Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 15

James

It’s one of those beautiful crisp nights that fools your body into getting excited for fall too early—makes you crave open fires and warm sweaters in the middle of August. I spent the earlier part of my afternoon at the museum, looking over the newest acquisitions that Silvia, the curator at the Galleria, managed to obtain from Firenze on lease. She’s masterful. And now we have four portraits by our own Raffaello di Sanzio to display for the fall, with two more on the way. There’s something so fulfilling about art finding its way back to Urbino—the city that shaped and nurtured the work’s creator.

The later part of my afternoon was almost as satisfying, playing Massimo one-on-one at soccer while Nina refereed from where she milked the sheep. I’ve been schooling the kid since he was in diapers, same mop of black curly hair and huge white chicklet smile. Though I hate to admit it, it might not be long until the tables are turned. Maso’s getting stronger—the ball tighter to his foot every time we play. I’ve got a year—maybe two—to keep him in his place. And then we are all in trouble.

“Gi, could you let Ava know we are leaving?” Nina yells out the window.

I stop rocking in my favorite chair on the porch and watch my peaceful afternoon drift into the past. There’s no point in saying no to Nina. And besides, the more I contest their obvious meddling, the more she and Leo see reason to meddle.

I take my time around the side of the house, replaying our conversation from this morning. “I have a boyfriend. A serious one.” Right. No wiggle room there. No blurred lines. Just a big red stop sign and a shitload of attitude. Why didn’t I tell her I’m not interested? Or that her presence is nothing but a splinter just beneath the skin?

The low-hanging sun reflects off of the glass of the guest house doors and I knock twice, even though I can tell she’s not inside. A small, silly pang of worry strikes me as I remember her brow knitted together in confusion this afternoon when I saw her last. What if she got lost searching for a sally port?

More likely, she’s out cataloguing artwork or creating some sort of checklist for her time here, her ridiculous planner tucked under her arm. Or maybe she’s working on the details of her absurd relationship arrangement with the jackass. Either way, her whereabouts do not—should not—concern me, so I step to the side of the guest house and take my time with my camera and the view, letting the pressure beneath my finger give way to the satisfying click of a moment captured. Sunsets like this make me crave watercolors, but I know my brush could never re-create that shade of orange, the way it burns the underbelly of the soft pink clouds above it. Only the camera can get that right.

Massimo destroys my moment of peace by yelling at me from where he is walking out of view along the driveway behind the cypress trees. At least his voice cracks a little, so I can smile as I sigh. I lower the camera and focus on the screen, clicking through my recent images while I try to close the distance between me and my family as they make their way toward the city walls for dinner.

There’s no doubt that the best pictures on the reel are those I’ve taken of Ava, and it’s not just my knack for portraiture. As a subject, her range makes the series of photographs fascinating. There is constant transformation—the Ava that she wants the world to see, and the Ava that is hidden underneath. The dichotomy makes the work impossible to ignore. And she’s stunning—lit from within.

Which just makes her all the more infuriating.

“Oh, Gi. That’s gorgeous. She will want that,” Nina says, leaning in to see the picture I’m studying of Ava looking down into Urbino’s streets from the hill beyond the wall. Her eyes are wide, the green popping with the grass on the hillside, and her lips are slightly parted in awe.

“A Mortal’s Glimpse of Olympus,” Zio Leo says. He has a habit of naming all of my work. And doing it well. Which makes him insufferable. “You should send that to Signore Davenport.”

“Zio, per favore,” I plead.

Since he “accidentally” opened an email from Greer Davenport, the owner of The Post, who wants me to sign with his magazine, Leo has been unrelenting. The arrangement requires me to live locally in London, and I’m not interested in leaving Urbino—leaving my family and my career.

“There is an entire world out there, Gi—”

I put up my hand. “I’ve seen enough.”

“You can never see enough,” he counters.

“Leo,” Nina warns.

Time to change the subject to the only thing they like talking about more than meddling in my professional life.

“The American must have left without us,” I tell them, ignoring their shared glance.

“No,” Massimo says. “She never came home. I kept an eye out.”

“You kept an eye out while I was embarrassing you at calcio? Maybe you should get a job, Maso. So you have less time to—you know—stalk guests?” I punch him in the arm and he points at my camera.

“I’m the stalker?”

Little shit.

I lift the camera. “This is art. Not creepy puberty hormones.”

Massimo kicks some gravel at my heels. “I’m sure that is what all of the great serial killers think.”

Nina chuckles and I throw her a glare that she just lifts her brows at and waves away. My paltry effort hardly registered with the Queen of Glares.

“I hope you are not giving her too much work, Gi,” Leo chimes in. “We want her to really take in what Urbino has to offer.”

I grunt and choose not to acknowledge the fact that I’ve given her 74,000 words to look over in her first week here. She basically begged me for them.

“She took in most of the wine Urbino has to offer last night with Franco,” I tell him. “Perhaps you should have put her in a class with lower enrollment if you thought she couldn’t handle the work.”

He purses his lips. “I believe that woman can handle anything you send her way, Gi.” I hold his gaze for as long as I can, then look back toward the view as he continues. “And good for her. She should imbibe as much as she wants. So long as she has saved us some for dinner tonight. Vincenzo said he procured some of the most exquisite white truffles he’s seen this season.” Zio closes his eyes, touches his fingers to his lips. Truffles and Petrarca are the two things that cause my uncle to speak in reverent tones. Which in turn causes my aunt to roll her eyes deeply into her skull.

