Chapter Three #2
He raises his hands. “Okay, okay, sorry. Let’s look around.”
We look at the wall in front of us with its decorated rocky nook holding the virgin.
“Heavenly,” he concludes after long contemplation, and I giggle.
“Let’s go that way,” I say, and we walk along the organic tunnel. I can hear birds singing, something I didn’t expect in a city like this. Within these walls, you can almost forget you are surrounded by water.
“Nice flower,” Jeremy comments when he stops near a bush of carnations.
“Yep,” I say, and more silence follows. “Do you want to go to a restaurant with me tonight?” I ask, looking at the flowers as if they can aid me in my mission. Their sweet scent is pleasant, but I don’t know what to do with it.
How is a romantic place supposed to help us exactly?
I haven’t planned this properly. Maybe I need to come up with some questions we should ask each other to get the conversation flowing. A recipe, a step-by-step, a script…anything that might get us in the right mindset for romance would be useful.
“Sure, dinner sounds good,” Jeremy answers.
“I’ll see if Lorenzo can make a reservation for us in one of the osterias I want to visit.”
Lorenzo. He’s still somewhere around. The awareness I feel when I know he’s near makes my stomach flutter.
I frown at myself. Lorenzo is an attractive fairy godmother for sure, but he’s not Jeremy. He’s an Italian man who lives in Italy. My world is Los Angeles. I’m not spending a second thinking about someone I’d have no future with.
Jeremy’s eyes meet mine, and it takes a second for them to focus on me, as if he’s also been distracted by his thoughts. “What? Yeah. Sure.”
I wonder what he was thinking about. Alice? His job? How awkward he feels right now?
“Cool,” I mutter.
Silence. Birds. Leaves rustling in the wind.
“Maybe we should get back?” I suggest.
I mean, we’ve seen the garden, haven’t we? I’m ready to move on.
Jeremy is looking at the figs. “They look really tasty.”
I hold back a nervous chortle. He looks around. I can see it happening. Oh God.
He picks a fig. I move away to show I have nothing to do with it if a nun sees him taking fruit from their garden without permission. “If someone catches you…”
Jeremy wiggles his eyebrows in a victorious expression. Then he plucks another fig and offers it to me. I step back as if he is tempting me with illegal drugs. “No, thanks.”
“Come on, take it.”
“It might be the forbidden fruit,” I say. “Virgin Mary is watching you.”
Voices. An angry Italian woman shouting. I look up and spot a nun staring at us through an open window. Uh-oh.
“Time to run,” Jeremy concludes, baring his teeth with amusement, and rushes to the exit. I start after him but realize I must tie my laces, so I hide behind a bush and kneel to fix my shoe situation.
A shadow grows behind me, and I startle when a pair of polished, Italian-made leather loafers stops before my dirty Stan Smith sneakers.
Even before hearing the person’s voice, I know it’s Lorenzo. His cologne—a musky, woodsy scent I could smell all day long—overrides the perfume of the flowers. And I recognize his shoes. He has a classy, sophisticated style. I don’t often meet men with such good taste.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s going on?”
I stand up, laces now tied. “Jeremy took two figs.”
Lorenzo rolls his eyes. “Jesus.” Then he glances at the Virgin Mary. “Sorry.”
I laugh, and he puts a hand on my back to guide me forward. I don’t feel his touch—it’s like his hand is hovering a few inches away from my body—but I feel the heat of his fingers through my T-shirt, which makes a shiver run down my spine.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
The woman is still yelling in Italian. I look back and catch a glimpse of another nun—or maybe the same one—on the stairs, pointing at us.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I say as we scramble to the exit. “She’ll probably never let you in again.”
“I can deal with angry Italian ladies, don’t worry.”
His calm, cheerful tone makes me relax. I look at him once we have walked through the doors and see he thinks it was a little funny. I smile back at him.
“So, you and Jeremy decided that theft on God’s grounds was romantic?”
His smile is truly stunning, especially combined with the way the sun illuminates his olive skin and brightens his emerald eyes.
“If it’s God’s grounds, the fruit should serve humankind without distinction, don’t you think?”
Still knocking me senseless with his perfect smile, he shakes his head, mildly reproving. I think of his apology to the Virgin Mary and what he told us earlier, that Italy has over twenty thousand churches, more than one hundred of them in Venice.
“You’re Catholic,” I affirm.
