Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 22

James

This time of evening brings peace to the bustle of Urbino. The hours for aperitivi have passed, the piazzas have nearly emptied, and people have walked, happy and buzzed, back to their home or restaurant. They’ve sat down and tucked themselves around the table to enjoy a long, delicious dinner with the people they love. They are all settled in just as the sun settles down beneath the hills that sweep in every direction from Urbino’s walls. The darkness falls gently, a warm blanket over a sleeping child, and the quiet in the streets brings quiet to my soul.

But then she arrives—five minutes late—in a black dress that holds her perfectly, and my soul is anything but quiet.

She gives a little curtsy and one of her golden curls falls forward over her shoulder when she dips her head. I step out from beneath the portico, some absurd instinct demanding that I tuck her hair back in place, while sanity keeps my hands firmly in my pockets. But she ends my internal battle by twisting it behind her ear and gestures around us to the empty square.

“I feel like I’m in the opening act of a vampire film. Doesn’t the museum close?” she asks, pointing to the huge closed wooden doors.

I nod, look down at my watch. “About an hour ago.” I slide the keys from my pocket and dangle them. “The superintendent is an old friend. She allows after-hours access to the dean and me—”

“And the women you want to impress,” she says with a smug smile as she approaches the entrance.

“And the assistant who needs to learn about the collection I’m lecturing about so she doesn’t tell the students that Raffaello is a mutant turtle,” I correct.

She keeps her distance as she passes by me, murmuring that Raphael is a mutant turtle. The sound of laughter reaches us from behind as a group of young people make their way past the square, perhaps one aperitivo too many between them. We are invisible to them, thank the darkness and their single-minded focus, and something about that makes my heart pick up its pace as I work the key into the heavy door and pull it open. I take a steadying breath and remind myself why I’m here.

We step through the door and it closes behind us with a dramatic thud and a metallic click.

Ava looks up at me with a wide smile as we step into the open-air courtyard.

“I feel like I’m doing something illegal.” She rubs her hands together and bounces a little. I force myself to look away. She’s fucking dangerously beautiful when her eyes twinkle with mischief like this.

“You’d think a future lawyer might take issue with that,” I point out.

“At home—yes. I’m boring—”

“I doubt that.”

“But Italian Ava seems to be a bit more exciting.” She waggles her eyebrows at me and I shake my head.

“How was your shoot?” she asks.

I smile at the thought of her reading the note I stuck to her face.

“Wonderful. The couple rented out Villa Grenata for the ceremony—the lighting was perfect—”

“A wedding! You do weddings?” Her entire face lights up.

I nod. “I do all sorts of events—anything that involves people and emotions.” I could add that the pay is great as well, but that’s never been the reason why I do it. There’s nothing as satisfying as capturing pure, untethered joy.

“Where’s your camera now?” she asks. Her voice has dropped an octave as she gives her full focus to the courtyard for the first time.

“No photographs allowed,” I tell her.

Though right now I hate that rule.

She’s spinning slowly in the center of the Cortile d’Onore. Her eyes sweeping over the carved Corinthian capitals, the Latin inscription that runs along the top of the arches along every wall, the pale stone coupled with the bricks in perfect harmony. I can almost imagine the men of the court unable to take their eyes off of her as they walk along the arcade or stare down from the oversized windows of the first floor above us.

Then her voice, low and breathless, stirs the air as she begins to translate the inscription, “Federico Duke of Urbino something something of the Holy Roman Church—”

“Standard bearer,” I supply.

She wrinkles her nose, the same expression my students give me when I’ve clarified them into confusion. She shakes it off with one finger in the air as she follows the inscription around the arcade, strolling contemplatively as if she were part of the duke’s court. As if this courtyard were designed for her.

“And head of the Italian League,” she continues, pausing to look over at me. “Is that like our Justice League? Was the duke a superhero like us?”

“Something like that. A Renaissance superhero,” I say. “A merciful warrior, unmatched in kindness and knowledge alike. Basically the whole package.”

“I guess he doesn’t fit inside my American single box,” she quotes me.

