Wish You Were Italian (17 page)

“Wait! I’ll do it.” If the first one worked … another couldn’t hurt. “I’ve got a wish.”

He raises his finger between us, a corner of his mouth turned up. I try to come up with a really compelling wish, something specific, but there is a pair of lips less than two feet away from me.

“Any day now,” he teases.

I close my eyes and blow out a puff of air.

“Ow!” Darren’s hands fly to his face.

“No! It did not just go in your eye!” I lean forward to try and help. “I’m so sorry!”

He shakes his head and flashes me his twisty-tooth smile, dropping his hands to the armrests of my chair.

“You are such a nerd.” I laugh.

I gently rub my eye again, the fire lessening but still a bit painful. Extra tears drip down my cheeks and Darren swipes at them with the back of a couple of fingers. Our faces are level. He’s on a knee in front of me, chest pressed against my legs, a pressure I hadn’t noticed until now. And now I can’t concentrate on anything else.

And he’s not moving.

My tears dry, and I can really see him, study him. A freckle on his left cheek, one near his temple. A tiny scar makes a gap in his left eyebrow. The brown of his irises are flecked with amber that brightens the center near the pupil, the color deepening as it reaches the outer edge.

Neither of us moves. Neither of us smiles. His eyes dart to my lips for the tiniest fraction of a second.

Chapter Twenty-Five

A fine mist slaps our faces as the wind kicks up again, forcing us to blink the moment away. The unused anticipation turns my stomach. Darren shifts backward, preparing to stand, but a nearby voice startles both of us.

“May I at least be introduced before you set the wedding date?”

Darren, still on one knee, scrambles to his feet, color spreading up his neck toward his ears.

“Chiara!” I stand and smooth back my hair. “What—”

She flashes a wicked smile. “I did not mean to interrupt.
Per favore
, carry on what you were doing.”

Two girls with sandwiches quickly snatch the table we abandon, so we move closer to the building, away from the cliff side. Thunder rumbles in the darkened sky overhead.

I say, “He was just—” at the same time Darren says, “I was just—” and we’re both tongue-tied.

“I had something in my eye.”

Chiara moves closer to us, making room for the other trail walkers taking shelter from the imminent downpour. A low hum purrs in her throat, hands resting purposefully on her hips.

“Darren, this is Chiara, the friend I was telling you about. Chiara, this is my—this is Darren.” I don’t know what I was going to stick in there after
my
. Friend? Can you be friends with someone if you don’t even know their last name?

Darren finally unfreezes, extending his hand, which Chiara takes in both of hers and squeezes. “Darren Ledger.”

Ledger. Darren Ledger. Pippa Ledger. Darren and Pippa Ledger.

STOP!

“You helped Pippa when she was hurt,” she says, and Darren nods. “You are one of those heroes we read about?” She rests her hand back on her hip, which she sticks out a little too far toward him for my taste.

Darren laughs and shifts his weight closer to me. “I don’t know about that. Right place, right time. That’s all.”

Chiara raises an eyebrow. “But that was a week ago. You are still here?”

He shuffles his feet. “No. Well, yes, obviously I’m here now, but I left the next day. And then I came back.” His eyes dart over to me a few times, but he won’t completely look in my direction.

“He came back,” she says to me, though not exactly softly, then looks back at him. “How lucky we are for that.” She brings a section of her raven hair in front of her shoulders and combs through it with her fingers.

My pulse pounds in my ears. She cannot be flirting with him.

Rain slips through the holes in the overhang and I pull my camera closer to my body. Why didn’t I think to check the weather forecast before I set out today? I would have at least brought my camera bag with me.

“I’ll be right back,” Darren says before approaching the order window of Bar dell’Amore.

“He is beautiful—
lui è bello,
” Chiara says. “And so much hair to hold on to.” She clucks her tongue as she sizes him up.

I stifle a gasp. “So you
were
flirting with him?”

“Does it bother you?” she asks, not taking her eyes off of his backside.

“Yes,” I say before I can think of anything more clever.

She offers me a friendly smile without showing teeth. “Then you are welcome.”

“What, I should be happy you’re flirting in front of me?”

“Now you are certain that you are interested.” She waves a hand, palm up, from her to me. “You are welcome.”

