Flirting in Italian (24 page)

I draw in a long breath, and then it catches in my throat as his hand closes over mine, still wrapped around his waist.

“Siamo arrivati,”
he says gently.

I have to get off first, I realize. And I’m embarrassed that it takes me a while to unwind my arms. Luca starts to turn and I realize with horror that my skirt is practically up around my waist: this galvanizes me and I jump off so fast I nearly fall over, dragging down my skirt so he can’t see my thighs. I’m wobbling, shaken up by the ride, and I hear him huff a little laugh of amusement as he swings his leg over to sit on the seat facing me, unbuckling his helmet.

“You like to ride on a Vespa?” he asks.

I take my helmet off and hand it back to him.

“Well, it’s bumpy,” I say.

I can’t really see his face, it’s so dark out here. There are a couple of lights on the villa walls, one over the main door, but that’s higher up; the parking lot is around the side, barely illuminated.

He stands up, towering over me, and puts the helmets down on the seat.

“And loud,” he says. “You know what
‘vespa’
means?”

I shake my head, my mouth suddenly dry, because he’s taken a step toward me, and his legs are so long that one step means he’s already standing in front of me, close enough to touch.

“It means ‘wasp,’ ” he says softly. “Because it makes a sound like a wasp. How do you say that?”

“Buzzing,” I manage. “It buzzes.”

“Buzzes,” Luca says, and his accent makes the word sound so funny that I can’t help laughing.

“You laugh at me?” he asks, and though he’s put on a serious voice, as if he’s annoyed, somehow I know he isn’t. “Girls never laugh at me. You are the only one.”

“Well, maybe they should,” I say without thinking.

“No,” he says firmly. “Only you can laugh at me.”

I don’t know what to say to this. I stand there, tongue-tied, which is very unlike me. It feels simultaneously as if we’re very close, and also miles away. I yearn for him to touch me, but I’m scared I’ll slap him if he does. I won’t let him take me for granted. Not after he’s spent the entire evening, as far as I know, with Elisa and not with me.

I think he’s read my mind, because after a brief pause, he asks, “You have a nice time at the party?”

There’s only one answer to this.

“Lovely,” I say, and I actually toss my head as if I were a heroine in an old film, being coquettish with an admirer.

“I danced and danced,” I add airily. “With lots of people. I didn’t see you at all.”

“I see you,” he says, “with Sebastiano. You dance a lot with him.”

I answer lightly, “Oh yes! He’s very nice. I really liked him.”

Luca’s feet shift on the gravel.

“He has lots of friends,” he says rather snappily. “Lots of girls.”

“Like you,” I snap back. “Elisa says you have lots of girl friends too. Foreign girls.”

Luca sighs heavily, and reaches up to run a hand through his hair.

“Elisa—” he starts, and then halts, as if he’s choosing his words very carefully. He sighs again. “Elisa,” he finally continues, “can sometimes be not very nice. Even to her mother, she is not very nice. It is maybe better not to listen to what she tells you.”

“This just in,” I mutter. “Breaking news revelation.”

“Come?”
Luca stares down at me, fine streaks of black hair now tumbling over his forehead.
“Non capisco.”

“Elisa,”
I say in Italian as careful as his English,
“è una stronza.”

He bursts out laughing.

“Brava,”
he says.
“Complimenti.”

And he’s very clever, because he uses the laughter to carry him toward me somehow, on a quick step forward, and the next thing I know he’s taken my hands and is holding them in his.

I don’t know what to do. I look at our clasped hands. It feels as if he’s cleared the ground, swept away Sebastiano
and Elisa; has tried to tell me that he saw me dancing with Sebastiano and was too jealous to come over, and that he doesn’t like Elisa that way.

Of course, he might just be telling me what I want to hear
.

“Violetta—” he starts, and I look up at him, which is a huge mistake.

Because he promptly kisses me, and I’m not ready.

