Kissing in Italian (20 page)

“What were you doing at the airport?” Paige is asking Luca. “I mean, why are you in Venice?”

Thank goodness for Paige’s directness. I was curious too; what on earth is Luca doing here? And where was he going? Not back home; it would be crazy to get a plane from Venice to Florence, when the train is so fast.

“Oh, family business,” Luca says. “Nothing important.”

I notice he hasn’t really answered either question, but it’s not my place to say so. I notice, too, that he doesn’t have any bags. He wouldn’t have left them at the airport—he would have got them back from the airline on deciding not to take his flight after all. Which means he was traveling really light. All he has is a leather bag, like a small, elegant satchel, slung across his narrow chest.

But it’s not my place to ask about that, either. In fact, I’m determined not to speak a word to him.

“And you missed your flight!” Paige exclaims. “You missed your flight so you could bring Kelly back!”

“I couldn’t let her come back on her own,” he says lightly. “We thought I would bring her back here, walk back to the palazzo, and ring one of you on a mobile to let her in, quietly, so that Catia does not suspect.”

“That’s really nice of you,” Kendra says, glancing at me to see how I’m reacting to all this.

I nod, clamping my lips together.

“What a coincidence we bumped into you!” Paige comments. “That was crazy lucky.”

“Oh, Venice is tiny,” Luca says, shrugging. “
Un piccolo paese
—a small town. Even smaller than Florence. I see people I know five times a day here.”

“Wow,” Andi comments sotto voce to Stu. “Isn’t it cool to hear how real Italians live?”

“How did you know I was gone?” Kelly’s asking us.

“Violet found your note and came to get us,” Paige blurts out. “We figured you must have gone to the airport.”

“And Kendra, you were really going to pay for a taxi?” Kelly asks.

The two girls look at each other, face to face, the breeze lifting their hair. Kelly shivers a little—not, I’m pretty sure, because it’s cold, but because of this moment of confrontation.

Kendra takes a step forward, and Kelly flinches. I see Luca’s hand come up to pat her reassuringly on the arm, and my stupid jealousy flares up again, hot and bright.

“I was going to,” Kendra says. She swallows. “Kind of as a thank-you.”

“A
thank-you
?” Kelly repeats, baffled.

“If you hadn’t told on me,” Kendra continues, “I honestly don’t know what would have happened. But nothing good.” She shakes her head slowly. “Nothing good.”

Kelly seems about to speak, and then she meets my eyes: I know what she’s about to say, that she made exactly this point to Paige when the latter was having a go at her the morning after the big scene on the lawn. I shake my
head swiftly at Kelly. It would be like rubbing it in, a “told you so.”

She gets the hint, thank goodness. Instead she says simply:

“I still shouldn’t have told on you.”

“Well, you shouldn’t,” Kendra agrees. “But it ended up being the right thing to do. The wrong way to do it, but the right thing to do.”

“
Thank
you,” Kelly says, and the words truly sound as if they come from the bottom of her heart. She takes a tentative step forward, and Kendra does too: they reach out to each other, awkwardly, making it really obvious that they’ve never hugged before.

As they do, Kelly’s red head leaning into Kendra’s dark one, Paige, beside me, nudges me in satisfaction. I turn to grin at her, feeling suddenly like we’re two mums in the playground watching our daughters finally get on. They pull apart and Kendra links her arm through Kelly’s; I see with great happiness that Kelly’s pale skin is flushed with excitement and pleasure at this definitive burying of the hatchet.

“We’ll let bygones be bygones, as Paige nearly said,” Kendra comments, and she smiles, the first genuine smile I’ve seen on her face since the whole Luigi mess, as they start to walk down the pier toward land. “I’m really glad you didn’t get on a plane.”

“I thought there was a cheapo flight,” Kelly says, “but it didn’t go from the main Venice airport, but another one, miles away. I didn’t realize there were two. So I was stuck—
there was a British Airways one—but it was
so
expensive! I just got hysterical—I couldn’t face going back on my own—and then Luca found me.”

“You were really lucky,” I say quietly.

“I’m sorry I was such a cow this afternoon, Violet,” Kelly says to me. “It was really nice of you to eat my pasta.”

“Paige put hers in her napkin,” I say.

“Oh really?” Kelly manages a giggle. “I should do that next time.”