“Uh—”

Darren returns, pulling something small from a plastic sack and holding it up. A rectangular magnet depicting a cluster of colorful buildings along the sea, with scripted font that reads Riomaggiore.

“For your fridge back home,” he says, offering it to me.

He bought me a present! I reach out to take it, our fingers sweeping across each other. I swallow and try to keep from grinning like a clown.

Holding up the empty sack with his other hand, Darren says, “And for your camera.”

I attempt to raise only one eyebrow but they both fly up. He takes my camera from me and wraps it up. I gape at him. Such a simple but brilliant gesture.

I stow it away safely in my tote bag, putting one more barrier between the rain and my baby. “Thanks.”

Chiara’s attention flits to someone at the other end of the overhang. She frowns and says, “
Solo un momento
”

Too preoccupied with replaying the finger graze over and over in my head, I let her go without asking any questions and watch her feet disappear through the growing crowd.

“And thanks for the magnet,” I add to Darren. I examine it, sliding my fingers across the smooth surface.

He pushes his hands down deep into his pockets. “Well, I didn’t want your camera to get wet. And I figured the sales guy would be nicer about me asking for a big sack if I actually bought something.”

Oh. Of course. Very logical. So he didn’t really mean to give me a
present
present. “I can pay you for it,” I say, a little too upbeat. “Or maybe you want to put it on
your
fridge.”

Hurt flashes across his face, but he quickly relaxes into a smile. “No. I picked it out for you. It’s the village you’re staying in.”

I picture this deep-blue and bright-pink souvenir stuck to the pristine stainless steel refrigerator back home. Mom freaks if there’s even one fingerprint on it; there’s no way this would fly.

“I’ll have to find a creative use for it. My mom doesn’t exactly allow magnets on our fridge.”

Darren laughs as if I just told an epic joke. I smile but it’s hard to find humor in my restricted reality.

“Wait.” He stops laughing. “You’re serious? You don’t have anything on your fridge?”

“Totally serious.” This can’t be a new concept. “She thinks it’s junky and cluttered.”

“It
is
junky and cluttered! That’s what’s so great about it. Our fridge back home is like a montage of all the places we’ve been. We’ve even got a set or two of all those tiny words you combine to make sentences or movie quotes or whatever.”

I’ve never seen someone’s face light up talking about refrigerator magnets before. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation about refrigerator magnets before, period. I can’t help but smile at him.

“Those are the really fun ones,” he continues. “We like to be sneaky and make up stupid phrases for one another to find.”

My chest tightens. “And your mom is actually, like, okay with you guys doing that?”

“Are you kidding? She’s the queen of that game.”

“Sounds like a fun mom.” I sigh. “I wouldn’t know what it’s like to have one of those.”

Darren’s cheery expression fades. “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot you and your mom aren’t really seeing eye to eye right now.”

“Right now?” I huff. “Try ever.”

“That sucks.” He hooks his thumbs on the straps of his backpack and shifts toward me so a family of six sporting bright-yellow rain ponchos can squeeze behind him. They look like waddling ducks.

When they pass, I catch eyes with Darren and both of us stifle a laugh. “Did your mom ever dress up your whole family in canary-colored ponchos?” I ask.

“No way. My parents are a little, I guess you’d call them free spirited. They don’t see anything wrong with getting wet,” he says, eyes cast out over the churning sea, lost in a memory. “It’s just another side to nature.”

“I don’t know why, but that doesn’t really surprise me.”

We’re laughing together when another family passes behind him. The portly father bumps into Darren’s backpack, which sends Darren crashing into me. He grabs my elbows and steadies both of us. I can tell the fabric of my shirt near my hip is touching the fabric of his shirt.

And why isn’t he letting go?

A woman’s angry Italian shouts make us jump apart and we turn our heads in that direction. Chiara. Of course. Always ruining my perfect moments.

But she’s not shouting at us, she’s shouting at a man maybe in his early twenties. And he’s shouting back. I know Italians sound like they’re yelling eighty percent of the time even in regular conversations, but this is different. There’s something off about this guy, the way he’s glaring at her between strands of greasy, wet hair.

