Wish You Were Italian (25 page)

“No.” I feel in the dark for my backpack and cram the journal inside.

“Please. Just admit you were drawing hearts around someone’s name.”

“I didn’t even do that in junior high,” I say, my high-pitched whisper threatening to break into full voice.

“Like I believe that.” He whisper-laughs again.

A mattress spring creaks and I can hear movement near the head of his bed. A second later I can just make out Darren’s outline as he folds a pillow in half and lies on his side, facing me. I grab my own pillow and mirror him. Nina’s snoring deepens and Tate rolls over. I hold my head perfectly still and sense Darren do the same. It feels like we’re about to get caught breaking some kind of rule, lying on our beds the wrong direction.

We’re quiet for so long, I’m sure Darren’s fallen back to sleep. I let my eyes close and start counting my toes again.

“I keep a journal too.” His whisper seems much closer than I expected.

In the soft light from above, I can see the glisten of his eyes looking right at me.

I swallow and my throat makes an embarrassingly loud gurgling noise. “Is it full of hearts?” I manage to ask.

The corner of his mouth pulls up. “That’s pretty much all I put in there. Hearts and flowers and more hearts.”

My bed shakes from the chuckle I’m containing. “Hey, as long as it’s not poetry.”

“What’s wrong with poetry?”

“Nothing.” I bite my lip, worried I offended him. “You write poems?”

“Sure. I’ve won awards for it.”

“Oh. Wow. That’s … cool,” I manage, reluctant to admit that poetry’s one of those things I don’t understand. At all. And people who do “get” it enough to write their own make me nervous with their intellectual prowess.

“Kiddiiiiing,” he draws out in a gravelly breath.

“Make up your mind,” I tease, secretly hoping he really is kidding. “Do you or don’t you?”

Eyes completely adjusted now, I can see him raise his hand and cross his fingers. “Don’t. Scout’s honor.”

“Funny,” I say, snatching his hand and yanking it down. “Did you already forget how to promise?” I worm my pinkie around his and squeeze.

He squeezes back and lowers our joined hands to the bed. My heartbeat is strong in my ears. Do I pull away first? Do I wait for him to? What if he doesn’t? What if we fall asleep like this?

“I promise I don’t write mushy, girly stuff,” he says. “I just like to keep track of what’s going on, you know? The places I go, the things I find. The people I meet.”

I could be imagining it, but the hold on my hand seems to be tighter.

“I know one day I’ll want to look back,” he continues, “and I don’t trust my memory alone to remember everything. What’s important to me right now might not be later, but that doesn’t mean I want to forget it.” He yawns and his eyes get watery, tired.

I fight the temptation to yawn myself. “I think you’ve just made an excellent case for diaries. Maybe I’ll start keeping one.”

He yawns again and his grip on my pinkie loosens, but we’re still mostly hooked together. “It looked like you already were,” he says in a fading whisper. His eyes drift closed.

I stare at his relaxed face, pale in the dim light. Nearly asleep, he looks vulnerable. Like I could tell him anything I wanted and he wouldn’t remember it in the morning.

When I first met him, I thought he was attractive but not in an omg-he’s-the-most-gorgeous-thing-I’ve-ever-seen way. But somehow, now that I know him, how his light brown eyes can sear right through me, how the corner of his mouth turns up when he laughs, how he blushes when he’s caught wearing a headband, I can see that he really is beautiful.

His hand twitches and his breathing slows, deep and heavy. In an instant he’s fallen asleep, and I’ve fallen even harder for him.

And I have no idea what to do about it.

The Roman Forum near the Colosseum is rubble, the layout hardly discernible to the untrained eye. But Pompeii is a preserved city. Colorful mosaics and frescoes, even some artwork on ceilings remain intact, protected for centuries by the very ash that killed everyone in its path.

Darren’s in his element, dragging me from one point of interest to the next, leaving Tate and Nina in our dust. We reach a clear enclosure protecting thirteen body castings. Darren
explains that the archaeologists who discovered the hollow cavities in the ash filled them with plaster, let them dry, then chiseled the pumice around them to reveal exactly how the bodies lay when they died. A few of them are small, obviously children, and all of them are on their sides or facedown except for one man in the corner who’s halfway sitting, as if he gave one last vain effort to escape.

