Chapter 17
Chapter 17
The morning of the third day, I wake up at 6:00 a.m.—way too early, especially considering that I was up with Rue, Tisha, and Nyota until nearly midnight, talking about…there was a lot of Nyota educating us on exchange-traded funds. She also tried to rip her bedside drawer out of its hinges with her bare teeth when we admitted that none of us have an investment strategy.
I should try to sleep longer, get accustomed to the new time zone, but staring at the ceiling and overthinking sounds unappealing. I put on a swimsuit and head for the pool, walking barefoot down the marble stairs and through the lemon grove, enjoying the gentle caress of the light on my face. The villa and its grounds are quiet, not a single soul in sight except for me, the birds, and the silent outline of Mount Etna. Before I dive in, I realize that I forgot to grab a towel, but I’m too lazy to go back upstairs. I swim a few relaxed laps to warm up, then a few more. Savor the way the water makes demands on my body without pushing it to its limits. Focus on counting the strokes, and I’m never left truly alone with my own thoughts.
I stop when my muscles begin to groan. Then I float on the water’s surface, letting my body cool down, taking in the sounds of the house as it begins to awake. Shutters creaking open. Metal and porcelain clanking together in the kitchen. A handful of people laughing down below, past the cliff, and the soft echo of church bells in the distance. The rhythm of the waves. After ten minutes, when the tips of my fingers grow raisin-like and cold shivers run down my spine, I force myself to get out of the water.
On the edge of the pool there is a clean, neatly folded towel.
The breakfast room is at full capacity, the table as richly loaded as yesterday morning—except this time there’s a dozen of us eating.
“Nice to see that people are recovering,” I say, pouring myself some freshly squeezed orange juice.
“I don’t know.” Tamryn shrugs. “I miss feeling one with the plumbing system. The sense of belonging that came with it.”
“Really made me reconnect with my spirituality,” Nyota agrees.
I sneak a piece of bread to Tiny and wait for my breakfast, taking in the various conversations flowing around me. It’s a first, seeing the entire wedding party together in the light, and I cannot help noticing that these twelve disparate people Rue and Eli put together, all seem to get along.
More than that: they like each other. Paul is showing Avery pictures of his garden; Diego, Minami, and Sul are bonding over a video game that involves elf-fucking. Rue laughs with Tisha, and does not look like she’d rather be elsewhere.
“What are you thinking?” Nyota asks me, slathering a fresh croissant with butter.
“Not much. Just having a bit of a take-stock-of-your-life moment.”
“How so?”
“I was thinking that if I were to get married tomorrow, I wouldn’t have this many friends to invite.”
Tamryn laughs. “I bet you have tons of friends.”
Maybe, by certain metrics. I’m not shy or introverted. But I lost most of my college friend group when I refused to be more gracious about Alfie and Georgia, and while I’ll never stop missing Rose, I’ve come to accept that our falling-out was inevitable. When I returned to Austin I reconnected with high school friends, and I love them dearly, but in the years I was gone we grew in different directions. The one person I can always count on is Jade. We’ve been close since our figure-skating days, and even though we fell off while I was in Edinburgh, she never seems to hold it against me. Sometimes we fight, but we always get over ourselves. She is what Minami and Conor are for Eli: My ride or die. The one I’d do an airport run for. The one I’d drop everything for if she asked me to be there, whether it’s to help her bury a body, or to be her witness when she elopes with…a toadstool, probably.
She’s a weirdo, but she’s my weirdo.
“Aren’t you surrounded by hot physics nerds of all genders?” Nyota asks. “I like to picture you kids having fun. Doing lines. Playing D&D until dawn.”
Tamryn seems interested. “What are physicists like? Do they wear several layers of T-shirts?”
“Sometimes. And they’re…” I cast a glance around the room, looking for a good descriptor. Conor is near the entrance, talking with Eli in low tones. My brother’s hand is on his shoulder. They’re both smiling.
