Chapter 18
Eighteen
Mark
Late in the night, Luca texts me that he’s just gotten off work and is stopping by my apartment.
I’m up with jet lag so I buzz him into the building and open the door.
“Hey,” he says in English. Luca always grabs a language at random. He plops down on the couch, arms spread across the top, without another word.
“Everything okay?” I grab him an orange Fanta from the fridge and toss it over before pulling a chair away from the table and straddling the seat to face him.
“That’s what I came to ask you.” He takes a sip and then swipes his long mop back. He’s lucky Nonna hasn’t slipped into his apartment at night and buzz-cut his hair while he slept.
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
He picks at the label on the plastic bottle and doesn’t glance up. “Did you talk to Mariella about the bidders?”
Oh, that. My ex-girlfriend and her big, conglomerate corporation competing against me for my dream job. Yeah, I’m not okay with it, but I haven’t given it a thought since Lexing—since the reception. “I’ll manage Zoe.”
Luca laughs without mirth. “You’ll manage her? Have you forgotten everything?”
No. I haven’t forgotten a thing, despite my best efforts. How Zoe insisted we apply for the master’s program in Italy. How blindly I followed her. How completely it gutted me when she made me choose between her and Italy.
But I was aimless then, unlike now. “I don’t think the owners will pick a foreign hotel company to partner with on the palazzo. They’re not all about the money. And you don’t need to worry about me, if that’s your concern.”
“You fell apart, dude.”
“I have the family now. I’m not the same guy I was then.” I point to my chest. “Smarter. Older. Wiser.”
“Will that be true when you run into her? The bids are due in person a week from tomorrow, and the design mock-ups are supposed to be on display at the festival at the architecture exhibition. She might already be in Rome.”
I nod. “Good point. She might be here . . . roaming.”
Luca snorts but shakes his head. “Be serious.”
Zoe’s old haunts in Rome—Hard Rock Cafe, Starbucks, etc.—are not places I frequent. “I’m over her, Luca.”
He looks me in the eye a moment, then nods. “Okay.”
I grab a stray rubber band off the table behind me and hook it on both sides of the chair top. “Got my luggage back.”
“Saw that.” Luca tilts his head back and finishes off the Fanta.
“A tan hard case with a wonky wheel,” I murmur. That’s what Lexington called it, and I’m pretty sure she meant it to describe both me and the suitcase.
“Huh?” Luca stops smashing the bottle, and I take it from him.
“Nothing.” I don’t need a repeat of this evening’s cross-examination at dinner. I can’t mention Lexington, as much as I want to unload to Luca how crazy I am about—how crazy she makes me.
“What does wonky mean?”
I twang the taut rubber band and center the squashed Fanta in the middle.
“Oh, that’s a good word to learn.” Luca has guessed my goal to make him sound like an ’80’s kid from the ’burbs, but so far, despite telling an American customer he’s as busy as a bee, he manages to stay cool. I’m not giving up. “Off-center. Weird.”
I pull the Fanta back and let it fly from my makeshift slingshot to the corner recycling bin. Bull’s-eye. Measuring spaces and calculating angles is my life skill. Also, it’s a small room and the bottle ricocheted off both walls first.
Yeah. Lexington definitely meant me.
Luca rests his forearms on his knees. “You have that almost-smile on your face. The secret one that means you find something funny you shouldn’t, and you know you can’t laugh.”
He’s right. Lexington and her quirky metaphors can’t be a source of delight for me. A source of angst and frustration, maybe. A force to be reckoned with. A competitor to gain victory over. Nothing more.
To prove it, I pull out my phone and type I’m going to win our bet. Before I can think twice about my fourth-grade behavior, I hit send.
Restless, I jump from the chair. “Come on, let’s head out.”
Luca looks at me from heavily lidded eyes. “Why? It’s after midnight.”
“To photograph the city.” Get a bet-winning photo. Do something besides sit in my apartment and think about Lexington. “Deserted streets and all that.” I’m coursing with get-Lexington-out-of-my-system energy, and the moon is full. I head to my room and assemble my camera.
When I emerge, the heavy device slung around my neck, Luca has a spare pair of my tennis shoes on, but his arms are crossed, and his head is tilted at the angle that says you’re fortunate I like you.
Even though he never says no to people (except the time he left a promising career in architecture and wouldn’t explain why), that doesn’t mean he’s always cheerful about it.
I clap his shoulder and shake it. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”
“In bed,” he mumbles, his body moving like Gumby, smooth and flexible with minimal movement, but he follows me out into the sparkling night.
“You’re the one who showed up here instead of going home.” There’s too much light pollution to see the stars, but the moon is bright and the streets are empty. It’s the slow, honest hour.
Luca follows me, pausing each time I stop for a photograph. When I take a picture at the hotel near the Fontana delle Rane, his eyebrows raise past his hairline.
Yes, fine, historically I’ve made a stink about the overabundance of hotels. “This is an old, reconstructed villa with amazing lines and classic atmosphere.” It also happens to be where Lexington is staying.
At least the tree-lined street is calm and quiet with its row of tiny parked cars like soldiers guarding the sleeping residents. Some places seem fine by day and turn seedy at night.
Luca still doesn’t look convinced that I’m checking out the hotel for artistic reasons.
“If tourists have to be somewhere in the city, I’d rather they be sleeping than wandering around.” Weak excuse, Mark. Very weak.
“I’d rather you sleep,” Luca mutters.
I make a point to take some shots of the frog statues spitting into the fountain in the center of the traffic circle. They’re a lot creepier at night.
My phone chirps. I let the message burn a hole in my pocket. No way am I looking at it right now because I can guess who is also up because of jet lag.
But Luca heard the notification. “Who is texting you at one in the morning? Is it an American?”
The way he draws the word out, insinuating there’s a love interest there, has me flinching, which I cover by taking a random shot I can delete later.
“No idea.” I keep a pace ahead of my cousin, my face in shadows.
The moon is bold and barefaced, like my lie. I catch it lingering between buildings at the top of a narrow street. While I adjust my lens, Luca reaches for my phone in my pocket.
Absolutely not. I bobble my expensive camera, dodging his greedy, curious fingers. “Hey. Not cool.”
Luca dips his chin and stares at me, his long hair covering all of his face except his eyes glittering in the dark. “Do you have a secret?”
“No.” Would I rather he not know about Lexington? Yes. But rivals don’t count as secrets.
He holds out his hand. “Then let me read it.”
Does anyone in this family understand privacy? There’s no more hiding unless I want Luca jumping to massive, inconvenient conclusions. Fingers crossed this isn’t an incriminating response from Lexington, I pull out my phone and open the text under Luca’s prying gaze.
No such luck.
I’m narrowing it down. Found lots of places that aren’t the heart of Italy.
There’s an attached photo. It’s a daytime picture of my apartment building from the street.