Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 37

Ava

Why have I not sat by this pool every day for the last three weeks?

Obviously, there are some extra bonus points today since Tammy is floating like an otter at the far end of the pool spilling details of her mother’s campaign and ensuring she doesn’t bring up Ethan throughout her chatter. She’s slipped twice—both times I waited for some sort of chest pain or brain zap that never came. His name no longer makes my lungs collapse. And as much as that’s a relief, it also scares the shit out of me.

I’ve spent a huge chunk of my life with him. Holidays, events, milestones—all of it has piled up between us to make the foundations of a life together. So how is it possible that the thought of leaving it in the past doesn’t tear me in two?

I turn and find the answer. James is in full recline, reading a novel.

Shirtless.

So many bonus points to him. Ten for the lines that crisscross his abs. One hundred for the shadow beneath his pecs. And a million for reading Elena Ferrante—in her original language. He’s broken the scoreboard.

I’ve been working very hard not to turn and gaze at him so that my face doesn’t get quasi-sunned and look like a half-moon cookie. But I’m failing. I really should just swivel my chair toward him and settle into the view.

He looks over the top of his book at me and lifts a brow.

“Can I help you?”

Nina and Tammy are in a deep conversation about the different government parties in Italy, so I stand and drag my chaise across the stones, making an awful shriek as I go. Verga stands from the shade I’d been providing him and makes his way to the shadow beside James.

“I’m wondering why we haven’t been doing this every day?” I ask him as I plop back beside him in my lounge.

He puts down the book.

“Partly because we have work and responsibilities,” he says. He leans his head toward me, lowering his voice. “Mostly because it’s next to impossible to see you in a bikini without wanting to put my hands all over you.”

Yikes. I want that—the hands part. I swallow and search for words.

“Do you think we could find some time to be alone this week?” I ask. With Tammy in the apartment and the pool house out in the open for all to see, alone isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Eight days left. Now that thought causes the collapsed lung.

“I think we can figure something out,” he tells me. “Are you hungry?”

Always.

“Sì,” I nod.

“Want to make pizza with me?” he asks, looking me over.

“How do you say hell yes in Italian?”

He shakes his head. “You don’t.”

I laugh and he smiles, then stands up and puts his shirt on before I have a chance to protest.

“Where are you two going?” Tammy asks, her tone brimming with insinuation.

“To make pizzas,” I tell her as I tie my cover-up at the hip.

“To make babies,” I hear her murmur, and I kick the soccer ball that is lying nearby in the grass at her. It hits the water and sends a splash over her face. Perfect shot.

“Nina, you want mushrooms on yours?” I ask, still keeping an eye on Tammy sputtering in the deep end in case she seeks revenge.

“Sì. Funghi, per favore,” Nina says, squeezing my hand as I pass by her on the way to the kitchen. “Use my sauce.”

“Va bene.”

I turn to find James watching me with amusement.

“You know how Zia takes her pizza?”

I brush past him and tell him, “I learned a lot this week while you were hiding.”

“Fair enough. I’m going to cut some basil—”

“Let me! I love the way my fingers smell after. Like fresh pesto,” I say, veering out to the garden.

James watches me with a smile and I turn away before I do something stupid like fall on my face. Or fall for him.

Too late, honey.

Ah. There you are, Mom. Radio silence all week when I needed you, but you decide to chime in now. And you’re wrong. I’m not in love. That would be reckless. Self-endangerment. Falling in love with James would be disastrous for all involved.

I look down in my hand and realize I’ve cut enough basil to stuff a mattress.

The glorious smell does nothing to distract me from my mother’s voice echoing the same two words over and over as I make my way back to the villa and into the kitchen.

Too late.

Too late.

By the time I drop the leaves onto the counter where James is already working on kneading the dough, they are crumpled and sad from me gripping them so hard in my fist.

“You okay?” he asks, looking sidelong at me. “You look like you saw something terrifying in the garden.”

I nod and swallow, then go to the sink to wash my hands before pushing into the dough he has set out for me on the counter. Maybe if I scrub hard enough I can wash this feeling off too.

“Alright, when you start kneading, you want the dough to be—”

I put up a wet hand and flick the droplets in his direction. “Don’t even start mansplaining pizza making to me. I’m Nina’s apprentice.”

