Chapter 40
Forty
Lexi
I shiver at Mark’s question, his stubble brushing against my cheek, and his voice in my ear.
The last time he was this close to me was yesterday at the ice cream shop when we almost kissed, a private corner of memory that I haven’t let myself visit.
What do I want, Mark?
The same thing I’ve always wanted. Italy. Only now for new reasons.
He pulls back, grinning. “Don’t answer yet. That would be only in the case that you win.”
I open my mouth to ask what he wants, but he shakes his head. “I’m not telling either. We just play it out and live with the results. Are you up for an adventure?” He extends a hand, and I stare at it.
What in the world am I getting myself into? How can I say yes to a blind-consequences bet?
He tips my chin up to look at his face. His heart-stopping smile dares me, coaxes me, and encourages me. There’s no more resisting. On its own, my hand lifts and shakes his.
“Good. It’s a deal.” Mark slings his bag over his head and across his chest, dumps our trash in the bin, and guides me out of the restaurant with a palm on my back. Reaching forward to push open the door in front of me, he mutters, “That was way easier than I thought it would be.”
Because my heart is a traitor.
On the narrow cobblestone street, he stretches and pulls out his big, fancy camera.
I watch him screw the lens on and mess with the settings like he’s done this a million times. There’s something so attractive about easy competence. “So what’s the game?”
He lifts his camera. “We wander Rome, doesn’t matter where. When I call Bet Shot, you have to guess what I’ll be taking a picture of. It’ll train you to look for heart and not just the Italian aesthetic. What did you have on your schedule this afternoon?”
“My schedule?” I cleared it for the afternoon because he mentioned us hanging out while we wait for the bet results. Yup. I deleted a whole afternoon of exploring parts of Italy I’ve been dying to see at the merest suggestion of Mark Time.
I’m not going to tell him that. His eyes will get mischievous and he’ll totally take advantage of all that power. “Catacombs.”
“Ugh. Pick something else.”
We stroll up the street, pausing several times for him to take a picture.
“Vatican City tour.” Before the Great Erasure, that had been on today’s plan from the last schedule rearrangement I made.
“I’ve done that too many times already. What else?”
We wander into an antique store across the street and poke around, showing each other various items of interest. I have to pry his fingers off a freaky mask he insists would be perfect for scaring Luca, but our taste in artwork is identical.
I can’t wait to show him the painting before the festival, and I’m glad he doesn’t know Reena Brooke is my mom.
I trust him now to judge me for myself, but I also want him to judge Mom’s final painting for itself too when he sees it.
I want his unfiltered reaction, not what he might think I want to hear. I’ll tell him after the vernissage.
The whole time we’re in the store, I’m providing suggestions of things to do and he keeps turning them down.
Back out on the street, I fold my arms. “Okay, Rome-Snob-Russo, what do you want to do?”
He shrugs. “We’re already doing what I want to do.”
I look up and down the cobblestone alley.
Pale, faded shutters are flung open at all the second-story windows, and vines climb the buildings along the street.
There’s graffiti on a closed shop front, an old bicycle propped against a pockmarked plaster wall, and a brick-arched window display at a used bookstore.
“This street is lovely, but what are we doing? What are we seeing?”
He lifts his camera and aims it in my direction. “We’re hanging out. I’m seeing everything I want to see.” Click. Click.
Well that’s going in my journal verbatim.
“Mark.” His name slips from my mouth.
He lowers the camera, but I don’t actually have anything to say. At least not anything I want to say out loud to him right now.
He lets the moment pass and then says, “Bet Shot. The game is live.”
We’ve barely moved from our start position.
I stand straight and scan the area for anything that’s changed.
A waiter is setting down two glasses at a tiny table squeezed against a restaurant wall, a woman adjusts her sun hat, and a bird flies out of some concealed nest on a building.
I point to the high sun hitting a blue shutter on the second story of a window.
Mark is good with light, so maybe that’s it.
“Nope. Point for me.”
I look around again. “What is it?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, I’m not telling.”
“How is that going to help me?”
He beckons for me to follow him. “Like I said, I’m not giving you the answer—this is still an ongoing bet for a coveted reward. I’m just . . . telling you when you’re wrong.”
I roll my eyes and follow him toward Piazza Navona. He’s called Bet Shot twice by the time we arrive at the busy, ancient square. My guess was wrong and—surprise, surprise—wrong again.
I sit on the stone guardrail in front of Bernini’s Four Rivers fountain and cross my legs. “Come on, I need a hint. A thousand noes won’t guide me at all.”
He gazes down at me, mouth shut tight, and I give him my most dejected expression.
He sighs, as dramatic as if I’d asked him to scrub the entire piazza with a toothbrush, and pulls me up to standing. “You are scarily impossible to refuse.” He bends close to my ear, like he’s divulging a secret. “Look for people in the middle of their stories.”
We walk the length of the square, and I spot a girl in stitches at the guy she’s with, who’s holding an empty cone, a pink splatter of ice cream at his feet. “There’s a story.”
He takes the shot, the corner of his mouth lifting. “That’s better, Lexington. A bit cliché, but progress. I’ll grant you a half point for that.”
I scoff in mock offense. “Go ahead and make up the rules as we go along. That’s totally fair.”
He laughs, leading me down a street off the square that’s choked with tourists.
Clumps of shoppers outside souvenir stores, sidewalk tables at tiny restaurants, and large meandering groups force Mark and I to walk close together.
He holds onto his camera at all times, ready for a shot and also shielding it.
His other hand brushes against the back of mine when our strides line up.
The third time it happens, his pinky links loosely for a second with mine until a toddler runs ahead of his parents toward us and I have to dodge and we aren’t in step anymore.
