Chapter Nineteen
We stop at the boys’ hotel on the way to dinner. Hodges is just bringing the suit Luca wants to wear back from the cleaners. “It’s lovely to see you again, Miss Story.”
“Thank you, Hodges, it’s nice to see you, too.”
“Thank you, miss, for the bookstore gift card. It was most thoughtful of you, but not necessary.”
“I appreciate you always making sure I’m on top of all this chaos.”
He smiles and nods before he disappears with Luca to do whatever guys like him do.
“You make a ghastly rich person,” Andrew says as he throws himself onto the sofa, legs outstretched.
I sit in a chair beside him and whisper, “I’m not really rich, you know. At least by your standards.”
“Really?” he says, fighting off a smile. “You had me completely fooled.”
“Besides, this way I stay connected to my people for when all this ends and Cinderella has to crawl back to her unlit hearth.” I say it lightly, but Andrew looks at me as if all the ways this experience could spoil my happiness have just occurred to him.
“Story—” he says as he sits up, but Luca comes out, and I shake my head for Andrew to let it go.
Luca takes us to an early dinner at a tiny restaurant my mom and I love on Via Urbana. It’s so early, we’re the only people there, but we still ask for a table in the back.
“This place is nice,” Andrew says as we sit down, chairs scraping.
“Wait till you taste the food.”
The place has a trendy, modern feel that would be considered cosmopolitan in any city. Luca relaxes in a way I haven’t seen at another restaurant, I guess because there’s no audience. A trio of older women come in before we finish, but they sit in the front and people-watch through the windows, so we’re alone except for the waiter.
“I think we should talk strategy,” Andrew says.
“Can we just not?” Luca asks. “For one meal, anyway. The situation is under control.”
Andrew pulls his lower lip in but doesn’t argue. When I order an eggplant dish, Luca asks the waiter if they can make it vegan for me.
“Yes, of course, signorina,” the waiter says.
“Grazie,” I say, and give Luca an appreciative glance. When I turn my gaze back to the room, Andrew is watching us. It makes me self-conscious, as if I’ve overstepped some boundary listed in the fake-girlfriend codebook.
After dinner, we drive up to the Villa Borghese gardens and walk around. Andrew takes photos of us by some of the statues and follies. We manage to agree that the ones at the Temple of Aesculapius give off the most who-wouldn’t-want-to-be-us vibes, so Andrew chooses those, and Luca takes a selfie of us with a tree-lined avenue in the background. Luca’s followers have increased substantially since he decided to date an ordinary girl.
“Everyone’s waiting to see the crash,” Andrew says.
Luca suddenly spins me around like we’re dancing. Andrew whips his phone back out for photos.
“I’ll set these to post tomorrow morning,” he says. “That way, the tabs get their scoop on Story’s wardrobe tonight and won’t be angry.”
“I never realized how complicated dressing could be. I mean, at least since the Victorian era.”
Luca laughs and puts his arm around my neck and kisses my temple, but Andrew gives me a dry look. A couple of girls around fourteen approach us. They recognize Luca and ask for a picture with him. I smile at Andrew that we aren’t worth being asked, but Luca tells them they can have the picture if I’m in it, too.
“That’s okay,” I say, but Andrew discreetly shakes his head at me, so I glom on to Luca.
“What was that about?” I ask when the girls have gone.
“I don’t want to be in pictures alone with underage girls,” Luca says. “People could get the wrong idea.”
“Gotcha,” I say, but it’s another price to fame I hadn’t thought about.
“We’re going to be late if we don’t get going,” Andrew says, and Luca holds my hand as we walk back to the car.
A swarm of paparazzi buzz outside the gallery, which is opening a show by a UK photographer whose work is mostly of African wildlife. We stop to let the tabs take their pictures on our way in, and a woman calls out, “Who are you wearing, Astoria?”
From a cluster of paparazzi, someone yells, “Old Navy?” I think it’s the German guy Luca teased outside my flat. They all laugh. Someone in the back calls, “Walmart?” They can barely contain themselves, relaxing their cameras as they giggle.
For a moment, it feels like someone has punched me, and I can’t smile. Then I square my shoulders and lightly toss back, “Dani Meadows.” I say it with confidence, as if they surely know her name. They look at each other uncertainly. It feels good, like watching Patrick stand with his mouth open as Luca whisked me away from school the day we made our pact. Luca has his arm around me, and he pulls me a little closer. “Welcome to the Premier League, Herriot,” he whispers through smiles.
“Do I get my own jersey?”
“Bloody hell, yes!”
He turns me, and Andrew opens the door for us. There are a lot of British people, including the UK ambassador, and she introduces me to the photographer, Rishi Patel. Of course he already knows Luca. He’s in his late twenties, with the handsome rough-and-tumble look of a guy who would do shaving cream commercials if he weren’t a wildlife photographer. Rishi asks me which photos are my favorite when I compliment his work.
