Six Noah
six
Noah
Noah hadn’t been on many vacations in his life.
Growing up, “vacation” had just been visiting his grandparents down in the Ozarks or seeing Silver Dollar City in Branson. His parents had been weirdly obsessed with Yakov Smirnoff.
And once he graduated and moved out, there’d been no time for vacation. He’d had bills to pay.
His first true vacation had been his honeymoon with Angela. She’d always wanted to see New York City, and Noah had never been, so they’d spent a week there. Noah had expected fancy restaurants and Broadway shows, making love in a fancy hotel bed, and maybe seeing the Statue of Liberty.
What had followed instead was his first experience with the Death March of Fun.
Angela liked to schedule her vacations to within an inch of their lives, and woe to any human, animal, inanimate object, or act of God that got in her way.
Noah thought Angela might lay off in Italy. She was moving here, after all, so she’d have time to see the sights. Besides, they were all jet-lagged. It was hot out. Jake was getting cranky. But no.
Angela had dragged them out of the gelateria before Noah could even say a proper goodbye and set a rapid pace down the streets of Milan toward the garden in Porta Venezia that had been “highly recommended” by whatever travel blog she’d been following.
From the gardens, it was a long walk down Via Alessandro Manzoni to visit the Starbucks Reserve in Milan, which was—apparently—a big deal.
It was fancy inside: a huge open-floor plan, almost like a train station, but for coffee.
From there, she led them down a side street to see a famous statue of a middle finger.
“You sure this is okay for Jake to see?” Noah muttered.
“It’s art.” She bit her lip and turned to Jake, who was practically hanging off Noah’s leg. “Remember, it’s not a very nice thing to do to people, all right? And never in school.”
“Okay.” Jake nodded and yawned.
“I think we’d better get him back,” Noah said, smoothing Jake’s hair off his forehead.
Angela looked at her phone, where she probably had another twelve spots pinned to visit, then deflated. “I guess you’re right.”
Jake was getting a bit too big to realistically carry around on his back.
Not weight-wise—between carrying stuff at work and lifting heavy things at CrossFit, Noah was pretty strong—but simply size-wise.
Jake was getting taller, his legs were getting gangly, and when they swung they bumped into things. Or other people.
Plus, when Jake fell asleep against Noah’s back, he went limp, so it was like trying to stop wet pasta from spilling out of a backpack.
Jake had gone completely dead to the world by the time they made it back to their hotel.
Angela wasn’t looking much livelier herself.
In the elevator he was pretty sure she fell asleep standing, her eyes closing and her chin resting against her chest, until the elevator dinged and she straightened up with a start.
Angela had booked them two connected rooms, so they could both have some privacy and let Jake run back and forth depending on who he wanted to bunk with for the night.
“How are you still awake?” Angela asked through a yawn.
Noah shrugged.
The truth was, he was more awake now than he had been when they’d landed. He was practically buzzing, all because of Ramin. Seeing his old friend had been like a jolt of electricity.
“I can put him to bed if you want to go do something,” she said.
Too late for that. The only thing Noah wanted to do was go back to that gelateria. He couldn’t even say why. But seeing Ramin had been so unexpected, so joyful. He hadn’t felt like that in a long time.
That wasn’t Angela’s fault, though.
“You sure? I don’t mind.” Truth be told, Noah was usually better at dealing with Jake’s bedtime, but Angela shook her head.
“I need the practice,” she muttered. “Especially if he’s going to be living with me here.”
Noah swallowed away the lump in his throat.
“Okay.”
The hotel gym wasn’t bad—some free weights, a few machines, treadmills—but no matter how much Noah lifted he couldn’t stop his mind from swirling.
Now that he was alone, he realized he was annoyed.
Annoyed at Angela for running them all ragged, and annoyed at himself for not complaining, and annoyed at his life because he was thirty-eight years old and single and the only good thing in his life, his son, might be moving across the ocean.
A shower didn’t help. Neither did spending some time with his sketchbook, which usually settled his nerves.
Plus he was hungry.
He knocked on Angela’s door, but the only answer was a soft snore. So he sent her a text, letting her know he was going out, and headed down.
The streets had cooled off a bit as the afternoon shadows grew.
Colorful stucco facades lined every street, with apartments above and shops or restaurants below.
Every so often, the buildings broke apart for a park, or a hotel, or a church, or a gleaming steel-and-glass tower that looked out of place against its neighbors.
Noah was relieved to be able to just wander without having to stick to Angela’s itinerary, but now that he was on his own, he did kind of wish he knew where he was going.
He had his phone, so it wasn’t like he was in danger of getting lost, but still.
He hadn’t had time to look up restaurants or sights to see or anything like that.
So he just kept walking. At one point, he passed a child a few years younger than Jake talking to a grown-up in rapid-fire Italian, their tiny, clasped hand raised to gesture emphatically along with whatever they were saying.
Noah smiled but stopped himself from laughing aloud. Even Italian children talked with their hands.
The next block, he passed a row of restaurants.
The smell of cheese and pasta and meat slammed into him, setting his stomach to growling and his mouth to watering.
He really did need to eat something. One of the restaurants had a little outdoor patio full of people crammed into tiny tables.
It smelled so good, but there was a line down the block. Who knew how long it would take?
Noah shook his head and kept walking. Maybe he could find whatever passed for fast food in Italy. But as he strolled past the patio, he stopped and doubled back.
It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.
There, sitting alone at a little table for two, sat Ramin, studying the menu.
“Ramin?”