Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
Mark
Lexington is like a frayed wire you know about and try to ignore. Then one day you touch it in a moment of distraction and zap. You’re lit up, tingling, and surprised, even though you knew that would happen.
I’d seen her through the window on the steps reading a letter, but instead of turning away, I took her picture. She was framed perfectly, I couldn’t help it.
Then she came into the museum and I froze, even with all that time to prepare.
I forgot to give her the lira.
Frankly, I forgot everything, including how to talk. Which she apparently took for rudeness.
I jump into hyperdrive. I need damage control. Now.
With a quiet thanks to Professor Accardi for her advice about the marble floor design, I swing the blueprint canister’s strap around my chest, take the stairs to the ground floor two at a time, then step out onto the piazza.
This late in the morning, tourists swarm like locusts. I scan the faces for Lexington.
Either she went up the steps, or she headed down to the streets lined with flagship fashion stores.
Up or down?
I choose the literal higher ground—that’s always the advice grown-ups gave me when I had fights in school.
Wrapping my fist around the coin in my pocket, I lunge up the steps.
They’re shallow and easy, but there are a lot of them.
I pause, catching my breath, and check the milling crowds below me.
A familiar, slim figure in cropped jeans and bun, with a light, bouncy gait moves up the steps on the left side. Gotcha.
I stride across and grasp her elbow. That seems to be a favorite spot for my hand. “Lexington.”
She turns, one step above me. We’re at eye level, and today her gray eyes are misty with confusion. I should have thought through what I was going to say.
“Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude in there.” I release her arm and rub the back of my neck. “It’s . . . been a day, and you caught me off guard. You might have already guessed I’m not a quick adaptor.”
“Plus you spent the night in a jail cell, right? Or did they release you yesterday?” She folds her arms, eyebrow raised, ready for battle, but her expression has already softened into the comfortable teasing we had at the restaurant.
I give an exaggerated grimace. “You saw that?”
She nods, smirking. “The picture I took of you being carted off by the police is—” she clasps her hands to her chest—“my personal heart of Italy. Expect a framed copy for Christmas.”
I shake my head, mock mournful. “It was all a setup. Your photo is equivalent to a deep fake.”
“Looked pretty real to me.”
“My grandpa has no boundaries. I’m plotting my revenge.”
She laughs, and that zap pings through me again. This would be a natural time to give her the lira but I hold off. For no reason except I’ve lost my mind.
She slides her hands into her back pockets and the look on her face is so impish I’m already grinning. “Well”—she rocks on her heels and gazes up at the clear blue sky and then back to me—“you could always deface his favorite book.”
Ahh. She’s found my notes in her paperback from the plane, which was a stupid prank, but I wanted to leave a trace of our connection in the airport, despite our fight. I wasn’t ready to let her go. “I’m sorry about that. I’ll buy you a new copy.”
“It’s okay. I . . . didn’t mind.”
“Are you sure?”
She pauses like she’s weighing two equal arguments of a critical decision. “I’m sure.”
A Spanish tourist group passes us, so large and oblivious we have to squeeze against the side wall to avoid being swept up in their party.
She’s so close her head grazes my chin and our shoulders brush against one another.
The slight breeze blows a stray piece of hair across her cheek, tempting me to catch it.
Her strawberry scent fills the air around me, and I try to hold my breath and inhale all of it at the same time. Being conflicted stinks.
She smiles up at me, and I choose a side.
I pull out my phone. “Hey, let me take your picture here. You probably aren’t getting many shots with you in them.”
She sets her hands on her hips and cocks her head. “Mark Russo is about to take a picture at an actual tourist site?”
“So rare it’ll be worth millions someday. Now stand over there with the light facing you.”
“Bossy,” she says, but she complies.
I angle her shoulders, then step down the stairs until she’s framed by the butterfly shape of the steps behind her.
There are people everywhere, and it won’t be a clean shot. If we came at night, I could get a photo with my good camera instead of my phone, of just her on the Spanish Steps, one woman climbing to reach something, determined and alone.
But that’s not Lexington, I realize. This is Lexington, who, while supposedly posing for her picture, is bent, giggling, coaxing a pigeon closer to a little boy who’s trying to catch it.
At ease with people. Kind. Fun.
I pull the phone’s camera away from my face and look with my own eyes. She grins at me, an invitation to join her delight.
Why would I begrudge her that?
Right now, just for a little bit, I want to forget the issues, the future, and my worries and have fun with Lexington.