Chapter 18
Ava
The moment we step through the port-of-sally-whatever, I can hear the low bellowing bass. I can feel it shaking the inside of my head and vibrating over my skin. James leads us up a shadowy alley with strong Jack the Ripper vibes that would normally terrify me, but with his broad shoulders blocking my view and his quick steps forcing me to hustle, I don’t have time to even look around and acknowledge the haunting surroundings.
“When we get there, I want you to let me handle it,” he says.
“Mmmhmm,” I say to his back.
“I’m serious, Ava.”
“You’re always serious, James.”
His fists clench at his sides, but he doesn’t turn around.
My brain starts to rattle and I know we are close. The opening chords of “Juicy” hit my ear, and the music feels a little less invasive at this distance and a little more inviting. The bar is entirely made of the old stone that comprises most of the town, but instead of one single entrance, there are three huge semicircular drop-down garage doors. James squats and lifts one high enough for me to duck under, and the moment I do it’s like I’ve stepped into an underground club.
The garage door drops behind me and I barely hear it over Biggie’s chorus. The inside of the bar is broken into two rooms—the bar room where a dozen red leather booths line the back wall, and what appears to be the dance room where a small platform peeks out above the cluster of gyrating students with their drinks held aloft like torches. Torches that are spilling all over their heads and clothes, but they don’t seem to mind.
I see a handsome older gentleman climb over the bar and push his way through the crowd. He looks stressed. Or distressed. Both, really.
“Gi!” he yells.
James puts his hand on the small of my back and guides me toward him.
“Gli Americani,” the man gestures to the bar. “They will not get out from behind the bar.”
I lift onto my toes and take in the four girls who are mixing drinks while they dance and shake. They are all in our class. And they are working that bar like they’ve been trained at Coyote Ugly. I try not to smile when the one named Jennifer sprays a guy reaching for her friend Sam’s ass across the bar. Looks like they’ve got shit under control.
Tommaso gestures toward the other room, where everyone is singing the lyrics as they sway. My rib cage suddenly feels too tight as I watch their happy faces laughing without a care in the world. This would have been me at twenty-one if I hadn’t canceled my study abroad summer. The thought sends an unfamiliar yearning through me, and I force my gaze away to focus on Tommaso.
“And they have taken over la musica,” he yells, his bushy eyebrows disappearing into his thick hair.
I squint and find a student named Jessica on the platform with a pair of headphones on, dancing above the singing crowd. There’s a dark-haired, olive-skinned man behind her that might be the only one in the bar who isn’t dancing—including me. James’s hand stills me by the shoulder and I look up at him, pressing my lips together so hard they might bruise.
“Alright, Tommaso,” James yells. “We will handle them.”
I widen my eyes at James. Is there really something to handle here? A couple of girls helping out behind the bar and another who appears to be working the crowd with her music doesn’t seem like a problem for the dynamic duo. I start to move my hips again and James shakes his head and lowers his mouth near my ear and says, “You deal with the music. I’ll handle the bar.”
“If I’m not back in ten, save yourself,” I say, trying my hardest to be serious. James ignores me and heads for the bar, leaving me to shimmy my way through the drunk crowd. I stay along the wall, trying not to draw any attention to myself, and I’m doing a damn good job when chaos breaks out at the bar.
“Shot! Shot! Shot!”
Everyone is pounding on the bar top and I make out James shaking his head while Samantha pours a shot in front of him. I can tell he’s working hard not to smile; his dimple does the pop-and-hide thing as he leans in and says something to the students behind the bar. They all nod in unison and James lifts the shot and throws it back. The cheers are deafening.
My partner has gone rogue, it seems, but then the four girls make their way out from behind the bar and James turns in my direction, scanning the dance floor for me. I slide and sway to the platform so he doesn’t catch me watching him with this stupid smile on my face. When I’m close enough, I tap Jessica’s foot until she looks down and sees me. Her face breaks out into a huge smile and she pulls me up as she grabs the microphone and emcees over the music.
“Special guest everyone! Miss G is out tonight!”
Everyone’s hands go up in the air and I shake my head, trying not to laugh. They are chanting my name like I might do a solo performance of “Lose Yourself” on the platform. I feel like I’m about to deflate a bouncehouse with twenty toddlers in it.
“Jessica!” I yell, but there’s no way in hell she can hear me with the headphones she’s stolen from this poor schmuck behind her. He makes a hand signal toward her that can only mean what the actual fuck.
I tap the side of my head and signal for her to take them off. She leans in.
“You have to give this man his job back,” I tell her in her ear.
She pulls back and looks at my face, shaking her head with a horrified look. Then she leans back in and says, “Miss Graham, I can’t. It’s bad. He only has like five songs and they are from the nineties.”
