Chapter 34
Our inaugural ride is a success. We take a group photo at the very end of the road in Ravello, holding cones of gelato, but Nico’s arm isn’t over my shoulder like it had been in the preride photo.
He stands on the other side of all the tourists, as far away from me as physically possible, and doesn’t look at me once.
I try to not let it get to me. I stick my cone up in the air like I’m the Statue of Liberty, plastering on the biggest smile, but the dripping trails of gelato melt down my wrist, leaving me scrambling to clean it all off.
Story of my life lately. We take the hour-long moped ride back in silence.
At the hotel, we say goodbye to our fellow riders, distribute the goody bags, and give out hugs to the tourists, who have been great travel companions.
“Highlight of the trip so far, Miss Soraya,” one of our tour group members, Jerry, whispers as we hug. “How will I ever thank you?”
“Well, we’d love for you to leave us a review, if it isn’t too much trouble.
This was our pilot, so the more interest it gets, the more likely it is you’ll be able to come back to do it all again!
” I pull up my phone and show him the places where the B and B is listed: Tripadvisor, Yelp, Expedia, the whole nine yards.
“Consider it done.”
I keep trying to catch Nico’s eye, but he’s ignoring me.
Moody much? With the guests dissipating it’s just the two of us again, and I want to toot our own horns, gush over the highs, commiserate over the lows, walk through the things that need improvement, but while he’s not exactly giving me the cold shoulder, he’s also not exactly warm and welcoming, either.
Sometimes people just need a minute. Space.
I get it, I guess, so I get to work on the mopeds closest to me, scrubbing and buffing them so they look brand-new for the next tour, in a few days.
It just sucks, to not be able to celebrate this moment together when we’ve worked so hard to pull it off, and as much as I hate to admit it, I start to get kind of irritated.
Okay, fine, we ran into Wes, and I know I’ve been kind of annoying about him, but it’s not like I planned it—this time.
I want to protest that it’s not fair, that actually I’ve done a lot of growing, don’t you know, but I don’t want to make things worse, so I just huff, loudly, as I wipe down the last moped.
There’s a gentle tap on my shoulder, and I look up to see that it’s Nico, a half-wry, half-apologetic smile on his lips and almost a hundred euro in his hands. “For you,” he says. “The group had such a good time. They were singing your praises.”
I shove them reflexively back at him. “This was all you,” I say. “Your recommendations, your connections, your ideas, all of it. I can’t take this.”
“You earned this,” Nico insists. “This is your share. The tour is as much yours as it is mine, and I won’t take mine if you don’t take yours.”
“But the point of this whole thing in the first place was to make enough to save the B and B!” As soon as the words escape my lips, I know I’ve slipped up.
Nico freezes. “What do you mean, save the B and B?”
There’s no point in lying to Nico. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that my lies can only make things worse.
I take a deep breath, bracing myself. “I saw the foreclosure notice, I’m sorry.
I didn’t mean to—it was the wind, and then it was on the floor, and then I picked it up and I couldn’t unsee it. ”
He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t even move.
His hand, outstretched before, has slumped to his side as he stares blankly at me.
I don’t know if I should keep talking, I don’t know if it’ll make things better or make things worse—all I know is now that the floodgates have opened, I can’t make myself stop.
“But I want to help you! I’m sure we can find out a way, the two of us.
This place can’t go under, it’s so special, I see that now, but I don’t want you to give up your fellowship or Rome either, not when it so clearly means so much to you.
Between the tours and the renovations and—and all the good reviews from all those people today, I know there’s a way to save it if we just—”
“Is that what all of this was?” he interrupts. There’s something brewing in his eyes, something awful. It looks like he’s coming to a realization. “Pity?”
I blink at him. “No! No, that’s not it at all.” Why would it be?
But Nico does something unexpected. He laughs.
“I can’t believe I thought…” He shakes himself, pivots.
“Sorry to break it to you, Sora, but a few summer food tours aren’t going to bring in enough to save this place.
You can’t just come in and wave around that American can-do attitude like it’s going to fix everything, because it can’t.
Some things just suck. I know you don’t believe it, but they do. Sometimes people can’t have it all.”
“Well, if you just explained what you need, I could—”
Nico puts his hands up and cuts me off. “Basta.”
“Fine! Fine. Just run away like you always do. Give up, accept defeat. Is that going to make you feel better?”
“Better than beating the same dead horse is going to make you! Do you think if you try it a third time it’s going to come to life again?”
I turn cold. “Excuse me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means… what did Wes have to say earlier?” Nico crosses his arms.