I’m still not sure that Luca hasn’t had a lovely evening flirting with Elisa, then decided, on a whim, to pursue me instead. For all I know, he’s going to go back to Elisa and tell her I’m not very nice. I don’t have enough to be able to trust him. I remember Elisa winding her arm through his, taking him out onto the terrace at the castello, and him walking with her without even glancing back in my direction.

My brain says I shouldn’t be kissing him.
Hold him off at least once!
it advises.
Don’t kiss him every time you see him! This is not cool behavior!
But it hasn’t sent the message through to my body, which is tilting up toward him, closing my eyes as his lips come down on mine. Our hands are still clasped together, and that’s weakening my awareness that I should stop the kiss, because the handclasp feels magically romantic, a knot held tightly against our hearts. Luca is the opposite of boys I’ve kissed before. He doesn’t push, he doesn’t grab, he doesn’t do anything until I’m desperate for him to do it. It’s incredibly seductive, because it makes me want more and more, more than just our lips parting, our tongues meeting, our mouths drowning in each other. I want everything, I want him so badly. My fingers wind through his tightly,
pressing into our chests, and the surge of feeling that rises in my body frightens me with its sheer force.

I’d do anything. I’d do anything with him
.

It’s too much. I wrench myself away. If I’m feeling like this, when all we’re doing is kissing, not even with our arms around each other, just holding hands, for goodness’ sake—how on earth would I feel if we were in a room together, with the door closed and no one to interrupt us? What would I do? How far would I go?

I know the answer. And that’s why I panic and pull myself away, untwisting my fingers from his, and blurt out, in a crude attempt to push him away verbally as well as physically:

“Luca—did you know I got sick after I was at your house? The castello? Catia had to call the doctor. I was really sick.”

“Cosa?”
Luca looks completely shocked. “I did not know.”

“Stomach pain,” I say, patting my tummy. “I was really sick.”

“Ma cosa dici? Violetta
—
”
He catches himself and goes into English with a visible effort. “With you—”

He paces away, striding in a wide circle, running his hands through his hair.

“With you, it is difficult!” he says finally, halting in front of me. “I do not know what you will say next. Or do next. I find you in my home locked into the
passaggio segreto
, and you say someone has locked you in, and now you say you are sick after you make the visit, and my mother
—la mia mamma!
—says you are very,
very
like my
zia
Monica, like her
gemella
—twin—and that is strange
—everything
with you is strange. I don’t know why it is so. And difficult!”

He buries his hands deep in his hair, the picture of frustration.

“What do you mean, you were sick?” he demands, staring down at me.

“I sort of fainted,” I say frankly. And even though it sounds gross, I add, “I threw up. Lots. The doctor pumped my stomach.”

“Dio mio! Violetta!”
Luca’s genuinely horrified. “You are all right now?”

He reaches out and brushes hair back from my forehead, curls that got stuck there under the helmet. It’s such a tender gesture that a lump forms in my throat, and I swallow hard. I nod, and his hand stays in my hair, stroking it gently.

“Oh!” I say, remembering something I wanted to tell him. “I downloaded some albums of that singer you mentioned before. Jovanotti. He’s really good.”

“You like him?” Luca smiles. “He is very good.”

“Yes, I’m teaching myself Italian by translating the lyrics.”

He smiles again. I just want to wrap myself around him and hold on tight. Keep him smiling forever.

Above us, a door bangs in the villa, someone hisses a “Shh!” and we hear footsteps coming along the stone path above us. Whispered conversation, muffled giggles.

“Guys!” comes Kendra’s voice, pitched low and discreet. “Are you down there? We heard the scooter come up the drive.”

Nice and tactful
, I think gratefully.
If Luca and I were having a major snog, that’d give us enough time to disentangle ourselves and get decent
.

“We’re here!” I whisper back. “Did you get Paige to bed okay?”

“Yes and no,” Kendra says quietly, coming down the steps to the parking lot. Andrea’s following on her heels like an obedient dog. “We got her upstairs, but she was all messed up and crying about the pony not being pink, and she woke up Catia.”

