Chapter Thirty-Five
I shut my phone off. I’ll have to deal with the response at some point, but not now. Instead, I sit in the quiet and think about how dashing Luca looked as he stood in the doorway in his misguided attempt to rescue me. He had on the same midnight-navy suit he’d worn to the opera, the night a princess taught me to love Puccini. His thin, dark tie brought out the deep ocean tones of his eyes, and the tiredness around them and two days of stubble let me know all this at least cost him something, too. He thought he needed to come and rescue me, but he’d already given me all the tools I needed to rescue myself. I used to be the girl who stood at the window and watched the world go by. I’m not that girl anymore.
I’m still daydreaming of a different ending to our story when my mom gets home. “I come bearing gifts,” she says as she sets a tote bag of takeout down on the table.
“Please tell me it’s potato gnocchi al pomodoro from Le Belle Notti.”
She smiles. “And fried zucchini flowers, and vegan chocolate caramel gelato.”
“You are the best mother ever. Does this mean I’m not grounded?”
She laughs. “If you weren’t too old, then I would ground you. But I think in this case, the consequences are worse than any punishment I could come up with.”
“They are.”
She comes over and hugs me. “Come on, let’s eat and you can fill me in.”
So we have dinner and I tell her. She’s proud of me for standing up for myself, and Jasmine and Luca, but when I tell her about Luca riding in on his black stallion to save me, she doesn’t comment.
“Maybe I could take some classes at Università di Roma and get a part-time job as a tour guide for this year.”
“Well, there’s time to think about that tomorrow. Today, let’s just hide away in the baking show, shall we? We’ll think better after a little distance from all this.”
She goes to change her clothes, and I go to my room to put on sweatpants and a T-shirt. I’m pulling them from the drawer when I hear a strange sound outside. It seems like my name, but weirdly muffled and amplified. I peek through the gauzy curtain. Luca is standing in the courtyard with a megaphone.
“Astoria Herriot, please come outside.”
I pull open the door and step onto the marble porch, warm from sunshine. Windows start opening all around the courtyard. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?” I say it as quietly as I dare, but I still have to almost shout for him to hear me.
“I once joked that I’d need a megaphone to make love speeches to you like Romeo from down here, and you said, ‘Well, it’s a good thing you don’t need to make me love speeches, then.’ It turns out, though, that I do.”
I glance to my right, and my mother is on the dining room balcony watching. I shake my head to let her know I have no idea what he’s doing. The three amigas have come outside on Guin’s floor, and other people I recognize from the embassy and lots of people I only know from the elevator or not at all have also come out. The whole building seems to be home for this spectacle. A few Italian residents yell encouragement to him in Italian. “Go on!” and “Tell her, young man!”
“Do you know how hard it is to find a megaphone in Rome?” he asks. “I had to have this dug up from the basement of the UK embassy.”
I grip the railing. “Why are you doing this?”
“When you left Scotland, I thought you were mad at me, and I couldn’t blame you. And then, today when I saw you, I really thought you hated me. But then I read your post. Why are you so convinced we can’t be together?”
He lets the ridiculous megaphone fall and stares up at me. The last rays of the long July day are fading across the courtyard. I forget for a moment that anyone is watching until someone yells in Italian, “Answer the boy!”
“You know why, Luca! I heard what your family said. They’re never going to approve of me.”
Some of the Italians who have understood me boo him.
Luca leaves the megaphone on the ground, and he has to shout. “What did you hear, Story? I’ll admit they were mad at first, but once they calmed down, they realized they were being unfair!”
I shake my head. There’s no way they would ever accept me after what I heard them say.
“I don’t know what you heard, but my family isn’t against us. In fact, they said I haven’t been this mature for my age since primary year one when I was five! My mum told me to come and make things right. Adaira says I’m the biggest idiot since Hamlet. And even Andy said if I don’t get you back, he’s dumping me to be your best friend.”
“They did?”
“Aye! Can you please come down here and just talk to me? Please, Story?”
I look over at my mom, who is mouthing Go! at me as if I’m the Pink Panther and a giant piano is about to drop on my head. Across the courtyard, people shout at me to go down, some in English and some in Italian. One old lady yells in Italian, “Give the boy a chance, stupid girl!”
I duck back into the flat. I run out of the apartment shoeless into the hall and down the stairwell. When I come into the courtyard, Luca is watching for me. I stop running and walk over to him.
We just look at each other for a moment. “Hello,” he says.
“Hello.”
“Do you want to tell me what you heard?”
I nod. “First of all, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. I just waited outside to see what I should do. I thought maybe your parents would want me to leave or have more questions for me. Then I heard your mom say I wasn’t at all appropriate and they didn’t know how you could have brought ‘a girl like me into the family.’?”
Luca’s Atlantic eyes pop. “Crivvens, Story, she was talking about Jasmine!”
Tears sting my eyes. “I hoped that at first. I really did. But you didn’t bring Jasmine there. You brought me home, Luca. I was the one at your family’s party! She specifically said at your grandmother’s party.”
He locks his gaze on mine. “She meant I brought Jasmine into the family, into our house, in the tabloids, by linking our names! She was furious with me. When the rumors ran around that I liked Jasmine, she checked her out, and hoo boy! But when she thought I started dating you, she wasn’t worried. Especially after Hodges and my dad’s friends told her you were absolutely great, and not like anyone I’d ever dated before.”
I put my hand to my mouth because this can’t all be true.
“But she was so angry at me.”
“She was disappointed. She even wondered if she’d been wrong about you. But when I told her how you wouldn’t take any money from me for anything, how I had to force you to even let me buy you a pair of cheap trail runners, she knew you’d only do anything this crazy for the right reasons. And when I told her how much you made me think about the world, and my place in it, she was sold.”
“But I ruined your grandmother’s party.”
“Story,” Luca says, moving closer, “they know this was my fault. And my gran said it wouldn’t have been a party without me causing a riot.”
A sob escapes me. “So you don’t have to choose between your family and me?”
Luca laughs. “No, you raging American dafty! But, just for the record, I would pick you. Every time.” He slips his fingers through my hair and wraps his other arm around my waist and pulls me in. “Story, the last few days I’ve been gawn off my heid withou’ yoo like I was steamin’ the whole time.” A tear falls onto my right cheek. He leans down and kisses it.
Cheers and shouting fill the space around us. Someone pops a bottle of prosecco and the bang of it breaks us apart and we laugh as the cork lands behind us. I look up at my mom, and her cheeks are glistening.
Luca picks up the megaphone. “For anyone who wants to report to the paparazzi hanging out front, or if they can hear me, I love Astoria Herriot. I love her madly, deeply, irrevocably.” He looks up at my mom and adds, “And reverently, Mrs.Herriot. No worries there. I love her reverently.” He turns back to me.
“You didn’t mention ‘truly.’?”
The megaphone falls, and he smiles. “And truly. As truly as Cupid loves Psyche.”
The whole building is cheering. Well, most of it. Kelsey and Guin have gone back inside, but Alicia waves a thumbs-up to me. A man yells for me to kiss the boy.
“I don’t usually take unsolicited advice,” I say.
“No, you don’t.”
I shrug and wrap my arms around his neck. “But when it’s right—”
Luca catches his lips on mine, and I kiss him the way Princess Ann would have kissed Joe Bradley if they could have been together.