I snap a picture, then let my camera hang around my neck. It feels almost disrespectful to take pictures of these figures that were living people once upon a time.

Warily I gaze back at the looming Mt. Vesuvius only five miles away. Could it go up right now?

“Don’t worry,” Darren leans in and whispers, reading my mind. “It’s an active volcano, but they’re monitoring it.”

“They better be.” I eye it one more time before facing him. “Where to next?”

He studies the visitor guide and points in the direction we came from. “Let’s go see the Great Theater.”

“There’s a theater?” I ask, instantly brightening.

“You’re surprised they had a theater, or that it survived?”

“Well, that they had one at all, I guess.”

We walk a few streets over, the afternoon summer sun beating down hard on my shoulders. Darren leads me through an arched tunnel that opens to a dirt U-shaped area where the orchestra pit would be in a modern theater. The slope of a grassy hill wraps around us, tiered with stone steps and remnants of seats, evidence that this theater held thousands of spectators once upon a time.

When the crowd thins a little, I rotate in a circle, taking a
360-degree panoramic. Darren ducks out of my way, so I make him pose for me to get a shot of him alone with the brick ruins in the background.

I preview it on the little screen. His hair is magically controlled today, every curl falling perfectly in place around his head, though his facial hair is the scruffiest I’ve seen yet. His smile is more of a smirk, mischievous. Like he knows I have every intention of making this the background picture on my computer.

A smile pinches my cheeks and I raise the camera to my eye, taking pictures of everything around me a second time just to hide.

“When did the volcano blow?” I ask.

“It’s erupted quite a few times, but the one that did all this was in AD 79.”

My eyes scan the perimeter of the theater. “Did it ever have a roof?”

“I think they used big canvas awnings.” He tugs at the collar of his shirt. “Which we could use right now.”

I lead us closer to the stone seats to get a better look at them. “It sort of makes it hit closer to home. I mean, when you imagine life back then, you think of the primitive parts: building things, growing food, trying not to get stabbed by someone’s sword. You forget they might have had time for other stuff, like putting on plays.”

“Oh, I know,” he says. “I think about that too, how people were still people. They looked out of their eyes and lived inside their heads just like you and I do. Think of how differently their eyes saw this place.”

I smile. “And you said you don’t write poetry.”

He laughs and palms the back of his neck. “Really though, you have to wonder how different we are. Minus electricity and modern medicine, I think things operated about the same. They went to work, came home to their families, ate meals together. The rich had the power, the poor did what they could to survive.” His eyes travel up an ancient aisle of steps. “But people have always wanted to be entertained. These days we just have fancier methods.”

I think of how cities now have separate venues for different types of entertainment. Concert halls for orchestras and operas, grand theaters for traveling productions, small clubs for lesser-known musicians. Even each type of sports team has its own place to play. But this broken-down pit was where the locals came for political speeches, concerts, plays, and festivals. All here in one place, right where we’re standing.

“Too bad it was buried before Shakespeare,” Darren continues. “This stage never saw the likes of Romeo or Macbeth.”

I whirl around to face him in horror. “No no no no no, don’t say the
M
word!”

“What
M
word? Macbeth?”

“‘Angels and ministers of grace defend us,’ “I mutter, turning from him and heading for the exit.

“Pippa, what are you doing?” he asks, right on my heels.

I stop inside the tunnel and he bumps into me, clutching my elbows to steady me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head as embarrassed laughter overtakes me. “Theater background. Superstitious bunch.”

“You’re superstitious?” His rough voice echoes above our heads, so he leans in closer and says, “I didn’t really see that coming.”

“I’m usually not, but I guess that got ingrained. Everyone in my circle knows not to say that inside a theater.”

“Bad luck, I take it?” he asks. I nod and he observes the place one more time before following me out. “Not to be insensitive to our surroundings or anything, but I think bad luck’s already done its business here.”

“Old habits … blow up in your face.” I adjust my ponytail and try to concentrate on what’s around us, but from the corner of my eyes I see Darren bite his lip. I’m not sure if he finds this new information about me endearing or insane.