“Nothing. He apologized.” Why does it always, always come back to Wes?
Nico is quiet. So quiet, in fact, that I wonder if he even heard me. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, I hear Nico say, “You’re going to meet up with him again, aren’t you.”
He doesn’t even phrase it like a question, so I don’t know how to respond.
Had I been going to agree? I don’t even know how to answer that for myself, much less to anyone else.
It’s just not that easy, no matter what Nico or Anya or Mari think, to cut yourself off from liking someone, just like that.
I’ve liked Wes longer than I’ve even known him.
Being with him feels easy, feels familiar, a life raft in a sea of change.
I already know all the ways he can hurt me.
“You sound like you’ve already made up your mind about whether I am or not,” I say frostily. “So what does it matter how I answer? You’re not going to believe me anyway.”
Nico scoffs. “What are you doing, Soraya?”
“What do you mean what am I doing?” I stand up, dirty rag in hand, ready to defend myself.
“I thought you had more self-respect than this.”
It stings, the way he says it, like he’s disappointed.
Like I’ve disappointed him. And he sounds, in that moment, extraordinarily like the way Anya and Mari did whenever I asked them for advice, and they would shuffle me off with a pat, You know you’re better than this.
Talking to me like I don’t know my own worth, like I’m stupid and pathetic for liking a boy. But Nico hasn’t finished.
“You go crawling back to this guy even when he’s shown you over and over what you mean to him, because you don’t want to let go. Even this B and B—you didn’t even know we existed two weeks ago.”
I hadn’t even agreed to go see Wes, but admitting that now feels like surrender.
So I pull myself up to my full height and dig my heels in.
“Wow, Nico. Wow. Self-respect. It’s so easy to point fingers at everyone else, but what about you?
You’re going to slink around in your mom’s shadow for, what, ever?
All while you keep telling yourself that there’s nothing better out there?
Well, here’s a question—how would you even know?
You’ve never left home! And now you claim you don’t like university even though we all see you, every day, burying your nose in your books because really, you’re just scared.
And for someone who’s too scared to go live his own life, you sure have a lot of opinions about how I should live mine. ”
Nico’s eyes flash with a mix of fury and hurt. His voice gets low and shaky. “The people who are close to you, they care about you. There’s a reason we all say the same thing. He seems like a bad guy.”
“Yeah, well. Why can’t you let me figure that out for myself?
Instead of acting like you know so much better.
” I spit his own words back at him. “You’re right.
Two weeks ago, I didn’t know this B and B existed.
Which means that two weeks ago, you didn’t know me, either.
So don’t pretend like you care so much when we both know that all you care about is whether I leave a good review. ”
Nico stands there, staring at me, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, and his face is as clear as a glass pane. He’s trying to decide how much I actually mean the things I’ve said, the things I regret almost immediately but can’t take back.
And then he says the worst thing he could say—not because it’s mean, but because I’ve never felt smaller: “Seems like you don’t know that much about me, either.”
I watch as he walks away. I’ve gotten really good at that—it’s practically a superpower by now.
I want to tell him that I don’t really believe what I said.
That I was only trying to hurt him because he hurt me.
That I know he cares about me, because how could I not?
That the last two weeks have felt closer to a lifetime. The door slams shut behind him.
I pick up my backpack, its sudden weight reminding me that I still have his thank-you gift.
I pull it out and rip open the brown paper, revealing a large bag of the pistachio hazelnut chocolates I’ve been stealing from the front desk.
He’d noticed after all, and never called me out on it, just let me go on enjoying them.
There’s something taped to the back of the chocolates. It’s a small rectangular packet—a tiny envelope. Nico has gifted me a pack of lemon seeds. On it, he’s written For irritabile Soraya, for her lemon paradise. I nearly drop to my knees. Tears sting my nose before I choke them back.
It’s fine. Whatever. It’s just chocolate and lemon seeds.
Anyone would have noticed that I devoured that bowl—I inhaled like twenty in one day.
And Nico probably had that packet of seeds hanging around—threw them in since we talked about it.
I should stop reading into any of this, because the truth is, I’ll never see Nico again after this week.
Who knows if Anya and Mari want to stay in my life.
What is sure—what is guaranteed—is that Wes and I will be at college together come fall.
I take my phone from my pocket and pull up the familiar chat, still populated with our last messages, arranging to meet before everything had fallen to shit.
You’re right. It would be great to have a do-over. Can I come see you?
I’m in the mood to blow my entire life up.