy brows at me every ten minutes. Nina has given me three little lava cakes—count them, three. As if she knew that the only thing that could bring me back from the ledge was her little mounds of gooey heaven. Italy, thus far, has taken my well-crafted plan and used it as toilet paper. One wipe by Ethan. Two wipes for my apartment and my coursework. And three wipes by the absent asshole, James. The study portion of study abroad is making lazy circles in the flushed toilet, and that awful spin in my head that I haven’t felt since after Mom is making it hard to breathe.

My mother’s voice gently nudges me to remember why I’m here. As if I could forget.

Though in reality I only promised to travel here, not stay. So contractually, I could call it a day and head back. Clean up the mess with Ethan and work out a way to earn my final credits at home.

The second the thought lands I feel sick to my stomach like I did when I was little and tried to hide something from her. Nothing twists the soul like guilt.

Maybe regret. Regret hurts too. Lucky me. I’ve got both swirling together like a twist of soft-serve ice cream.

And then someone dipped that soft-serve in a hard chocolate shell of anger.

I want nothing more than to call my advisor and get some reassurance about these impromptu changes, but he’s on an adventure expedition in the Galápagos. So I have to trust Leo and go with the terrifying flow. I’m more she-who-engineers-the-levees-to-control-the-flow. But I can adapt. I must.

I chew the last bite of cake slowly—consider lifting my plate for a lick, but when I look around to make sure no one is watching, I find Verga staring at me from beneath his skin flaps. He whines and I put the plate back on the table.

Nina and Leo have left me with their pervy tween son, and he’s watching me eat like I’m a rare zoo animal at feeding time.

“Do they not have chocolate in America?” he asks. His teeth are so perfect.

“Do they have braces in Italy?” I ask.

“You like my smile, no?”

Oh shit. Do not encourage. Do not engage.

I put my plate on the floor for Verga and ignore the imp.

“Dogs cannot have chocolate,” he tells me, wagging his finger twice at me. “Luckily there was none left on that plate after you made love to it.”

I scrunch my nose as I push up from the table. Time to escape. Nina has put me under strict instructions to take a walk up the hill path after I finish my espresso, and I’m unsure if anyone in their right mind would defy Nina. Though she did tell Massimo to leave me alone and, alas, alone I am not. But he’s obviously not in his right mind. My gaze settles on the bushy-headed boy as I round the table, being careful not to give Verga or him access to my ass.

“I don’t think the normal rules apply for this dog. I’ll see you around.” I finger wave goodbye.

“Don’t forget you promised me a swim,” he calls after me.

I pick up my pace and elongate my stride as far as it can stretch in my favorite dress, heading straight for the path in the woods that I have yet to explore, hoping not to be followed by prepubescent hormones. I pull my phone from my pocket, check that the ringer is on for the one hundredth time today, and then slide it back in its place, feeling pathetic for thinking that maybe I missed his call. Stay present, my mom reminds me, and I let out a long breath and focus on the scene.

The gravel and dirt is lined with shepherd’s hooks as it leads uphill through the trees, and hanging on each one is a tiny black lantern that casts a fan of soft light out toward my bare toes. The light is entirely unnecessary tonight with the full moon above, but the décor adds a sense of safety in the darkness.

The thought has barely grazed my brain when there’s a rustling in the leaves beside me. My hand goes to my hip where my purse always hangs, chock full o’ Mace and rape whistles that my dad thrusts upon me along with the crime rates in Philly every time we meet up for dinner. He can’t seem to comprehend the idea that the Main Line doesn’t really count as the city proper. The movement stops for a moment. Are there bears in Italy?

The leaves explode in the darkness and a huge wrinkly-faced mastiff bounds out of the brush toward me and leaps majestically through the air. I’m admiring said leap when two front paws connect with my chest, copping a generous feel, and I plop gracelessly on my ass. His tongue accosts me—gives me the kind of facial I’d pay hundreds for in Center City—while I try to karate chop him off of my chest. I’m a fly compared to him. I start to just play dead when the sound of a whistle fills my head and I think I’m imagining my rape whistle. But then the Beast is gone, up the hill and out of sight, leaving a trail of floating silvery dust in his wake.

A dark figure makes its way toward me down the hill, through the dust, and I’m reminded of that time when Harry catches Voldemort drinking unicorn blood. Except I’m the unicorn.

As Voldemort approaches, I notice he’s holding a camera in front of his face, the click of his finger in rapid succession just audible over the chirping crickets.

“You alright?” he asks.

“Voldemort would have been better,” I murmur, picking myself up off the path with as much dignity as one can muster after being mounted by a dog. I ignore the proffered hand and wipe off my dress.

“Verga has taken quite a liking to you,” James points out, snapping away as I fix my hemline.

“So it would seem.”

“Follow me,” he says.

“To further humiliation?”

His hand closes around the skin above my elbow and I suck in a sharp breath. I mutter some lie about his hands being cold, but James doesn’t let go, just lifts his mouth into a lopsided grin and then tugs me softly up the path.

“No more humiliation. I’ve decided to tolerate you,” he tells me. I notice that the hand that isn’t holding me still has the camera balanced firmly in its grip. His fingers are rolling along the dial on the lens, restless and eager.