He lifts his brows and smirks.

“Is that so? And I suppose a week with my aunt has made you some sort of expert?”

“Yup.” I slap some flour on my hands and press my fingers into the dough, ignoring his watchful gaze. “Shall we have a competition?”

“Absolutely. I love competitions. Winner gets to decide what we do for a date Friday night,” he tells me, reaching out his flour-covered hand.

I look down at it, hiding my smile as the word date marinates in my mind. Dating? It doesn’t feel like the right word—doesn’t seem to cover the breadth of this. But I reach out and shake his hand anyway, watching the cloud of white powder poof into the air on contact.

“Deal.”

He doesn’t let go of my hand. His fingers slide up the inside of my wrist and he tugs me toward him, turning me so my back is pressed against the counter. His hands slide up my bare arms, leaving a trail of flour as they go.

“I like having Tammy here,” he says, staring at my mouth.

Why is he talking about Tammy right now?

“You laugh more around her,” he tells me. “And your laugh is …”

He searches my face for the word.

“Is?”

“Intoxicating,” he says, his voice so low I feel it at the base of my spine.

His thumbs are running along my jawline as he lowers his mouth over my lips.

The sound of someone clearing their throat freezes his face an inch from mine. He sighs and lets me go, his hands falling to his sides as he sidesteps away from me without turning around.

“Zio, would you like eggplant on your pizza?” James asks as he returns to his dough, leaving me face to face with Leo’s smirk.

“No, grazie. I ate at Vincenzo’s,” he says, stepping into the kitchen and hanging his gray suit jacket over one of the chairs at the island. He drops a large manila envelope on top of the counter and smiles at me. “I found more pictures for you, cara.”

More intel on Mom? I bounce a little on my toes and start brushing off the flour from my hands and arms so that I don’t mess up the photos. I pull up a stool at the island, slide the envelope to me, and pull out the stack of pictures.

The first few are of my mother alone—reading a book on the hill overlooking town; head bent over her sketchpad in the piazza out front of Aldo’s; holding up a glass of red wine to the person taking the picture. She’s so beautiful. And so obviously at one with her surroundings.

Then there’s a series of images with her and the man from the picnic table picture Leo showed me weeks ago. In one they are holding hands in front of the Raphael statue in the park, my mother smiling dreamily at the camera. In another she is sitting beside him at a table in the university’s library, her fingers pressed to her lips, signaling for him to be quiet while he has his head thrown back in laughter. The man is older than she is in the pictures, maybe by a decade, but he’s undeniably handsome. And it’s obvious from my mother’s expressions that she adores him.

“Who is this?” I ask.

“Professore Genaro,” Leo answers from just over my shoulder.

I glance back at him to ask if there was something between them, and I get my answer without asking because Leo presses his lips together and looks away.

So my mother fell in love here.

In all the years that we spoke of Italy, planned my study abroad as she shared her memories, not once did she mention an affair.

“He was her art restoration professor,” Leo says.

“Can I meet him?” I ask without thinking.

Leo shakes his head.

“He retired from academia years ago to paint. Last I heard he had moved to Venezia,” he says.

I trace my mother’s figure sitting on the edge of the fountain in the piazza, her finger in the water sending ripples across the surface.

So many things that she never told me. But then again, she never expected to have so little time. No one expects that.

James’s hand slides over mine, and I look up from the image. His eyes are asking me if I’m okay, and I nod slowly.

“Thank you for these, Leo,” I say thickly.

“Prego, cara,” he says, then presses a kiss to the top of my head. I hear his footsteps make their way through the kitchen and out the door, but I can’t see much through the tears in my eyes.

The breath-stealing need to have more time with her is a feeling I know well, but right now it is swallowing me whole.

James slips his fingers between mine as he circles the island and wraps his arms around me from behind. I shut my eyes and hold onto him for dear life so that this wave of grief doesn’t sweep me out too deep.

“I’m here,” he says into my hair. “I’m here.”

And as I inhale his scent and lean back into his chest, my mother’s words echo one last time, then soak into my brain like syrup into pancakes.

Too late.

Too late.

Too late.