Nyota’s eyebrow lifts. “Pleasant? Sex gods? Smelly?”
“Very competitive. Driven. Know exactly what they want.”
“So do you, Miss Young Investigator Award.”
My laugh comes out a little stilted. “Do you never have doubts, Ny? About your professional choice? Being a fancy lawyer?”
“Nah. I’m way too good at it.” She points her knife at me. “Listen, choose MIT. Come to Boston. You’d be an obnoxiously close train ride to New York and to me. We’d hang out every weekend. Being spotted with an academic would considerably lower my social cachet, but I’d take the hit for you.”
“I think you should take that industry position in California.” Tamryn takes a bite off the roundest peach I’ve ever seen. “I used to be in academia, and it fucks with your head.”
“You were?” My words sound rudely surprised. “Sorry. That came out wrong. Didn’t mean to imply that—”
“I’m too hot to be academically gifted?”
“It does feel highly unfair, now that you mention it.”
She laughs and pats my arm, reassuring. “I was halfway through my PhD in poli-sci.”
“Why did you stop?”
“Oh, you know. Same old story. Was very young, caught the eye of a rich dude, was treated to a couple of steak dinners that cost more than my yearly graduate salary, accepted a hasty marriage proposal despite my many misgivings, spent the following decade in corporate.” She shrugs, and I can’t look away. There is something charming and vulnerable about her. Unique. “When I was your age I made a lot of stupid decisions, mostly out of fear and pressure.”
I sit forward, elbows on the table. Study the crawl of freckles on her cheeks. “Did it feel like it, at the moment? Like you were making the wrong choice?”
“Funny you should ask, because…Yeah. A little. This nagging feeling that…it didn’t feel natural, if you get my meaning. It’s so easy to mess up, if you’re not listening to yourself. But don’t worry about it. You’re doing great.” Her expression clears, and she leans closer. “Sorry, I…we just met, and I shouldn’t speak like I know you. But Conor told me a lot about you.”
I let out a scoffing laugh. “I’m surprised. That he speaks about me.”
“Are you?” Her eyes meet mine, knowing. Level. There’s a shared secret there. Her voice is low, for me only. “You shouldn’t be, Maya. I’ve known about you for years. Conor and I are very close. What’s important to him, he tells me.”
I swallow, heart in my throat. “Sometimes I wonder if I qualify.”
Suddenly, she looks sad. “He only—”
She pulls back when today’s breakfast appears in front of me, courtesy of Lucrezia. It’s the same brioche I had yesterday, but cut horizontally and stuffed with two large scoops of gelato and whipped cream.
“Oh my god.” I blink at my plate. “This is beauty. And grace. And what separates humanity from beasts. A Sicilian breakfast.”
“Colazione,” Lucrezia says, squeezing the ball of my shoulder with an affectionate strength that could easily dislocate my spinal cord, then leaving again.
Nyota sighs. “God, our country is so behind.”
“Is it?” Diego, whom I’ve never seen eat anything but sprouts, seems skeptical. “Is breakfast ice cream really the litmus test for societal development?”
“Shut up.” Nyota steals a fingerful of stracciatella from my plate, and makes a face that would earn her lots of money on OnlyFans. That’s when Axel enters the room, glancing around, as if suspecting that a sniper might be trained on him.
“No need to hide the knives, Axel,” Eli tells him. “No one wants revenge. You have been formally forgiven. We all agree that the dinner was a great start to this week.”
“Really?” Axel asks.
“Yup.” Eli nods. “A killer night.”
Axel winces.
“Really put the die in diet,” Eli adds.
Axel groans and sinks in to the chair next to me, looking like a chastised puppy. Honestly, poor guy. “You think your brother is going to murder me in my sleep?” he asks.
“I don’t think so. But he will probably roast you for the rest of your natural life.” I pat his back. “Which, at least, should kill all remaining bacteria.”
By unanimous decision, the plan for the day is: beach.