It’s a good thing Mark doesn’t call Bet Shot for a while, because all I can think about is that trace of his touch. Not random, but so casual and natural that it takes my breath away.
After another half hour, we stop for a snack, and I convince Mark to try the pomegranate and black currant San Pellegrino soda.
We’re sitting at an outdoor table on a semi-busy street, Mark’s legs stretched out and under my chair.
(Maybe it’s a small table and his legs are very long, but I think he enjoys tapping my chair leg with his toe anytime he wants my attention.)
I hold out grabby fingers, gesturing for him to give me the camera he’s laid on the table. “Let me take some shots. If you can part with your baby, that is.”
He passes it to me. “I trust you. Despite your taste in soda flavors.”
It’s heavy and has a lot of buttons. He stands and moves behind me, pointing out the options on the digital display over my shoulder. I absorb exactly nothing of what he is saying because he smells so good. Spicy and clean and something manly that reminds me of his deep, raspy voice.
I swivel in my chair to face the street. “Stand over there and let me get you in the shot.”
He obeys, because holding the camera makes me the authority, which I could get used to. I place him and shift him and pose him, getting bossier and bossier, bolder and bolder from my director’s chair.
For five minutes.
Chuckling, he strides over and takes the camera from me, waiting while I pull the strap from around my neck. “All right, that’s enough. I don’t think you’re ready for this responsibility.”
I untangle my hair from the buckle and toss the leather band to him. “Oh, that’s rich from a man who couldn’t resist making me sit illegally on the Spanish Steps for his picture.”
He grins and pulls his chair next to mine, thumbing through the pictures with me. He selects a few of the bad ones.
“No, don’t delete those. Send them to me.”
“Well some are—”
“Even the blurry ones.”
“You can’t even see—”
“You’re being snobby again. Not every picture has to be perfect. I can make that shine.” I lean closer to see the grid of pictures, enlarging one. “That one, for instance, I can fix all that mess in the corner, scrub the graffiti out, and adjust the lighting so it doesn’t look so harsh and—”
Yikes. With a sharp inhale, I pull back from Mark. I didn’t mean to go there, to the topic that made him so upset on the plane. Making Italy look different by editing the photos. Setting Rome up to be something it’s not. Seeing only what we want to see.
“—orangey,” I finish lamely.
I watch him, waiting for that frustration again, but his eyes soften. “That’s what you do. You make everything . . .”
He’s going to say I make everything shine, and I’m seconds from melting into a puddle at his feet.
He puts a palm on my cheek, staring into my eyes with almost over-the-top smolder. “. . . less orangey.”
I collapse into giggles and decide I like laughing as much as melting. Maybe even more.
He grabs our empty cans, drops them in the recycling bin inside the shop, and we resume our wandering.
“Okay, score is twenty-three to two-and-a-half. Good luck, Lexington.”
The way my full name has always come out of Mark’s mouth so natural and casual, it’s like he’s sliding the key to my soul into the slot.
One flick of the wrist and everything I’ve locked up inside lays open every time he uses it.
I hope he’s unaware of that because I’m wholly incapable of stopping him.
The alley soon opens onto a wider street. Two policemen stand watch in front of a government building, and a Vespa rounds the corner and buzzes too close, startling me. Without a word, Mark takes my hand.
Finally.
We’ve touched over the last week, but mostly impersonal handshakes or accidents. This is nothing like that. This is possession. Belonging. Warmth. And a very intimate type of communication. It requires matching our rhythm and staying close. It makes us a pair.
I glance up at him. The corner of his mouth lifts, and now he’s gently rubbing my wrist with his thumb. I might have trouble keeping pace with him if my spine doesn’t firm up and grow a backbone.
I take back what I said earlier. Melting is very nice too.
The game is dead. We walk and talk for hours.
(Don’t roll your eyes. Clichés are still worth at least a half point.) He tells me all about the palazzo he’s hoping to renovate, and how much he wants to get his dad to visit and reconcile with his grandfather, and I tell him stories about Julie and I starting our business, my impressions of Italy, and only a brief mention of Mom’s illness.
Nothing super deep, but everything we say has the sound of promise in it, like dropping a pebble in a cave you’re about to explore.
It’s on the verge of my tongue so many times to tell him who my mom is, but I hold back and keep to my plan to tell him after the vernissage.
As much as it doesn’t make sense—grief never does—I want to keep Mom and Mark separate for a bit longer.
Part of me is afraid that mixing them will negate this trip, like making Mom a third wheel when it was supposed to be a mother-daughter week, even though it kills me to know they’ll never meet.
We part ways outside the restaurant where I’m meeting Julie for dinner. Mark has work to do since he took the whole afternoon off to be with me, and tomorrow he has some event all evening. We don’t discuss when we’ll see each other again, but our eyes make plans, and that’s enough for now.
After I’m seated at a wooden table in a quaint, brick courtyard shaded with potted palms and flowering bushes, I shoot a message off to the Ninth King of Rome.
Sorry, change of plans. We decided to have the contest live at the Roma Festival.
He writes me back immediately.
Bummer. I was looking forward to seeing that play out.
I invite him to stop by the museum where the bet photos will be if he’s in the city during the festival—he does claim to be the king of Rome, after all—and put in his vote.
Maybe I will. Either way, keep me in the loop.
I breathe in the apricot-sweet smell of oleander flowers, waiting for Julie, alone with my thoughts for the first time today.
Despite my resolutions, I ditched the Vatican tour, again. I took no pictures of famous spots. Mark and I went nowhere in particular and did nothing but laugh and share. On my spreadsheet, it’d look like a waste of time in Rome, but I felt so engaged and alive.
This is not the Italy I imagined. I am not walking around mourning or decoding Mom’s letters or finding the temple.
This Italy is better, and I don’t know what to think about that.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but she’s not here to hear it.