I swallow my laugh and try not to be offended at her calling out my birth decade, then lean in to tell her the song she’s playing is from the dreaded nineties, but I can tell it’s a lost cause. My eyes find James sitting at the bar, his arms folded across his chest, one brow lifted as he watches me as if he knows exactly what I’m about to do. I hear Jessica repeating the word please over and over beside me, and I mouth the words to James over the sea of heads. “Abort mission.”
He shakes his head and lifts his camera, aiming it at me. I shrug and smile, then lean into Jessica and tell her, “If Tommaso signals you, cut the music and help him. Deal?”
She nods and I wink at her. She holds up her hands in victory. Everyone cheers, and the song blends into Lizzo as I make my way down the platform steps and back toward the bar, where James is grinding his teeth so hard that I see the muscle along his jaw twitch with the effort.
“Am I kicked out of the Justice League?” I yell at him.
He gestures toward Tommaso like he defers the decision to him, but the man is so swamped with orders he can barely look up. James leans over the bar and says something to him, and Tommaso gives me a thumbs up and waves us away.
“You ready?” he yells. “Or do you want to do some more dancing?”
God help me, I do want to do some more dancing. That craving for freedom hits me again square in the center of my chest, but I can’t submit. I’m in charge of these younguns and there’s no faster way to blur the line of authority than the running man.
“Will Tommaso be okay?” I ask, changing the subject.
“I think he was better off with the guest bartenders,” James yells over his shoulder, pulling me toward the garage doors.
“Shouldn’t we offer to help?”
James lifts up the door as I scoot under.
“We just did,” he says as he straightens. “Well, I did.”
I roll my eyes.
“Jessica said he had five songs on loop from the—gasp—nineties!” I put one hand on my heart and one on my head like I might swoon.
He lets out a low chuckle and I straighten.
“Did you just laugh?” I ask, looking around to see if it could have come from anywhere else.
He sighs, then turns and heads back down the haunted alley without answering me.
“Back to the Batcave,” I tell his back. “Very unorthodox for a vigilante to take a shot before completing a mission.”
“The shot was part of the mission,” he grumbles. “I think it’s quiet time now, don’t you?” James asks, snapping a photo of the shadows spilling across the stones at his feet.
“Sure thing, boss.” I zip my lips and then study him as he retreats into his photography. I watch him drop to one knee and aim his camera up at the walls of Urbino, the moon hanging low just above their reach. I watch him point his lens out over the hillsides, his bottom lip pulled between his teeth as his finger presses down over and over again. He doesn’t make a sound.
It’s clear in the way he moves, the way his body relaxes with each shot, that this is what he loves. That photography to him is what painting was to my mother.
The silence lasts until we get to the first cypress tree that lines the driveway to the villa, and then, emboldened by the shadows, I ask, “Why haven’t you made photography into a career?”
He doesn’t answer, and I look up at him to find a sliver of moonlight cutting across his cheekbone as he stares out over the fields toward the distance.
I narrow my eyes at him and push. “It’s clear that you love it. And you are extremely tal—”
“Could we not do this?”
His eyes flash to mine and I can see I’ve struck a chord. Naturally, I want to strike it again. Several times.
“Ahh. I see,” I say. “You get to know all of my secrets, see me at my lowest, but I’m not good enough to hear yours?”
He stops at the side of the house and turns to me, eyes narrowed.
“You don’t see. There’s nothing to see,” he says. “Telling someone your life story because you believe a driver can’t be bilingual doesn’t make you not good enough. It just makes you—”
I put up my hand. “Don’t you dare. You don’t get to just hurl insults and deflect every time I ask a serious question that you’re too scared to answer.”
He steps forward, and I have to tilt my head back in order to keep eye contact, but there’s no way I’m looking away first.
“A serious question?” His voice is low, just loud enough to reach me above the cicadas. “What is it that you love, Ava? Law? Is that what sets you on fire? Or did you choose that career for some other reason? Maybe the same things you saw in Edward? Money? Prestige? Veneers?”
I open my mouth to speak and shut it again. His brows lift in a knowing smirk that I want to smack right off of his face. But before I even have a chance to defend myself, he mutters something in Italian and turns his back to me.
“It’s rude to talk about someone in a language they don’t understand,” I call after him, wincing. I sound pathetic—like a petulant teen.
“Then learn Italian, dolcezza,” he says just before stepping through the front door and closing it behind him.
“Good night to you, too. Stronzo!”
But he doesn’t hear me. The porch light turns off and I’m left with a burning anger in my gut and nowhere to release it as I make my way to the guest house through the dark. Somehow this anger still feels better than the rest of today’s emotions. So when I plop into bed, my eyes on the single square of light coming from the second-story window of the villa, I turn the heat up under that anger and let it simmer.