Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 34

Ava

There’s no way in hell I could have stayed in this apartment.

It’s not the size. Nope, I’m used to tiny. My apartment at home is barely more than a studio, and I love that I can hit up the coffee machine in less than four strides. I knew the square footage I’d signed up for here.

And it certainly isn’t the original problem with the air-conditioning because I have to wrap my arms around myself to keep the chill from spreading deep into my bones.

It’s the—the James-ness of the place.

His photographs are everywhere. I’ve barely been able to make it past the first wall on my left without feeling like I was tossed into his mind to play a game of “Who is James Massini?” Every black-and-white moment oozes with emotion—a child holding an injured bird beneath a tree, her tears leaving a streak of shimmering light down her cheek—an older woman sitting on a bench looking out over Urbino, her face filled with memories of what she experienced on the streets below her.

It’s all too much.

As I turn away to escape his work, my eyes lock on the painting that hangs on the wall above the small kitchen table, and it’s like a sucker punch straight to the diaphragm. Layers of white slide over the hills surrounding Urbino, pooling and slipping up over the walls, up over the rooftops and the dual towers of the palazzo. The sky is a layer of bruises, purples and grays splitting across the canvas like the painting itself might be bleeding internally.

“When I was little, I believed that Urbino was made of ice because of this painting.”

His low voice finds the back of my neck and seeps into my brain, anchoring me back to reality.

“How did you get this?” I ask, keeping my eyes fixed on my mother’s work.

“Nonna,” he says.

“She knew my mother?”

“She did. Before my grandmother moved to New York to help my mother with me, she worked in admissions at the university,” he explains. “She met your mom there. This painting hung in our kitchen in Brooklyn. She’d stare at it while she cooked. Told me it brought her home.”

I’m imagining a young James rolling rice balls with his grandmother in the kitchen beneath my mother’s painting, and the thought of it has me reeling. It’s as if my mother painted it with a purpose, to keep a piece of herself connected to all of the people she left behind. Like she painted it to connect me to the people she left behind.

I’m not sure how much time passes before James’s hand finds my shoulder, sending so much warmth through my limbs that I think the AC may be broken again. He turns me slowly, studying my face as I spin. I’m a mess. I know I am—cheeks burnt, eyes swimming, hair God knows what—but he’s looking at me like I’m beautiful and that look—Gesù Cristo, that look makes the tears escape.

“Too much?” he asks, putting both hands on my face, sweeping a tear away from the corner of my mouth with his thumb.

Too much is an understatement. At this point, my synapses are so overloaded they’ve frozen the signals to my brain in an attempt to keep my central nervous system from frying like a fork in a toaster.

I shut my eyes and tilt my face against his palm.

“Way too much,” I whisper, and he chuckles softly.

I want to ask him what we are doing. Why he’s not running for the hills like he did last night and the week before? But I don’t want his hand to leave my face.

And before I can think of anything to say, his lips are on mine, barely touching at first, just brushing lightly, as if they are getting reacquainted or asking for permission. My body responds, pushing me onto my toes to deepen the kiss.

Permission definitely granted.

This week without kissing him must have left me starved for this, because I’m pulling him against me, one hand in his hair, the other gripping the fabric of his shirt at the bottom hem. I need him closer. And I need this kiss to go on forever.

I let my tongue slide along his bottom lip, and his grip on my hips tightens, the pressure of his fingers sending a soft moan out of me and into his mouth.

He pulls back and looks down at me, his breathing fast and raspy, his eyes three shades darker than a moment before, and I’ve lost my mind. Not a single wit is left between my ears. All I hear is the pounding of my pulse and the voice in my head demanding more. I arch back a little and untangle my hands from his hair and shirt, then slowly lift my tank top up and over my head.

James stops breathing altogether as he takes me in with his eyes before running one finger up from my hip to my sternum, taking his time to trace the scalloped lace that dips and rises along my breast.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, his eyes sliding up to meet mine.

And even though all of my blood is definitely pooling down below I still manage to flush at his compliment.

He reaches behind me and unclasps my bra, then slips the straps from my shoulders at a painfully slow pace. It slides to the black-and-white tile, forgotten at our feet as he lets his eyes wander over me, down and up, up and down, his gaze heating every inch of skin it touches. I know he’s taking mental snapshots, and the idea of him actually photographing me like this sends a shock wave straight down below my navel.

“James, if you don’t touch me, I’m going to go crazy,” I tell him.

One side of his mouth tilts upward and his hands keep tracing slow lines along my torso and beneath my breast.

“I am touching you,” he says in a tone that’s far too reasonable for my liking.

I make a frustrated sound and lift myself onto the kitchen table behind me, pulling my cotton skirt up to my hips while I wrap my legs around him and hook my ankles at the back of his thighs. I pull him toward me, and when the hard part of him rubs against the soft part of me he lets out a sound that makes me want to spend all day getting him to make it again.

His mouth crashes down over mine and there’s no space between us now. His lips know everything about my lips. His hands are everywhere, on my thighs, down the back of my skirt, circling and teasing at my nipple, and I want him inside me so badly that the thought of it already has me climbing toward an orgasm. I pull him closer, arching against him, needing more—

“Avvvvvvvvvvvvva!”

James stills above me, his mouth a fraction of an inch from mine.

That voice was in my head right. Because no fucking way that voice could be real. That voice is back in Wayne, Pennsylvania.

But then there are footsteps and the sound of something being dragged up the stone steps on the other side of the wall, and I am scrambling off the edge of the kitchen table, trying to find my tank top and my bra, and James—well, James looks way too fucking calm and somewhat amused as he watches me try to slip into my bra and put it on upside down.

“This city is amazing but you should still lock the door, Aves. This is the worst fucking place for an apartment—how high is the elevation up here, A—Oh.”

Tammy looks like she’s just stepped out of Urbino’s only spa and salon. Her perfectly glossed mouth is making a little O as she takes in James and me. Her brows lift when her gaze settles on the tag at the front of my tank top. Inside out and backward. Great.

“Ohhhh. Okay. I see,” she says, her surprised O-shaped mouth now stretching into a grin.

James moves first. He steps forward and holds out his hand.

“I’m James.”

Tammy holds his hand a little too long, shaking it a little too excitedly as she keeps that grin pinned on me.

Then she steps forward and opens up her arms.

“Surprise,” she says with a laugh.

And I run so hard into her arms that I nearly knock us both back down the steps.