“Bollocks,”
I say, with feeling.

“What is ‘bollocks’?” Luca asks, sounding very interested.

“Never mind,” I say firmly to him. “Is Catia really pissed off with us?”

“We have to have a meeting tomorrow morning after breakfast,” Kendra says gloomily. “To set new house rules.”

“Oh
no
,” I sigh.

“Yup. We should go to bed now. I don’t think Catia really cares that much.” Kendra adds cynically, “She’s just going through the motions. But, you know, we shouldn’t look like we’re—”

“Taking the piss,” I finish.

“Taking the piss?”
Luca echoes, his accent so funny that I stifle a giggle. Not quite well enough; he hears it and aims a playful smack to the back of my head, which I dodge with another giggle. That’s the thing about Luca. One moment we’re teasing each other, then we’re kissing, then we’re fighting, or being serious. And it can change so fast, it’s dizzying.

No wonder I don’t feel in control of anything when I’m with him. And honestly, cool as he seems, I don’t know if he’s any more in control of what’s between us than I am. One moment I’m doubting him, watching him let Elisa stroke his
hair; the next I’m feeling a connection between us stronger than anything I’ve experienced before.

“O
-kay
,” Kendra says, with an intonation that perfectly conveys what she wants to say. She jerks her head toward the steps.

“We should go,” I say. I look at Luca hopelessly. “Get home safe,” I manage, shrugging out of his jacket, which I’ve only just realized I’m still wearing, and handing it to him.

He takes it and flourishes me an elaborate bow, the jacket dangling from his outstretched hand, which should look stupid, but actually feels as romantic as when he held my hands while kissing me. I know I’ve gone bright red.

“Kaiindra—” Andrea begins, but Kendra’s already walking swiftly up the steps.

“Text me,” she says over her shoulder.

I follow her up. At the top I turn and look briefly at the parking lot. The two boys are standing there, looking up at us. Luca’s staring straight at me, and I have to look away to avoid breaking into a silly smile.
Honestly, they’re so gorgeous. The kind of boys you dream of meeting if you come to Italy. Who’d have thought it? How lucky are we?

“Andrea’s really good-looking,” I say to Kendra in a low voice when I hear the Vespa and the jeep start up.

“Whatever.” She shrugs. “The weird thing? I love to, you know, hook a boy on the line, but when I do? I don’t care about ’em anymore. I’m funny that way.”

I digest this. “So you’re not really keen on Andrea?”

She shrugs again.

“Not now. He’s gotten all needy.”

“Wow,” I say respectfully. “You’re very tough.”

“I can’t help it,” she says simply. “I’ve always been like that. I get bored really fast.”

“Wow,” I say again. “You’re like a nasty guy. So look—don’t get upset—but if you don’t like Andrea, do you think you could leave him alone? I think Kelly really likes him, and if you don’t care one way or the other—”

“Sure,” she says casually as she pushes open the front door of the villa. “No prob. Plenty more fish in the sea.”

I shut the door behind me. And maybe because I’m tired, and it’s dark, and she’s been so nice about leaving Andrea alone, I ask:

“Are you okay about forgetting that nasty comment Elisa made? You know, about you being exotic?”

“Because I’m black?” Kendra wheels around to look at me directly, stopping in her tracks. “Yeah, I was really mad about that. But then I thought, what am I going to do, not date anyone or have fun the whole time I’m here? Elisa would
totally
win if I did that!” She smiles, her teeth beautiful and white, but there isn’t an ounce of humor behind it. “I had a really good time tonight. Tons of boys hanging off me. And I could see it was really messing with her head—she kept giving me these dirty looks. So I’m going to get as many boys as I can running after me this summer. Just to make Elisa really …”

She pauses.

“What would Kelly say?
Narked
.” Now her smile’s real. “I want to make Elisa
narked
.”

I smile back: the English word sounds really cool in her American accent.

