Chapter 11
QUINN
JUNE — EIGHT WEEKS TO WIN OVER THE FACULTY
Damn, I’m good.
I may still have a shit ton of work to do to win over the faculty, but I am the uncontested queen of choosing AirBnBs. I can’t be topped.
The greens and yellows of the rolling hills stretch out before me, peaking and dipping between each other like waves on the ocean.
The scent of jasmine floats up the hill to where I’m perched on our terrace, fighting for dominance over the espresso wafting up from my hands.
I close my eyes, savoring the cool breeze and the escape from the heat of Rome.
This last-minute mini-vacation is worth every cent.
A few days ago, I dropped down on the lawn of the Borghese Gardens next to Inez. “Can we go on vacation?”
She laughed, and rolled onto her stomach, propping her chin on her hands. “Is Rome not enough for you?”
I nudged her with my foot. “Of course it is, but the past month has been stressful for both of us. We deserve to get away for a couple days. Dr. Guarino and Dr. Aguilar are taking the students to Venice and Verona this weekend. Let’s go somewhere, too.”
She chewed on her lip. “I was actually planning on taking the train to Florence for the day on Saturday.”
“Tuscany’s perfect! We can find a villa, drink good wine, and not think about work for two whole days.”
Inez started picking at her nails, something she always did when she was nervous. “Well, I was actually going to visit someone.”
I widened my eyes at her. “Inez García, are you going to see a boy?”
She rolled her eyes at me and pinched her lips against a smile. “No, nothing like that. I can’t seem to find any luck in that area. Just an old friend I’m meeting up with. But maybe we could do the whole villa thing. Bring Colton, and you two can hang out on Saturday while I’m gone.”
I nodded. “Okay. I’ll find something perfect for us.”
And, at the risk of sounding full of myself, I delivered.
The house itself is small, more bungalow than villa with three tiny bedrooms and a living room we can barely fit in, but it’s cheap and comfortable, and the interior isn’t the pull, anyway.
Every bit of the indoor squeeze is worth it for the incredible outdoor space, set at the top of a hill with views in every direction.
There’s a terrace with a stunning pergola and creeping vines, the perfect spot for a morning coffee.
The other side of the house faces a wide lawn with a pool, the deck lined with lounge chairs.
The edge of the property is dotted with Italian cypress trees, like tall, skinny sentinels set up to defend us from the stress of the outside world.
We rented a car and headed up Friday, spending the entire afternoon and evening lounging outside and swimming in the pool.
That night, the three of us piled into the small kitchen to make aglio and olio pasta, which took all of four ingredients but still felt like a massive accomplishment when none of us are cooks.
As I looked around at my best friends—my family—I thought life couldn’t get more perfect.
And it won’t end here. This will be our life forever.
We’ll head back to Boston and get together for home-cooked meals and laughter over wine.
The three of us will lounge on the quad on those warm summer days when students flee campus, and in the evenings, Inez and I will force Colt to watch the latest Netflix rom-com with us, as entertained by his sarcastic commentary as we are by the movie itself.
I’m feeling hopeful. The type of hope I haven’t felt in years. A professor is on board. Truly, fully on board. Yes, I still have three more to go, but after getting Sydney’s buy-in, it feels possible for the first time. I’ll come back from this weekend refreshed and ready to dive in.
A splash comes from around the corner of the house, and I round it to find Colton swimming laps in the pool. I’ve just made my coffee, and this boy’s already getting a workout in. The energy levels are honestly absurd.
He stops after another lap when he spots me, throwing me that smile with the dimple that makes my whole body heat like I’ve thrown myself into a giant pizza oven.
Colton pushes himself up and out of the pool, the water sluicing down his toned chest and stomach, and my mouth goes completely dry.
He grabs a towel off the lounge chair, and even from twenty feet away, I can see the way his muscles bunch as he runs the towel over his hair.
I want him. Want him so badly that I don’t think I’m going to be able to stop myself from doing something stupid, and that thought is terrifying enough to make me want to beg Inez to take us with her.
What if I let myself indulge in him the same way I’m going to indulge in Tuscan wine this weekend?
