Chapter 51
Ava
Being back in Nina’s kitchen is nearly as soothing as the sound of her and Leo’s chatter streaming in through the open window. Venice was amazing—and my time with James in Venice even more so, but I needed out. After Alessandro and David, everything around me became less magical surrealism and more dismal melancholia, like the tide had shifted and dragged in all of the terrible memories of her battle along with my mom’s secret.
The smell of the marinara bubbling around my spoon as I stir wafts up into my nostrils and tempts me to taste, but the risk of getting caught with my fingers in Nina’s sauce keeps me upright, stirring slowly and methodically while trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation that they are doing nothing to hide from me.
“You will tell him he’s here, no?” Nina says, hands flying in a way that if you stepped up behind her she might accidentally knock you out.
“I do not know,” Leo says.
“What do you mean you do not know? He needs to be prepared for this—”
“Sì. Sì. Lo so. Ma forse, if he does not know …”
I move the blowing curtain to the side and watch Leo’s bushy brows lift up into his hairline. What are these two up to?
“That is an ambush!” Nina says breathlessly. “He will not be happy if he knows you knew—”
My hand slips on the spoon and my wrist brushes against the lip of the pot.
“Shit!” I yell, pulling back from the heat.
Nina is inside within a breath, pulling me toward the sink, murmuring in Italian as she holds the burn under the cool running water.
“Are you okay, cara?” she asks me, surveying the angry red mark on the inside of my wrist.
“I’m fine. I swear.” I shut off the faucet and head back to the marinara, but she guides me away.
“I will take care of the sauce. Go wake James for dinner,” she tells me. “There is burn cream in the medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom.”
I nod and head up the stone stairs, staring at the pictures of young James and baby Maso. Baptism pictures of Maso with a full head of black hair, James standing beside his aunt as she holds him out to the priest. James in a blue suit with a crown of laurel leaves around his head, a tradition for graduation from the University of Urbino. The hallway is a family shrine—every picture filled with love and happiness.
“Are you crying?”
I turn to find James leaning against the wooden doorjamb of the bathroom in nothing but a white towel wrapped around his waist.
“No. I was cutting onions in the kitchen,” I lie.
“Tammy called again while I was asleep,” he tells me and I wave him off.
I’m not upset with her. I know that she told Olivia about Venice, setting off the emergency protocol for Ethan’s proposal. That’s why she was acting like such a spaz for our final hours together in the car. And I know she supports my happiness more than any family agenda. But the real reason I’m avoiding that call is because of everything that has happened in the past two days. I’m not ready to answer questions about James—or my mom for that matter. Not ready to lay it all out and dissect it the way Tammy will want to do.
James adjusts his towel then smiles, and between the memories of the last shower we took together and the sight of him half naked, I forget what the hell I’m even doing up here in the hallway.
Oh right. Wake-up call.
“I’m here to wake you up,” I tell him and he nods, but doesn’t move. “And to get some burn cream—”
“Are you okay?” He’s immediately hovering over me, inspecting me for damage. I hold out my wrist.
“It’s nothing. My wrist hit the pot,” I explain, but he’s already turned away and is rummaging through the medicine cabinet like I’ve lost a limb.
“Your aunt and uncle are up to something,” I tell him as he searches.
“When are they not up to something?” he murmurs, then turns and holds out his hand for me to give him my wrist.
“They were speaking loudly and in English about a man being here and whether or not to tell you. I assume they want me to tell you, hence the volume and the English,” I say.
James is hyper-focused on rubbing the burn cream on the tiny red welt on my wrist.
“Does that hurt?” he asks.
I shake my head and he looks up from my burn and straightens, pulling me slowly to where he’s leaning against the sink. My free hand finds a droplet of water that must have dripped from his hair and I trace it down over his chest toward his navel.
“Is the cream helping?” he asks.
“Mmhmmm.”
I can’t feel anything but his hands on my hips as he pulls me to him. I look away from the water droplet and up into his eyes, and my entire body turns to liquid. He lowers his mouth to mine, but just before his lips find mine he freezes.
“Non fermate. It was just getting good, no?”
I turn to see Maso leaning against the hallway wall, a picture of him in a white suit in church above his head.
“Maso, you little perv—”
“Better me than papà, who is on his way up now,” Maso says with that painfully wide grin as he skips down the hallway toward the stairs.
I step away from half-naked James and hurry out of the bathroom. The only thing worse than voyeur Maso would be the dean of students crashing our little bathroom party.
“Ava,” James says, grabbing my good wrist.
I smile, but make sure to stay outside in the hallway, as if the threshold makes it more acceptable to be ogling his goodies.
“Can we talk later? After dinner?” he asks.
And my stomach drops an inch or five.
Talk? We talk all the time. Of course we can talk.
But I know this one will be different. This is “the talk.” I’m not ready.
“Yeah. Of course,” I tell him, trying to give him my best reassuring smile.
He leans down and kisses my forehead just as Leo’s booming voice can be heard from somewhere downstairs. James throws me one last smile and then shuts the door between us, and I hightail it back downstairs where I might get burned, but at least I’m safe.