“Is there anyone you do like?” I ask as we tiptoe upstairs to bed. “Obviously not Andrea …”

“Maybe,” Kendra says as we reach the top of the staircase. “But I don’t actually like boys.”

I’m so taken aback by this I stop, trying to read her expression, and she laughs softly, turning away to the room she shares with Paige. “Just messing with you a little there,” she says, flashing me a smile over her shoulder that, even in the moonlight, I can see is genuine. “When I said I don’t like boys—I meant, I like men.”

And she whisks herself into the bedroom, closing the door behind her on the perfect exit line.

Luca, I am all too aware, has still not asked for my phone number. A few days after the party, floods of texts are still swamping both Kendra and Paige’s phones, and Gianbattista’s already rung Kelly several times, asking her out. The only girl at Villa Barbiano who doesn’t have a boy getting in touch with her is me. Sebastiano wasn’t interested in me that way, I know. He was just a dancing mate.

It’s incredibly annoying.

The thing is, when I’m with Luca, it’s so overwhelming that I feel swept away, as if I’m struggling all the time to keep my balance. It never occurs to me when we’re together that he isn’t asking for my phone number. But it means that afterward, I can’t expect a text or a call from him. There’s no
way for him to get in touch and make plans for us to meet again. It’s really unbalanced. He knows where I am most of the time—at Villa Barbiano, doing lessons, hanging out. And if we do go out in the evening, to a party or to the bar in the village, all he has to do is get Leonardo to let him know, and then he can drop in and see me if he wants.

Or not, if he doesn’t want.

I sigh. It feels incredibly unfair. I’ve lived in London all my life, in the center of a big city with Tubes and buses and bike lanes. Parties, going out, hanging out with friends are all so easy that I’ve taken it completely for granted. I never gave a moment’s thought to people who live in the countryside or who aren’t old enough to drive, or can’t afford a car, and are completely dependent on friends for their social life. How do they manage? If you lived somewhere like the place we went last night, gorgeous as it was, how do you get around and see people? Maybe they have Vespas. But how old do you have to be to have one of those? At least sixteen, I’d think. Maybe even older. And they can’t be cheap.

Luca has a Vespa, of course. And a car. Maybe he shares the car with his mum, like Leonardo does with Catia, but I can’t imagine the principessa goes out much. He can nip around as much as he likes, while I’m stuck pretty much in one place.

Okay, that’s enough self-pity
, I tell myself.
Concentrate on memorizing imperfect conjugations. Kelly and Kendra probably know theirs backwards already
. It’s the afternoon, a glorious sunny day, and we’re by the pool, Italian grammar books in our hands. Well, everyone has them but Paige, who’s given up
even pretending to study and is flicking through magazines.
If you’re stuck somewhere, there can’t be a better place in the world for it. Don’t be spoiled
. It’s gorgeous weather, and although I’m being careful to use sunblock, I’m getting a lovely tan. Golden and healthy.

Like an Italian girl. Not one with a Scandinavian mother and a Scottish father
.

I bite my lip. Coming to Italy, wanting to find out the reason that the girl in the portrait in Sir John Soane’s Museum looks like me, has tangled me up much more painfully than I thought it ever could. I thought there could be secrets buried in my family that I might not want to know about. I never thought about the secrets in the di Vesperi family, how my resemblance might affect them. I never expected that they might see the likeness in me. That definitely never crossed my mind.

How could I possibly have expected that generations down the line I’d meet and feel this way about the son of the family? And what’s more, that he would be attracted to me …

Thank goodness, I’m leaving all that well alone
. What do I care if I saw my own face looking back at me from an eighteenth-century portrait? I have a mother and father who love me, and a really good life. I tell myself that I should be glad Luca doesn’t have my phone number. Because if he did, then I’d be on tenterhooks all the time, checking constantly to see if he’d texted, or if I’d missed a call from him. It’s better this way. I can actually get on with things here that I care about without being perpetually distracted by the possibility of him getting in touch.