“Hey,” Andi says as we pass the Alilaguna stop on our way back to Piazza San Marco. “I just figured out what ‘Alilaguna’ means: ‘Wings of the Lagoon.’ I love that! Doesn’t it sound like a romance novel?”

“Totally!” Paige agrees enthusiastically.

“Wings of the Lagoon!”
Andi continues. “A beautiful American girl comes to Venice in the nineteenth century and gets swept away by a handsome gondolier …”

“Only her rich and powerful parents are way too snobby to allow them to date …,” Kendra chimes in.

“So they run away together in the gondola,” Andi says, “but get caught up in a terrible storm …”

“And her parents think they’re dead …,” Kendra adds.

“So they send out a search party and find them floating in the gondola, arms wrapped around each other,” Kelly suggests. “Still alive, but barely …”

“And the parents forgive her and say they can be together …,” Andi says.

“And then it turns out he’s the son of a Venetian duke who was going to have an arranged marriage, but he ran
away to be a gondolier ’cause he wanted to find a girl who loved him for himself …” Kelly’s voice is getting stronger and more confident.

“And they both live happily ever after!” Paige carols happily. “I
love
this story!”

She, Kelly, Andi, and Kendra exchange high fives.

“It’s nice when a story has a happy ending,” Luca says softly in my ear. I hadn’t realized he was so close to me. “In real life, it’s not so easy.…”

I swallow hard at the sound of his voice, at his words. All I can do is shake my head vehemently.
No. It’s not so easy. You come to Italy and meet the son of a Florentine prince and you don’t live happily ever after. Not at all
.

“Shall we go get gelato to celebrate?” Stu asks.

“Yeah! Gelato!” Andi says enthusiastically. “We’ve been eating gelato all over Italy, haven’t we, Stu? What’s the best place to get some in Venice?”

“Near here, it is Gelato Fantasy,” Luca says. “I can take you.”

“Don’t you need to get back to the airport?” Evan says, the first time he’s spoken since Luca and Kelly got out of the water taxi. “I mean, if you’ve got somewhere you need to be …”

Luca turns to flash him the most dazzling of smiles, pushing back his black hair with his long pale fingers.

“Ma no!”
he says, so charmingly that I know he’s being totally fake.
“Per niente!
Now it is too late, my flight has gone. And I am very happy to show you all where to find some good gelato.
Andiamo!”

“Wow,” Andi sighs as Luca leads us into the piazza. “Luca’s
hot
. I mean, I love you, Stu, but that’s just how I pictured Italian men.
So
handsome and sophisticated.”

“He’s a prince, too!” Paige says enthusiastically.

“Oh my God, you’re
kidding
!” Andi exclaims. “Kelly, you got rescued by a prince! That’s crazy!”

“I was so lucky he was at the airport,” Kelly says in heartfelt tones. “I don’t know
what
I’d’ve done without him.”

“We’d have turned up!” I say, for some reason finding it almost intolerable to hear Luca praised to the skies. “Kendra would’ve got a taxi, and we’d have come and found you. You would’ve been okay.”

“I’m just saying he was really nice,” Kelly says quietly to me.

I nod as we cross the square. The orchestra’s still playing a waltz, and Evan says to me:

“Violet, do you want to dance?”

I know he’s pitched it so Luca can hear; I see Luca’s shoulders stiffen. Because of course, I’m looking at him, not at Evan.

“I’m a bit knackered from all that running around,” I lie. “Another time.”

And I smile up at Evan, because he’s really nice, and because he likes me, and because I have to stop obsessing about Luca, about how much I would like it to be Luca asking me to dance.…

“Stu?” Andi says to him wistfully. “Just this once?”

“Oh,
Ev
!” Stu says to his friend reproachfully. “You
had
to go ask a girl to dance! Now you’ve dropped me in it!”

“Sorry, dude,” Evan says, not sounding remotely remorseful.

“Stu,”
Andi wails to her boyfriend. “It’s
so
romantic.…”

“Jeez, Andi,” Stu says, wrapping his arm around her. “You know guys only dance with chicks to get—uh, to get to know them. Once you’ve, uh, got to know them, you don’t need to dance anymore. Right, Ev?”

Evan falls back, and Stu emits an
“Oof”
that sounds as if Evan’s smacked him on the head.

“Dropped you in it right back, buddy!” Stu says cheerfully.