Just once. I think of the look in his eyes while we were at the Borghese, indulgent as always, but with an undercut of hunger that seems to have been there consistently since we got to Italy. It doesn’t feel one-sided.
“Enjoying the view?” Inez says from behind me, and I jump, my tiny cup of espresso flying into the air before tipping and pouring the hot liquid down the front of my pajamas.
I glare at her while she laughs. “Look what you did!”
“Just pointing out what you were doing,” she says, her eyebrows wiggling a bit.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say haughtily, and she laughs again.
Colton comes up behind us, whipping out the towel in his hands.
It catches me lightly on the hip, the slight sting sending a rush of heat to every corner of my body.
Inez raises a knowing brow at the way my skin flushes.
When I turn to face him, he spots the coffee all over my shirt and bursts out laughing.
“Shut up,” I say, crossing my arms over the offending stain.
He covers his laughter with a cough, wrangling his broad smile back into a serious line. “Excited for today?”
“God, yes,” I say “Give me an overly excited Italian person explaining the science behind wine that I’ll avidly listen to in the moment and forget by the time the liquid hits my tongue.”
He chuckles and drapes the small towel over his shoulders, leaving his defined chest on display. “Or, I could go to the store and buy a dozen different bottles of Tuscan wine and we could stay at the pool.”
Tempting, him in low-slung swim trunks pouring me another glass of wine while I lie on a pool float.
“That’s what we did yesterday. I want to go out and see the world.”
“I wish I could go with you,” Inez says, playing with the soft silk of her shirt.
Something’s off. She’s meeting up with a friend, but doesn’t seem happy about it. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?” I ask.
Inez smiles tightly. “No, you guys go. Have fun, and you can tell me all about it over dinner tonight.”
I nod, unable to shake the feeling that she’s hiding something from me, but I head inside to get ready.
An hour later, Colton and I are ready to be picked up by the driver we hired so we could both indulge, leaving Inez to use our rental car. We make our way out to the car before I realize I left my phone behind. I run back into the little house to find Inez pulling on a blazer.
Her lucky blazer.
“What is that?” I ask, pointing at the offending piece of clothing.
She bought it our first year of graduate school before we started our internship interviews.
After receiving offers from every single university she interviewed with, she dubbed it her lucky blazer.
She’s worn it for every interview and important meeting since.
The abstract teal and white design has faded over the years to something softer, but it’s no less beautiful than the day we found it on the sale rack at Saks.
Inez looks like a deer caught in the headlights. “I thought you left.”
“Forgot my phone. Why are you wearing your lucky blazer to ‘get together with a friend’?”
She starts chewing on her lip. “Okay, don’t freak out. But I’m meeting with Dr. Lascano.”
My brows pull together. “From graduate school?”
She’d been a professor in our program, teaching class virtually from Florence where she worked for Scuola Leonardo da Vinci, a massive Italian language school and study abroad program.
I’d completely forgotten about her existence, but I’d only taken one class with her while Inez had worked closely with her for several classes, including an independent study.
“And you need your lucky blazer to meet with Dr. Lascano?” I ask, even though I know the answer in my bones.
“I’m not taking a job,” she says quickly, reaching her hands out to me, but stopping before she touches me as she thinks about her next words. “I’m just… thinking… about a job.”
I sputter. “But… but we love Billings.”
She winces again, and I feel guilty, like I’m jabbing her with a needle over and over again. “I do love Billings. It’s a great school, and it would break my heart to leave Boston and you. But it has a lot of problems, too.”
Obviously, I know Billings has problems. I’m literally working my ass off to try to fix them. We’ve spent eight years bitching about the professors, but neither of us has ever seriously considered leaving.
Until now.
“We always said we were going to fight to fix the problems. If everyone runs away from the problems, they’ll just get worse. Remember? That’s what we’ve always said.”
Billings has been our home for the past eight years.
We’re a family—a better family than the one I got at birth.
Inez and I love how small the campus is.
The way we run into students while walking from meeting to meeting, and how they’re always happy to see us even though they know we’re going to bug them about following through on whatever we’re working on.