“It’s so hard to choose,” I say, and he seems to take that as a sign I haven’t really looked, as he nods complacently.
“I love the one of the giraffe mother and baby. I’m leaving for college soon, and it makes me think of my mom and me. I’m already missing her, and that photo has the same kind of love in it, the way the mother is bending to touch her face against her baby’s. And the subtle colors of pink and blue in the one of the flock of storks is gorgeous. It feels surreal and peaceful even though there’s so much activity with all of them wading in the water. But I think my favorite is the zebras on the beach by the waves. That one makes me believe in all the beauty of unexpected things. I can’t imagine what it would be like to see that sight in person.”
When I stop, Luca is watching me intently. A hot flush spreads across my face. “Sorry,” I mumble. I look down and push back a strand of hair that’s escaped my sloppy bun.
Rishi laughs. “Please, don’t be sorry. We live for someone to care about our work. How you describe the zebras is exactly how I feel when I look at it, too.”
I catch his gaze, and I don’t think he’s making fun of me. He seems genuinely happy to be appreciated, even if it is from a girl who gushes like a nerdy twelve-year-old.
“Story brings a unique perspective to everything,” Luca says. “It’s one of my favorite things about her.” He slips his hand onto my hip and pulls me closer, nestling me against hisside.
“I see that,” Rishi says. “You should keep this one, Luca.”
“Thanks,” I say, not sure how much either of them really means what they say. Luca gives me a shrug.
A couple comes over to talk to Rishi, and we slip away to wander around the exhibit some more. I stop in front of a photo of two cheetah cubs. They’re playing, but also hiding from the great and terrifying world, half-hidden beside a boulder. Luca’s fingers are intertwined with mine, and he stops when I do.
“And what does this one make you think of?” he asks.
“Us.”
He scoffs. “Us? Why?”
“Look at their faces. They want to just be themselves, but they have no idea how to do that in the world they’ve been given.”
Luca studies the photograph. He absent-mindedly rubs his thumb against the back of my hand. “You know, Story,” he says, so quietly it’s almost a whisper, “sometimes I think you’re the only person who sees me as more than Luca Kinnaird, the brand.”
He looks down at me and smiles a little.
“Maybe you need to stop worrying about being a brand, and just be Luca.”
He searches my eyes for a long moment until Andrew pops up behind us. “You two are going to get an Academy Award if you keep going on like this.”
We break apart. “Let’s get out of here,” Luca says.
When we emerge from the gallery, he’s quieter than usual. We stroll to a gelateria and then to a little park nearby before they take me home, paparazzi in tow.
In the morning, Luca takes me to the farm. It’s rained overnight. The roads and trees are still sparkling. We’re a bit late because we have to stop and get Luca tea and pastries to keep him awake, and Elisa tells him he’s welcome to stay and help if he wants.
“I can’t today, but I will when I bring Story on Friday.” He’s flying to Nice to have a secret brunch with Jasmine. It’s the first time they’ve seen each other since she started her tour. I told him he didn’t have to bring me this morning so he could get an earlier start, but he’d said we should keep to appearances to be consistent.
I laugh as I get out of the car. “Who is this masked aristocrat so ready to help?”
Luca gives me his dangerous smile. “Hilarious. I can be useful sometimes. I’ll be back at two-thirty. Three at the latest.” He sends me an air-kiss and takes flight.
Later, when I come back to the office at the end of the day, four Vespas are stationed across the road from the entrance to the sanctuary, each with a paparazzo. I sigh. Elisa and Ferdy, a ranch hand in his sixties, are standing outside the office, watching the spectacle. I walk over to them.
“I’m sorry, they’re here for me.”
“For you, Story?” Elisa asks, because I’m obviously not the kind of person people follow around with cameras.
“Well, really for Luca,” I explain. “He’s a bit famous in the celebrity magazines.”
They nod and say, “Ahhhhh.”
“Well,” Elisa says as she smiles and waves to them, “maybe they’ll write about us, and people will make donations.”
“I hope so,” I say.
Luca comes swooping in, tires crunching on the fine gravel that lines the driveway. “Ciao,” he says. He seems happy, so I guess his reunion was all he had hoped it would be. The thought is like a sting to me, but it’s just because I don’t really like the girl. He could do so much better.
“Buongiorno,” Ferdy and Elisa say.
Ferdy smiles at me. “è una bella macchina ma non puoi trasportare una mucca dentro,” he says.
I laugh. “Sì, sì, Ferdy. Ciao, a venerdì.”
They say goodbye as I hop in the car. Luca makes a circle.
“Can you go slow by the sign? I want to make sure the paparazzi get it in the background.”
He smiles at my sudden willingness to be photographed for a good cause and then rolls the Portofino past the gate. The paparazzi shoot their photos as we drive away.
“What did that guy say that was so funny?” Luca asks.
I grab my glecks from the console where I leave them and smile as I slip them on. “He said it’s a beautiful car, but you can’t move a cow with it.”