“Oh
wow
,” Paige breathes; we’ve gone down another narrow street and have stopped in front of the aptly named Gelato Fantasy. “This is
amazing
. Look! Meringue mousse! It sounds like a face cream, doesn’t it! Mmm! Strawberry cake!”

“Yellow peach and crème caramel,” Kendra says dreamily. “Ooh, I might get a Nutella crepe,” Kelly says. “Or
three
. I’m starving.”

“I bet,” I say. “You barely had any lunch and you skipped dinner.”

“Luca got me a sandwich at the airport,” she says. “But I was all wound up and I couldn’t eat it.” She looks at me, her face illuminated by the bright light pouring from the window of Gelato Fantasy, making the brightly colored ice creams and sorbets gleam orange, blue, green, deep red. “He was really nice, Violet. He got me a cappuccino and just sat and listened to me whine and cry all over him, and then he took my hand and said that I was really lucky to be here, and I shouldn’t just throw it all away. And he said that it was
my fault Paige and Kendra were cross with me, so if I didn’t come back it would be like insult to injury, cause their time here would get all messed up worrying about me.”

Wow
, I think.
Well played, Luca
.

Kelly hesitates, and then plows on.

“And he said I should come back because you would need me. ’Cause you were my friend here and that, the way things were going, you were probably going to need a friend.”

It’s true. Luca knows he’s my half brother. There’s no doubt anymore
.

Blindly, I put out a hand to steady myself, leaning into the slightly damp stone wall of the ice cream shop.

“I’m going to have milky cream and fondant chocolate!” Andi’s saying. “That sounds
amazing
!”

“What does
‘Puffo’
mean?” Stu’s asking. “That blue one?”

“It means ‘Smurf,’ ” Kendra informs him. “We saw that in Florence. Isn’t that great? It’s Smurf ice cream!”

My stomach has closed up. I can’t even think about ice cream, let alone eating Smurfs. By this time, I was more or less sure that my guess about my parentage was true, because of my mother’s stalling, her refusal to offer a clear denial; but the gap between guessing and knowing was wide enough to let me fill it up with a big bucketful of hope.

Now that gap has slammed closed. I look over at Luca. He’s gazing at me, and I can see all too clearly that I’m right. His father must have said something to him, confirmed what we suspected. His deep-blue eyes often seem to change color: they can light up, or glint bright with cynical amusement, a clear sapphire. But now they’re so dark they’re nearly black. Like mourning.

I’m mourning too. Just when I’ve seen such a nice side of him, one I hardly knew was there. Just when he’s taken care of Kelly, found just the right things to say to her, shown a level of empathy and understanding I had no idea he possessed … just as I’m more impressed with him than I’ve ever been—that’s when I’ve realized, for sure and certain, that I can never have him.

“I’m so sorry, Violet,” Kelly says. “I’m so sorry.”

And I don’t reply. Because there’s nothing at all for me to say.

The next day is as gorgeous, glowing, and sunny as all the other days we’ve had in Venice. I wish it were pouring rain. I wish there were thunder, lightning, a massive electrical storm crackling over the water. Sleet. Hail. Biblical plagues of frogs and blood and locusts. I totally mean that. Almost.

I’ve woken up in the worst temper I’ve ever experienced in my life. I slept very, very badly, tossing and turning, waking up in a cold sweat from a nightmare that involved getting stuck in a plunging lift with two faceless girls who were trying to strangle me. I have no idea what it meant, but it wasn’t good. Now I’m pacing up and down the room as Kelly’s in the bathroom taking a shower: I’ve been up for
ages, showered, dressed, ready for today’s excursion, and I have not pent-up energy, but pent-up anger to discharge.

Because I really am angry. Furious. The other girls have sorted out their problems and made peace and wafted hearts and flowers all over one another—last night was a total lovefest as we got ready for bed, all “No,
you’re
cleverer and nicer,” “No,
you
are!” and it completely made me want to puke. I went to bed in a foul mood and woke up even nastier. I want to punch through a wall, stamp a hole in the parquet floor, jump off the balcony into the canal.

It’s Mum and Dad I’m so livid with, of course. How dare they leave me for days and days without anything but some feeble texts telling me they love me and to hang on? Don’t they know, can’t they
imagine
, how utterly awful I’m feeling? How much longer am I supposed to wait in limbo like this? It’s
beyond
unfair of them, and I honestly don’t think I could be more wound up, more on edge, than I am right now.