He shrugs, smiling. “I was raised by my grandma, who is very religious, so that’s my background. She brought me to church when I was a kid, and I brought her to the Sunday masses when I lived with her as an adult. But, to be honest, I only know I believe in God, and the rest is fluff.”
Hearing him talk about his grandma with fondness makes the unwelcome fluttering in my stomach return. She’s still alive, it seems, and I sense he visits her whenever she needs him.
I guess men who care for their former caregivers spark my admiration, perhaps because family has always meant everything to me. So why have I only ever dated guys who had complicated or distant relationships with their folks?
“That’s basically my religious view too,” I reply, smiling at Lorenzo, not wanting to reflect on my past mistakes.
Dad talked about God and fate a lot, but it was never within the context of a specific religion.
I feel like sharing this part of my past with him, but for some reason, I don’t.
Since I lost my dad, the only people I’ve talked to about him are Jeremy and my brother.
“Jeremy is an atheist, as you may have guessed,” I say instead.
We are out in the street, and I realize I haven’t seen Jeremy. I look around and find him leaning against a wall, eating his stolen fig.
“Was it worth it?” I call out from where I am.
He nods, chewing. “Every extra minute I’ll spend in hell.”
Lorenzo and I laugh in unison. Something about the situation makes me feel warm and cozy inside, and I tell myself it’s Jeremy’s ingenious humor.
But part of my attention is on the unfamiliar merry laughter coming from the Italian man next to me.
* * *
After the garden, Jeremy’s hangover headache returned, and he left for the hotel with Lorenzo. So now I’m sitting on a bench with the Maps app open on my phone, trying to memorize the way to the best ice cream shop in Cannaregio.
It is a peaceful area. When you’re alone like this in Venice, with no tourists surrounding you, the city reveals itself in a truly magical way.
If I were an artist, I would be sketching the landscape, but since I’m a chef, I’m attentive to the aromas dancing through the air, coming from a trattoria near where I’m sitting.
My trained nostrils instantly detect the savory scent of garlic sautéing in olive oil.
The tangy smell of ripe tomatoes. The fruity, nutty tones of aged Parmigiano-Reggiano that will be grated on top of perfect al dente pasta, its subtle, comforting fragrance overtaken the next minute by the smoky char of pizza just taken out of a wood-fired oven.
I think of Dad’s slow-simmered ragù , and it’s such a vivid memory, I can taste it.
My mouth waters—and my eyes too. I should have known that being alone in this country wouldn’t be easy.
Despite never having been to Italy, with my dad or without him, something about this place awakens the Italian blood that ran through his veins and now runs through mine.
He would have loved this city. His small hazel eyes would’ve shone, and he would’ve walked around like a mafia boss, sunglasses on and chest puffed out under his Ferrari-red polo shirt.
I can’t help but picture him sitting by my side, arms stretched out on the backrest of the bench.
“I bet you can’t think of another place you’d rather be,” he’d say because he was always betting—in the figurative sense, never for real—and I would have come up with another place, somewhere he hated probably, like Taco Bell or the Hollywood Walk of Fame, just to make him laugh.
I’m here because of you, Dad , I mentally tell the ghost sitting next to me.
I’m going to bring Venice to our Venice and honor your legacy.
The restaurant we dreamed about, the dishes and design solutions we came up with together all those late nights in the kitchen—they’ll finally become a reality once I reclaim La Veneziana and keep it in our family for generations to come.
I owe him that.
When La Veneziana was his and the financial challenges began and quickly escalated, my dad could only see one solution: full makeover and rebranding. That gave him a tough choice to make. Sell his treasured Santa Monica house to save the restaurant or give up on it.
And I pushed him to make the wrong choice.
I dry my eyes, not wanting to enter the spiral that will take me down if I let go. I’m in Venice. I remind myself of how lucky I am. I can eat a real gelato.
I’m almost getting up when someone stops in front of the bench.
Again, the person’s shoes tell me all I need to know.
My stomach quivers in anticipation, and I look up.
Why does being in his presence make me feel like this?
My body should know better than to pull me toward someone who would only be a hindrance to my plans.
“I thought I might still find you here.” His voice is suave like the rest of him. Charming. Confident. Elegant. He has the golden package that gets women swooning. Me included.
I mean, in general, he is just the type.
The type who breaks hearts.
And I have vast experience being broken because I’m an idiot who always falls for the deceptive charm of such men.
Not this time.