Chiara’s face is flushed, which I’ve never seen on her, and both of them are throwing hand gesture after hand gesture, each one more animated than the last. The people nearby—tourists, mostly—scoot away to give them room, mouths hanging open, and I get a clear view of the two of them.

The thug steps closer to Chiara and towers a full head above her. His hand curls into a fist, then relaxes. He pops his fingers.

I suck in a breath. “Is he going to
hit
her?”

Darren’s face scrunches in concern. He pulls away from me and begins to move in Chiara’s direction.

“What are you going to do?” I ask in a quiet rush.

“No idea, but something’s better than nothing.” He tucks me behind him. “Stay behind me. Far enough so you don’t catch any stray punches.”

I nod, biting back my fear for Chiara. And Darren. It’s not that Darren doesn’t look like he can fend for himself, it’s that this greasy guy is nearly a head above Darren. And his arms might be a little thicker.

When we approach, Chiara and Greasy Guy fall silent, eyes still locked in a staring contest. Theories are flying through my head. Ex-boyfriend? Jilted lover? Another cousin gone bad? He’s not particularly attractive, so I rule out all formerly romantic possibilities quickly. Maybe they’re just friends who had a falling-out. A really loud, dramatic, public falling-out.

“Chiara,” Darren finally says. “Everything okay?”

Greasy Guy looks Darren up and down with narrowed eyes and spits out what I’m guessing is a question. Darren responds, calmly, in Italian. It’s the most I’ve ever heard him say in Italian, and I can’t even tell if his accent’s right, but it’s seriously hot.

They go back and forth a few times, Chiara chiming in once in a while. I pick out a word here and there, but I mostly make up what I think they could be talking about. My version sounds like this:

Greasy Guy: “Who the bleep are you?”

Darren: “A friend of Chiara’s.”

Greasy Guy: “What kind of friend?” This is when he puffs up his chest to make himself look stronger.

Chiara: “Not that kind of friend, so chill out. Besides, Pippa’s got dibs on him.”

Darren: “Is there a problem?”

Greasy Guy: “Yeah. You. How about you get out of my way?”

Darren: “Chiara comes with us.” This is when Darren nods in my direction and I back up a hair.

Greasy Guy: “You can’t have her. We’re not through here.”

Chiara: “I should have cut ties with you years ago! You selfish piece of bleeping ble—”

Greasy Guy: “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t put a dent in that pretty face of yours!”

Chiara backs away and links her arm with mine, pulling me over to where Darren and I had stood. I turn my head to check on him. He’s right behind us. Greasy Guy takes off toward Manarola.

Okay, so my version of their conversation must not have been accurate.

Thunder cracks above us, and another round of rain sprinkles down.

“It is about to get worse,” Chiara says with an edge to her voice, arms crossed. I wonder if she’s really talking about the weather. “We should not be out on la Via dell’Amore when it does. Go on your way.” She motions to us to continue on to Manarola.

That was my original plan—to spend the day with Darren. And his girlfriend who magically happens to be his
brother’s
girlfriend. My stomach tightens. Now that I’m actually allowed to be into him, I’m freaking out.

I turn to Darren and speak so Chiara can’t really hear me. “I think I should go back with Chiara. She seems a little shaken up.”

“Oh,” he says, shoving his hands back into the pockets of his cargo shorts.

“Plus, if it’s about to storm.…” Lame, Pippa.

“Right, right. Yeah, you girls be careful.” He takes a step back and glances at my feet. “Especially you.”

Chiara studies my face with narrowed eyes. “You are certain this is what you want to do?”

I can’t look at Darren because I know I’ll change my mind. I need to get away. Need more time to think.

I put my arm around her shoulders and lean in close, exaggerating my concern for her situation. “Yes, I’m going back with you.”

Darren pulls his hands out of his pockets and grabs on to the straps of his backpack again. “Well, I wanted to tell you … we’re checking out Genoa for a couple of days. It’s just up the coast a little.”

He’s leaving again. “Oh, okay,” I say, unable to mask my disappointment.

“But we’ll be back here by Wednesday,” he adds quickly. “I’ll stop by the restaurant, if that works for you.”

“Sure,” I say through a smile that can’t be helped. For once I know exactly when I’ll see him again. “See you Wednesday.” I grip Chiara’s shoulder harder and start to turn her toward Riomaggiore.