I’d be a fan, even if it looked like one of the cheap, overcrowded, brown-water spots where my parents used to bring me when I was a kid. The private strip of coast right under the villa, though, takes my breath away.
I descend the stone staircase and realize that the sand starts out fine and soft, then turns into white pebbles closer to the crystalline blue shoreline. Lucrezia shows us around—the private cabana, the sun loungers and umbrellas—and is on her way back to the villa when she notices me taking off my clothes.
I grin at her, but she doesn’t reciprocate. Her eyes narrow further as she watches me tie my hair at the crown of my head. When I wave her goodbye and head for the water, she hurries toward me, signaling something with her hands that I cannot quite understand.
There is a no , somewhere in the sentences. And she’s pointing at my body. “Is it my swimsuit? You don’t like it?”
Lucrezia understands me even less than I do her. But a quick inspection of the rest of the group tells me that no one else has stripped down to their suits yet, and…maybe Italy is conservative, when it comes to swimwear? I mean, why not? The pope is right here . Catholics can be weird about sex, right?
“Should I cover up? Get changed?”
She points at my bare midriff, and I wrap myself in a towel, just to be safe. Then I glance around, searching for an Italian speaker.
“What’s up?” Conor asks, when I manage to catch his eyes. He’s still in his shorts and white tee, and jogs up to me, separating from the rest of the guys, who are busy drawing lines in the sandier part of the shore.
“Um, Lucrezia has been wagging her finger very insistently at me and…is my suit too revealing?”
I pull my towel open. Conor glances down at my bikini, a reflex, and freezes, like a wild animal caught in the light would, and—
It’s like it hadn’t occurred to him. That there would be a body inside the swimsuit. My body. His stare is heavy and blatant and profoundly still . It lasts a hiccup of a moment. Then a seagull screeches over our heads, and he rips his eyes away.
Blood rushes to my cheeks. “I have another. A one-piece. I can go get it, if she…”
“That’s not…Let me find out,” he says, husky, before asking Lucrezia about the problema . He listens for a few moments. Turns with a small smile. “Lucrezia is very worried about you.”
“Is it because I am a…harlot?”
“Did you just use the word ‘harlot’?”
“I was going to say ‘whore,’ but it didn’t sound churchy enough.”
“This has nothing to do with churchiness. Or with your suit.”
“What, then?”
“If you go swimming in the ocean within two hours of eating you are going to drop dead.” Lucrezia adds something else, and he translates, “All your blood will be in your stomach, digesting. There will be none left in your limbs, and you will sink like a stone.”
I scratch my temple. “Tell her that doesn’t sound right.”
Conor snorts. “I will not do such a thing.”
“It’s a thoroughly debunked myth.”
“The science hasn’t reached Italy, clearly. And I am not going to contradict Lucrezia, Maya. About anything, ever.”
I edge forward, glaring at him. “Aww. You scawed? Of the cute middle-aged lady?”
“I am, and not too proud to admit it.”
“Thank her for her concern, but I’ll be fine. I’m a good swimmer.”
Another quick exchange in Italian, that culminates in: “She reminds you that this area has lots of unexpected currents. And she wants me to keep an eye on you and rescue you when you inevitably begin drowning.”
I look her in the eye. “Sadly, Lucrezia, Conor is much more likely to hold my head underwater than to— Ouch .” He’s pinching the back of my arm so tight, I’m going to have bruises. “This hardly disproves my point,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“But it proves mine.”
“Which is?”
“That you should be quiet. And do as Lucrezia says.”
“But I want to—”
With an arm around my shoulder, he pulls me into him. Tells Lucrezia something that sounds disturbingly like a promise, and then turns us both toward the makeshift field where the others are idling with a ball. Our feet slip through the sand, his heat pressed into my bare flank, and the scent of pine and sunblock fills my nose. His forearm hangs down my collarbone, right above the swell of my breast.
“Come on, Trouble.”
“What is happening?”
“I’m kidnapping you. Just to spare Lucrezia’s peace of mind.”