He follows me quietly for a few minutes before speaking again. “So theater, huh? Not sure I saw that one coming either.”

“Why?” My cheeks are warm, but I keep in front of him and look anywhere but his direction.

“The theater kids back at my high school were … a lot different than you.”

I laugh a little louder than necessary. “There are definitely some characters in drama club. As far as style or individuality goes, I’m not much of a standout at school.”

“You would have stood out to me.”

“I don’t need any tall-girl jokes from you, thanks.”

He shrugs. “That’s not what I meant.”

Must. Look. Away. What else can I take a picture of? I point the camera to my feet and snap a few.

“You’re taking pictures of your feet?” His tone is equal parts curious and amused.

“Oh yeah,” I say, turning the camera on his sneakers. “I’ll call it, ‘Standing in Pompeii.’”

“How original.”

Great. I’ve just made myself a certifiable nutcase.

“There you two are,” Nina calls.

She offers a smile almost identical to Chiara’s when she’s up to something. Nina drops Tate’s hand and presses the power button on her point-and-shoot camera. She motions for Darren and me to get closer together, but we’re like rocks.

“Come on, I want a picture,” she prompts.

Darren doesn’t move, so I walk over to him and leave a few inches between us. Nina huffs and reaches for Darren’s arm, wrapping it behind my head and resting his hand on my shoulder. My bare shoulder!

“Nina—” Darren starts to gripe.

“Shut up, I’m giving you direction. You two are pathetic.” She stands by Tate again and takes a picture of us. “Smiling won’t kill you, doll.”

“I
am
smiling,” I say through gritted teeth, Darren’s hand burning into my skin.

She puts a fist on her hip and shifts her weight impatiently. “Not you. Him.”

I turn to look at Darren, but he’s still holding on to me and my body sort of melts into his. He turns his face to mine too and I bite back a nervous laugh, which makes him crack a smile.

“Finally,” Nina says as she takes a couple more pictures.

My smile stretches ear to ear and I’m completely lost in Darren’s deep eyes. Nina’s still chattering on, probably asking us to change poses, but I don’t hear any of it and Darren doesn’t seem to either. It’s just us. Me and the boy I watched fall asleep last night. The same cute face I stared at until my eyes burned with
heaviness and forced me to close them. The hand on my bare shoulder is the same one that still held a loose grip on mine this morning when I woke up.

My head is light and my fingers shake, but I can’t stop smiling. He’s so close. All he has to do is lean—

“Where’s the mistletoe when you need it?” Nina’s voice cuts through my thoughts.

His eyes dart to my lips for an instant and his smile falls. “I think you got enough pictures, Nina,” Darren says, dropping his arm and turning from me to Tate who looks as confused as I am.

Nina sighs and slips her arm through mine. “Are you hungry? I’m starving. Let’s go find some food.”

We follow the boys down the black stone street, heat radiating from it in waves. I glare at Darren’s sweat-spotted back, a good twenty feet ahead of us already.

What. Just. Happened?

Chapter Thirty-Five

See Pompeii

The view of the Amalfi coast on the boat ride from Positano to the island of Capri is the biggest reason the guys selected Positano as our home base. As the vessel pulls away from the marina, I’m able to take in the whole cliff-side town for the first time, the colorful buildings spilling from the mountains toward the turquoise sea. Houses become sparse, dotting the lush green vineyards tiered up the slopes reaching high into the mist of early morning.

I take way too many pictures of the coast, zooming in on buildings that look like castles along the shore, a giant cave on the side of a cliff, and boats we zip past that are much smaller than our ferry. Nina poses for a few with Tate at the railing of the
deck with Positano in the background. They hang all over each other, grinning like fools and pecking each other on the cheek. If I wasn’t so jealous of their relationship, I might be annoyed.

Okay, so maybe I’m jealous
and
annoyed.

“What should we do first?” Tate asks when we get off the boat at the Marina Grande.

Nina leans into him and points to a map of the island. “The chair lift to the top of Monte Solaro. Or we could check out la Grotta Azzurra.”

Tate looks to me, then Darren. “All in favor with the queen?”