“I guess you don’t either, since you can translate a dead language but have no ability to ask for a bathroom in Italian. Why did you study Latin?”

She shrugs as if to say why not. “I was obsessed with mythology. Loved Homer and Virgil—read the Odyssey in English before I could even understand it. So Latin seemed like a good fit. My dad gave it the okay since it helped with a lot of lawyer-ese.”

She rarely speaks of her dad, but something in the sudden stiffness of her shoulders tells me to veer left. I think of her pushing my buttons on purpose the other night and put my foot on the gas and stay straight.

“Is your dad a lawyer too?” I ask.

She lets out a long breath and narrows her eyes on me.

“Yup,” she says, popping the P.

“What’s with the one word answers?”

“Don’t even start, hypocrite,” she says, lifting her chin at me. “You don’t get to dig around in my shit, then get all touchy and aggressive when I stick the shovel in yours.”

“Really nice imagery, Ava,” I say with a smile. She’s right. I have no right to dig, but watching her chest rise and fall when she gets fired up makes something wake up inside me.

She slowly returns my smile and asks with a southern drawl, “Did I offend your delicate sensibilities, James?”

I wave her off and try a new tack.

“How did your mom feel about the Latin?”

She lights up, smile doubling in perimeter, and suddenly she doesn’t care that I’m digging.

“My mom loved languages and words, said they opened the world to you. She said that about literature too. And art. She supported me no matter what electives I chose,” she says, her eyes unfocused as she looks up at the sky overhead. “She probably loved this courtyard. Walked just like this a hundred times.”

She moves toward a column beside the well in the northeast corner, runs her finger over the curves of the carved stone. I know she’s thinking that her mother touched that marble because her eyes have glazed over, filling up in that way they do when she talks about her.

“She sounds like an amazing woman,” I say softly as I approach her.

Ava blinks hard and looks up at me, and I’m swallowed by the grief in her eyes.

“She was.”

When a tear makes its way from the corner of her eye, my thumb wipes it away before I have a chance to think. But before I can pull away she tilts her head toward my hand so that I cup her cheek. She fits perfectly in my palm. Her lids drift shut, her lips part. What am I doing?

She’s fucking beautiful. And I need to retreat.

I clear my throat and she straightens.

“We should head inside,” I murmur.

She hesitates, pulls her brows together, then looks down at the intricate herringbone pattern of stones at her feet.

Shit. This was a bad idea, being here with her alone. And even worse, here she is upset about her mother and all I can think about is crushing my mouth to hers. What the fuck is wrong with me? She’s driving me crazy.

“Ava—”

She puts a hand up, then gestures for me to lead the way. Her eyes have gone cool.

“I met Signore Uvaldi today.” Her voice is gravelly, and I keep my eyes trained ahead of me. “At the butcher shop,” she says to my back as we pass under the archways.

Uvaldi is one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. In the early days, when my anger ate at my insides, he’d paid me to walk his dog, insisting that the old mutt needed it four times a day, when in reality it was me who needed the peaceful strolls around the city walls and the soft, calming effects of the rolling hills. I want him to do the same for her—open her eyes to what this place has to offer.

“This is the grand staircase,” I tell her, choosing the left arch and heading upward. The ramp to the west leads down, into the basement—a dark tunnel filled with shadows and nooks. Not a place to go with Ava.

“He was wonderful. He gave me some ciauscolo for Nina, and he’s coming over for dinner tomorrow night,” she adds.

“He’s a great man. I’m glad you got to meet him,” I tell her. I stop and gesture to the space around us and pull the conversation back to where we need to keep it. “No one architect can be credited for the palazzo, there are several who made significant contributions during Federico’s and his son’s rule. Laurana is responsible for the courtyard, but his predecessor took care of the first-floor windows overlooking it—”

“If it hadn’t been for your little map you left me,” she continues, almost whispering now. I know if I look back at her, her armor will still be out of place, shifted like that loose curl that keeps falling from behind her ear. She’ll be softer somehow. Cookie dough fresh from the oven. I swallow again. Push on toward safety.