“It is not as busy tonight,” Nina comments as we pass through the entrance onto Via Mazzini.

“My students are nursing hangovers,” I explain.

Both Nina and Leo nod their understanding. In the fall, when the university reaches full capacity, the city buzzes with an energy that could sweep you away faster than a rip tide after a hurricane. But in summer, that energy ebbs and flows at half its power, depending on the moods and whims of the student body on campus.

Our usual table outside of Vincenzo’s osteria is set for us with a small placard that says RESERVED, four candles lit beside bottles of white wine sitting in cylinders of ice. Six places are set, Franco occupying one of them in the hat that Ava wore the night before. I look around for Ava as Franco stands, removing the hat, and Vincenzo appears from within to welcome us.

Vincenzo kisses and embraces us with the same warmth I remember from boyhood, the kindness exuding from his every pore toward me even as a strange American child fresh off the boat. But then his wife was alive to double that warmth and welcome.

“Gi, you look lost, no?” he says in his booming voice. The other patrons don’t look up, a sure sign that they are locals who are used to the deep resonance of Vincenzo’s volume. “Ahhh,” his finger goes up and he gives me a nod. “She has gone to make a phone call.”

I don’t even bother asking who he’s speaking about because five knowing pairs of eyes are on me. Massimo’s eyes are accompanied by a wolfish grin. I look to the sky for help.

“I’ll let her know we are here,” I say, dropping my gaze to the haphazard stones at my feet as I begin to climb the hill toward the pay phones in the piazza.

I’m glad she’s phoning home. It means she took my advice—decided to call home and figure out what the hell her douche of a boyfriend expected from her. I try not to feel too satisfied at the fact that my words reached her this morning. It’s not like it changes anything. She’s still an entitled brat and I’m still not stupid enough to get wrapped up in her emotional wreckage.

I nod and wave hello as I pass students and locals alike, but my mind keeps pulling toward her—to what she said—how he responded. Did she take hold of the situation? I can’t imagine this woman as a back-up singer at someone else’s concert. She’s got a zero-shit-taken policy that’s as visible as a traffic light. At least for me.

The tinkling of the small fountain at the center of La Piazza della Repubblica reaches me before it comes into view over the stone crest of Via Mazzini. The iron tables set up on the near side of the square are filled with students and tourists clustered beneath the white umbrellas, partaking in a very late apertivo or a very early nightcap. The portico of white archways outside of the Collegio Raffaello glow with bright lights beneath, happy chatter drifting outward from the open doorways where students sip espresso and plan their evenings. I look to my right and find the familiar sight of the eight pillars that seem to hide the space behind them where something as mundane and modern (comparatively) as pay phones dwell. I step into the shadows, the tinkling of water and conversation fading away behind me the moment my eyes settle on her golden head.

She’s sitting on the smooth tiles that run the length of the portico, her back up against the brick fa?ade where the pay phones are mounted every four feet, her knees hugged against her chest. She looks up when I’m standing over her, and the look in her eyes curls my fingers into a tight fist. I’m torn between two equally insane instincts—wrapping my arms around her and finding Edward and beating the ever-loving shit out of him.

I should walk away, run back down the hill, but I crouch so I’m nearly at her level and hold her gaze in the shadow.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shakes her head twice and hands me the piece of plastic that the shithead sent her across the Atlantic with, and I try to imagine what sort of man could pull a stunt like this—what kind of man this woman would allow to make her feel this way. It takes everything in me not to crack the card in two. But I slip it in my pocket and keep studying the way the unshed tears in her eyes make them swim—the green is the exact shade of the Tyrrhenian Sea off the coast of Sardinia. Her face here in the shadows looks like a black-and-white film star’s. This photo, if I were shite enough to take it, would be the best of my life so far. Possibly the best of my future life.

As if she can read my mind, her eyes lower to my camera dangling against my chest.

“Do you want to eat and drink wine?” I try, then hold out my hand to help her up.

A smile slowly tugs at the corners of her mouth, but falls again as if the effort is too great.

“The answer to that is always yes,” she whispers, her voice thick as she settles her fingers into my palm. I yank her up and she bounces off of me gracelessly. Her uncomfortable chuckle unclenches my fist, and I put my hand out for her to lead the way back down the hill.

“I didn’t call him,” she says as she passes me, glancing up to study my expression, searching for—approval?

“And it wasn’t because I couldn’t figure out the stupid pay phones,” she adds.

I keep my lips pressed together until she looks away, then I breathe. Breathe out her scent. Breathe out the gut punch that took me off guard after seeing her pain. Breathe her out. Out and away.

She didn’t call him. Is that supposed to be a victory? Some sort of restraint or feat of strength? Some sort of signal to me? I might be fluent in Italian and English, but this—Ava-ese—is way beyond my reach. She’s a breadbasket with cake inside it. Or a cake filled with vegetables. Either way you never know what you’ll get when you reach inside. And apparently I’m a moron, because I keep reaching inside despite my better judgment.

I watch her step out of the shadows, past the white umbrella–covered tables, back into the lights streaming from the shops and windows lining Via Mazzini, smiling at the bottega owners who stand in their door greeting their customers. And just like that, she’s lifted her infuriating shield, stepped back into her armor, and is marching away while I’m left wondering why the hell my insides are still twisted from seeing her hurt, when the only thing I should be feeling is inconvenienced that I’m dealing with the baggage that I just promised myself I’d avoid.