“How magnanimous of you,” I murmur. “You’re a photographer then?”

He looks at me for a moment, shakes his head a little, then lets out a frustrated breath.

“You realize how American it is to make everyone fit inside a single box,” he asks—no, tells me.

I consider shrugging off his hand, but it is sliding down toward my wrist and I’m not sure I have the will. But then I picture Ethan’s long, elegant fingers and nonchalantly slide my wrist out of his calloused hand.

“You realize how condescending you are, right? Would you prefer art-eest?” I ask, making sure to top on some extra sarcasm.

“I’m a lot of things, Ava. Most people are. Get used to it,” he says.

But I’ve stopped listening to him.

The earth has ended—dropped out from beneath us—and a fortress is rising from below us like it’s an extension of the rocky hills it was built upon.

“Is that Atlantis?” I whisper.

James chuckles, a low, deep sound that shakes the air around me.

“Urbino,” he says, his voice soft. Reverent.

And I can see why.

The walled city appears to be built of gold—thousands of lights illuminate the sawdust-colored stone that stretches in every direction, peaking here and there into bronzed turrets and duomos that seem to reach into the stars above. It’s a castle—no, it’s more. More welcoming. A palace? A kingdom? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

“I’ve seen it on my postcard, but …”

My thought trails off as I trace the expanse of the walls with a finger in the air, dipping down and around the hillsides that surround it.

“The image rarely captures the reality,” James says, and I sneak a glance at his profile.

He lifts the camera to his eye just as I notice the way his top lip rests just slightly over the bottom.

“Enjoying the view?” he asks, turning the camera on me.

“I’ve seen better.”

He’s snapping away and I roll my eyes and turn back toward Urbino and all of its splendor.

“It seems quiet down there,” I say to myself.

“In the summer, yes. When the semester begins it gets a bit more boisterous,” he explains.

“College town.”

He nods. “Something like that.”

This is the longest we’ve gone without insulting one another. I’m about to point that out when he speaks.

“You seem a little old to be a college student,” he says.

There goes that. Patronizing shit.

“I’m twenty-eight. And I’m graduating from law school. Not college.”

“Don’t get huffy. It was just an observation.” He turns toward me and lets the camera fall to his chest.

“Huffy? You mean like leaving a family dinner because you can’t handle some light teasing?”

He smiles. Steps forward. And I realize I’m standing on my toes to try to match his height and I’m still falling short. Annoying. I left my heels on the porch.

“Yes, exactly like that.” His voice lowers an octave. He steps forward again and the lens from his camera is an inch from my chin. I don’t budge.

“Why Italy? Surely there were better law programs than Urbino’s?” he asks.

And here it is. Once I pull the mom card, there’s no putting it back in the deck. He’s watching me like I might hold the answers to the universe. I open my mouth. Close it. Turn back toward the view and pull out my phone from where it’s tucked in my dress pocket.

“I made a promise,” I say, voice thick now, trying to pull up the camera on my homescreen to ignore his probing gaze.

He makes a low sound in his throat and I can smell him—it’s lemon, that scent I couldn’t put my finger on earlier. Mint and lemon.

“Interesting. Una promessa …”

His Italian is as smooth as Nina’s lava cake. I glance back up to find his lens trained on me again. I lift a brow.

“You will be deleting the pictures of your dog taking advantage of me,” I tell him.

He grins, his eyes so dark I cannot find where pupil becomes iris. I turn my focus back out to Urbino and hold up my phone to capture the memory, pressing wildly at the red button like it can protect me from his presence beside me.

He leans into the empty space beside my ear, his breath and the breeze mingling along my neck.

“Certo, dolcezza.”

The roll of those Zs slides down my spine and my eyes fall shut. My mother told me the language was intoxicating, and she didn’t lie. I can feel every sound slipping along my skin—teasing and caressing. I take a small step forward to escape the sensation easing down my back, and James’s hand shoots out to grab me. The shock of his touch sends my phone up and out of my fingers.

My eyes pop open and I look down just in time to see the glimmer of my rose gold case bounce over the edge of the cliff and plunge into the darkness below.

I stare after it for some time trying to make sense of what’s happened. Someone has placed a hex on me. I’m cursed. I pissed off a deity. I turn toward James, and his eyes are round, his lip pulled between his teeth as he watches me like I might explode into a thousand angry pieces.

I let out a breath that might have been in my lungs for an hour and look up to the sky.

“Ava, I’m—”

“You knocked my phone over the cliff,” I cut him off.

“That’s not exactly what—”

“Why did you do that?”

“You were going to fa—”

I put up my hand for him to shut up.

I want to take all of the bubbling anger in my chest out on him, and if he says one wrong word, I’m scared of what I might do. Maybe send him tumbling over that cliff after my phone.

“At least now you won’t be tortured by having to check to see—”

The sound that comes out of me is a mix of Xena Warrior Princess and the sound a motor makes when you run out of gasoline. He takes a step back and holds up his hands. I turn my back on him and head back down the path, walking as quickly as my bare feet allow, ignoring the happy prancing mastiff that’s at my side. I need to crawl into bed and wake up on the other side of this god-awful shitstorm of a day. I need to recover, recoup, and replan.

I need to stay the hell away from James.