“—some of the additions were built on top of a standing medieval presence. In fact, all of Urbino is built in layers, like a wedding cake, the bottom layer dating back to the Roman Empire, then traces upward through the medieval era until it reached the hands of your Iron Man, Federico, in the Renaissance—”

“James,” she huffs, putting her hand on my back. I stop, her fingers burning through the soft cotton of my shirt. When I turn she is staring up at me with that look of defiance—jaw tight, lashes low. I take a step backward and upward. A step away. “I’m trying to thank you—for today. For the note, and you won’t shut up about architecture. Can we have a moment of civility?”

I let out a long breath and nod.

“Thank you for the note. I promise you can bore me to death now,” she says, ascending the steps two at a time as she passes me.

“It was nothing,” I call after her. “As I was saying, layers—”

“Yup. Got it, teach. Roman dudes in togas built the basement for beer pong, then Dark Ages ground floor for interrogation, torture, and sex dungeon, and then Federico enlightened the rest with his glorious towers and libraries and whatnot. That’s what I’ll write,” she says, passing the pilaster at the top of the stairs. She traces her finger along an intricate design, making sure to hover above the shapes carved there, then looks back at me. “Does that about sum it up?”

I nod. “Almost perfectly. We are going to focus on Federico’s enlightened ‘whatnot’ and not the sex dungeons.” She’s wandered into the library and is staring upward at the sunburst decoration in the center of the ceiling. “This is the library.”

“La biblioteca,” she murmurs to herself. “Do you think, James, that maybe I could just take a tour in silence first? Experience the ambience. Then we can retrace with the lecture?” she asks.

“That bad, huh? Of course. Whatever you want,” I tell the side of her face. She’s gnawing on her cheek as she studies the rays exploding in every direction from the sun.

“Oh please.” She waves a hand at me, nearly smacking my face. “You know your lectures aren’t bad. Haven’t you noticed the students tipping toward you like you might touch their foreheads and grant them infinite knowledge?”

“No.” I’m in the zone when I teach—completely swept away in the story of the art. She steps away and I follow.

“Well, they do. What are these gold sperm things with the horns?” she points up to the gold sperm things with the horns.

“Nope, no questions,” I shake my head. “Silence, right?”

“Really mature, Professor,” she murmurs. “Where are all the books and manuscripts?”

She stops. Looks up at me and waits.

I smirk and lift my shoulders, then let them fall.

She sighs and rolls her eyes, then moves onward.

“You are really annoying. I imagine they’ve all been sent over to the Vatican,” she says to herself, rendering me absolutely useless because she’s correct. Then finishes with a smug grin, “—since the papacy ultimately took over after the duchy. I bet Duke Fred had a mean collection.”

He did. I bite my cheek to stop myself from blurting out the number of manuscripts housed here and the famous editions that topped the list.

“These tiles,” she says, taking off her heels and sliding her feet on the floor like she’s ice skating. “I want them in my bathroom at home. Could you arrange that, sir?”

“Certainly, Signorina. Would you like the golden sperm as well?”

She smiles over her shoulder, brows lifted.

“Someone thinks very highly of himself.”

She disappears through the far doorway into the next room where seventy tiles are hung to replicate a famous frieze before I can finish laughing. And I follow. She studies the work, touches her face, chews on her lip, reaches out to trace the scene, stops, then moves on to the next exhibit. It takes everything in me not to point out the sequence of the bas relief—explain the years of restoration work that went into each piece. I’m torn between her and the art—the way her eyes shift and widen as she studies the portraits. The way her head tilts when she finds something interesting in the work.

She barely looks my way. But I know she’s aware of me by the color that dips beneath her neckline when I stare, the way she tilts her head when I stand behind her, the shallowness of her breath when I get too close.

Through five rooms of ceramics and ancient antiques, while she reads and thinks and breathes, I watch her in silence—study her as she studies the artifacts that I could describe from memory. She touches every Montefeltro eagle—traces every pilaster on every mantel. I could write a lecture on her—on the way she responds to the art around her.

By the time she steps foot on the grand staircase and looks back at me over her shoulder, all of the heat in my chest that I’ve convinced myself was anger has melted into something just as consuming and even more urgent. And I know I’m fucked.