Wish You Weren't Here

Chapter 41

Ava

The three-and-a-half-hour ride to the Venice airport is a complete one-eighty from my first ride-along with James. One, I’m not spilling the secrets of my life to him as we curve through the hills topped with gorgeous villages that I wish we could stop at, stay the day, maybe even the month. And two, Tammy’s annoyingly symmetrical face appears over and over again between us, hovering over the center console like a pair of fuzzy dice hung from the rearview mirror. She messes with the air-conditioning, changes stations, asks James both impersonal and personal questions, and just generally seems to want to sit on our laps. For someone who has emphatically pushed me to jump into whatever this is with James, she appears to be making a maximum effort to keep our hands from grazing on the gearshift. Which makes me question what the hell is wrong with her?

But before I have a real chance to ask her, we are standing at the curb of the departures terminal at Marco Polo airport, holding onto each other as if I’m not coming home in less than a week.

“You know I love you, right?” she asks.

I nod into her shoulder.

“And if I could, I would always choose you over everyone in the world. You aren’t family, but you are the sister I’d choose.”

I push back from our hug and narrow my eyes on her face. The lines above her nose are so deep that she might get a headache.

“What are you—”

“Ava, the water taxi is here,” James says, gesturing to a handsome man standing beside him with a sign that reads Massini.

I look back at Tammy, my question still sitting on the back of my tongue like a timid child on a diving board, but she has already engaged herself in conversation with a porter who is struggling to wrangle her obnoxiously sized luggage.

She meets my gaze one last time and then winks at James. “Arrivederci!”

Part of me wants to run after her—grab onto the hem of her long skirt and tell her I need her here to tell me what to do. But she’s already passed through the glass doors, laughing at something, moving merrily along as Tammy is wont to do. And I’m frozen at the departures curb, feeling far too panicky about getting on a boat to Venice with James and a thousand unnamed emotions.

A warm, solid hand lands softly on my shoulder, and my thoughts settle like a blanket laid over a sleeping child.

“Are you alright?” he asks.

I nod once and turn toward him. The moment I meet his eyes, I forget all about Tammy’s weird behavior in the car because the answer to his question occupies all the space inside of me.

I’m alright. With you.

I don’t need to say the words, because he smiles down at me, laces his fingers in mine, and then leads me where I need to go.

I’ve seen beauty. I’ve spent the last four weeks steeped in it, like an oversaturated tea bag ready to burst. But this—this is something else. This is otherworldly.

The briny spray that misted us as the boat sped across the choppy, dark blue waves has subsided and the motor drops from a roar to a purr. James has me pulled tightly into his side where we are perched on the shiny mahogany ledge at the stern of the motoscafo; one of his fingers is securely threaded through the belt loop of my jeans, the other squeezing my thigh as if I might plunge into the Adriatic at any moment. Venice rises above me—Aphrodite standing from her foam—her allure so palpable that every limestone curve and marble arch, every bronzed duomo and iron terrazzo sends a pang of some unknown sensation through me. It feels like desire infused with danger, darkness, and melancholy. It’s unnamable.

As we approach, the sound of water laps softly against the stone foundations of the buildings, leaving dark stains that remind me of the things this city has seen. The great wars and great tragedies. The great joys and loves. The great Mini Cooper race with Charlize Theron and Marky Mark.

We turn from the Grand Canal down a narrow waterway, only just avoiding a gondola coming in the opposite direction. A young couple stare up at their gondolier, whose deep voice serenades them from beneath his wide-brimmed hat.

I’m in a novel.

“How are you not taking pictures of this?” I ask, just loud enough for my voice to be heard over the thrumming of the motor.

James leans in so that his mouth grazes my earlobe.

“If I were to get my camera out right now, I would only be taking pictures of you,” he says, and I shut my eyes and let his words warm me.

I feel a shadow pass over us from behind my lids and open them to find the underbelly of a stone bridge. I could stand and run my finger across the smooth stone, grab onto the parapet and dangle over the water like fish bait.

“I’ve done plenty of shoots here over the years,” James murmurs as a slosh of water broadsides the boat and sends us drifting toward a gray stone building with lilacs dripping from the window boxes. Our taxi turns down another narrow canal, this one empty and quiet, almost eerie if it weren’t for James’s arms around me. “Couples love to stage their engagement in Piazza San Marco,” he finishes.

“With all the pigeons?” I ask.

“Yup. Pigeon shit and all,” he laughs, and the sound of it sends a rush through my blood. “I’ll take you there tonight if you want. It’s far more enchanting in the dark—”

“When you can’t see the pigeon shit,” I venture.

“Exactly.”

I release a small sigh and say, “My mother loved St. Mark’s Square. Made me promise to sit at the white-clothed tables and order dessert while listening to dueling pianos.”

James kisses the side of my head and whispers his condolences into my hair.

“If you’d like to do that—we could,” he says.

Would I?

Yes, Ava. Say yes to all of it. My mother’s voice drifts up from the depths of the dark water beneath us.

“I’d like that,” I tell him.

Captain Marco shifts the boat into neutral and I lurch forward, but James’s hands keep me from falling to the wooden planks below my feet.

“Siamo qui,” Marco says, as he turns the wheel so that the boat pulls up against the brick side of a house that juts out from a corner where the water slices in two directions on either side. It’s a fork in the canal.

“Grazie, Marco. A domani, sì?” James asks, and I’m immediately transfixed by the way his mouth rolls Marco’s R. I try to mimic the sound with my own tongue dipping and falling, but I fail and James smiles at me over his shoulder while continuing his conversation.

“Sì. Alle sei?”

“Forse dopo. Ti telefonerò.”

I stop trying to translate and look up at the building we are floating beside. Three stories of dilapidated brick tower above me, interrupted by huge arched windows with a small white stone balcony at the very top.

“Where are we?” I ask James as he tosses our bags overboard onto a stone step that leads to a huge wooden door.

“Cannaregio. This is where we are staying. A friend’s second home,” he says, offering his hand for me to step off the boat.

A friend’s second home is a sixteenth-century palazzo? What the hell does his/her first home look like?

The stones beneath my feet are wet from the sloshing wakes of passing boats. My flat slips and James steadies me with a hand on my back. He types in a code on the keypad that looks so out of place beside this door that witnessed the bubonic plague, then heaves it open and steps to the side for me.

The space is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Huge windows flank the far wall, exposing the water that snakes back toward the Grand Canal. The walls are white, the floor is white, but the ceiling reminds me of the cathedral in Urbino. A hand-painted fresco, so bright and vivid I wonder if the paint is still wet, stretches overhead. The mix of modern and antique surrounding me is vertiginous—makes my thoughts spin as I run my hand along the soft arm of a midnight blue velvet settee.

I turn to find James watching me, our bags left by the door behind him. The way his eyes drink me in reminds me of the night at the museum when my skin sang each time he came close, and I can feel the color rising to my face as I remember how he felt pressing me against that garden wall.

He clears his throat, gestures to the space.

“What do you want to explore first?” he asks, his voice thick.

And without giving it a moment’s thought, the answer flies off my tongue.

“You.”