Yes. It’s much better this way
.

I huff a sarcastic laugh. I am appallingly bad at lying to myself. I look around the pool area: Kelly, wrapped in a towel—she’s still very uncomfortable at being seen in a swimsuit—is immersed in one of the textbooks we all had to bring with us for the course, the same one that’s lying on my lap. Its cover is shiny and cheerful, stripes of white, green, and red, but its subject,
Basic Rules of Italian Grammar
, is dry as a bone. Still, Kelly’s reading it as intently as if it were a torrid vampire romance, her lips moving as she recites irregular verb conjugations to herself, and Kendra, not to be outdone, is scribbling notes in her own copy.

“How do you say ‘love and kisses’ in Italian?” Paige asks, absorbed in her texting.

“Amore e baci,”
Kelly and Kendra promptly reply, and cast jealous glances across the loungers at the speed of each other’s response.

“Who are you writing that to?” I ask curiously.

“Everyone!” Paige says. “ ‘Hi boy, love and kisses!’ I’m writing that back to all of ’em. I can’t even remember which one’s which.
Ciao ragazzo, amore e baci
.” She types it in, sends it, and clicks on another message. “Ooh, what does this mean?
‘Sei una favola, bambola mia’
?”

“ ‘You’re a fairy tale—’ ” Kelly starts, looking smug.

“ ‘My doll,’ ” Kendra finishes for her. “ 
‘Bambola’
is doll.”

“Huh. ‘You’re a fairy tale, my doll’? That’s
weird
,” Paige says. “Maybe just kisses for him. No love. And what’s
‘bonona’
? Is that like another doll?”

I prick up my ears, remembering the word from the party: a boy said it watching Kelly walk across the room.

Kelly blushes. “It means a girl with curves. It’s a good word. Like a compliment.”

“You’re kidding!” Paige sits up straight, looking over her sunglasses at Kelly.

“No, honestly,” Kelly assures her. “It’s a mash-up of the words for ‘big’ and ‘good.’ But in a really good way.”

“Like big is beautiful?” Paige starts to giggle. “I could be eating
more
pasta, then! And to think I was looking at all those Italian girls at the party and envying how thin they are! When the boys really want a nice curvy girl!
‘Bonona,’
 ” she reads out from her phone. “I don’t get all of this message, though. He keeps putting sixes in for some reason.”

“Oh, that’s ’cause they use the number six in texting to mean
‘sei,’
‘you are,’ ” Kelly explains. “ ’Cause six is
‘sei’
in Italian. It’s like us using the number two to mean—”

“Got it,” Paige says with satisfaction, scrolling through the message. “Hey, now this actually sort of makes sense! You’re super-smart, Kelly.”

“It’s pretty obvious, really,” Kendra snaps. “I worked it out ages ago.”

Kelly turns a page in her textbook. “You didn’t mention it, though, did you? And you didn’t say it just now.”

“That’s because you’re always jumping in first,” Kendra says with an audible sneer. “You’ve just got to be teacher’s pet, even when there isn’t a teacher around.”

I catch my breath, worried that this very obvious attack will devastate Kelly. But I’ve underestimated her.

“I have to be teacher’s pet,” she says calmly, not even giving Kendra the satisfaction of raising her eyes from her book. “My family’s not rich like yours. I have to use my brain
and suck up to the teachers to get scholarships so I can make something of myself.”

Wow
, I think at this body blow to Kendra.
Well played, Kelly
. I realize that she must have had to deal with this kind of accusation before, from other girls jealous of her cleverness, and learned exactly how to deflect it.

I should say something to cut the tension, but Paige gets in there first.

“Jeez, I completely forgot!” she exclaims. “There were three guys called Riccardo at the party! I called ’em Riccardo One, Two, and Three. Look!” She waves her phone around. “That’s how I put their numbers down. Hilarious!” She looks thoughtful. “I sort of remember Riccardo Three having a hissy fit, but hey, it wasn’t
my
fault I met him third, was it? But maybe it was Riccardo Two.” She pulls a comical face. “I’ve got a few memory blanks about the party.”

Catia was surprisingly blasé about Paige’s coming home staggering drunk and sobbing about My Little Pony not being pretty enough; in the next morning’s house meeting, she was going through the motions rather than laying down the law. Considering that neither her own daughter or son had yet to return from the party, and that Leo, who’d taken us, hadn’t bothered to bring us back, even with Paige in that state, Catia wasn’t starting from a highly elevated moral perspective. But I honestly don’t think she’d have cared much anyway. Catia limited herself to telling us firmly again that Italians don’t drink to excess—something I’d noticed myself—and she wants us to behave like the locals while we’re here.

She added something a bit pompous about hoping that
our experience here will encourage us to go back home and show people there that you don’t need to get horribly drunk to have a good time. (I’d have been crosser about that if I hadn’t had to admit that she might have a point.)

Catia concluded by saying that she knows we’re all young, and young people like to go to parties and have fun. We’ll have to learn how to moderate our drinking and be sensible, and she’s pleased to see that three of us already managed that with no problem at all. Paige and Kendra were goggle-eyed: they were definitely expecting to be read the riot act. Things are clearly a lot laxer in Italy than America.

I realize my gaze has drifted sideways, beyond the rosemary bushes, to the cypresses that line the parking lot, hidden down below the stone wall that borders it. I’m remembering two nights ago, standing there with Luca, still wearing his jacket, kissing him, our hands twined together, and my heart turns over in my chest. I jump off the lounger and walk over to the edge of the pool. It does me no good to turn pictures of Luca over and over in my mind. Especially as I don’t know when I’m going to see him again.

Kelly and Kendra have subsided into silence, their heads buried in their books. I shudder to think what kind of atmosphere we’re going to have in tomorrow’s Italian class; they’ll be fighting to show off how much they’ve learned.
Oh well, at least it’ll take the pressure off me and Paige
. Because, to be honest, I’m finding it really hard to do homework with my thoughts so full of Luca.

I’m overheated from the sun; my brain is cooking. I need to cool down, and then maybe I can learn at least the past imperfect. I stand on tiptoes, about to dive into the pool.

“Oh, Violetta!”
calls a voice from the terrace above, the one outside the dining room. Not Catia; she’s out doing errands. I teeter, catch my balance, and manage not to belly flop into the blue water.

For which I’m extremely grateful when Elisa emerges into view, leans her slender arms on the stone balcony, and calls again:

“Violetta? You must come with me. I just get a message from Mamma. She say she is at the Castello di Vesperi, with the principessa, and they want to see you.” She sighs theatrically. “You cannot drive, so I must take you. It is very,
very
boring for me.”

Don’t go
, Kelly had said immediately.
I really don’t think you should. We agreed you should stay away from the castello
.

How could I not go? My curiosity is much too strong. It brought me here all the way from England; it can’t conceive, now, of being so close to the castello and refusing a summons to visit, on my own. Singled out. It would be like doing a marathon and stopping after the twenty-fifth mile.

Besides, as I pointed out to a worried Kelly while I quickly showered and pulled on a dress and sandals, it’s not like Elisa’s kidnapping me. Both her mum and the principessa are going to be there—we heard Elisa say that, all four of us. They are witnesses. And then, at the castello, the principessa and Catia will be together; it’s too far-fetched, even for our lurid imaginings, to picture them ganging up in some bizarre plot against a girl. My resemblance to the
principessa’s sister-in-law may be freaky, but it’s much more likely that they want to discuss it with me in private.

You got really sick there once before
, Kelly said, her voice rising anxiously, so I agreed that I wouldn’t eat or drink anything I didn’t keep my eye on the whole time and that other people weren’t having too. But I still find it really hard to think that I might have been deliberately poisoned; it’s like something out of a novel, too unreal to take seriously. The more time passes, the more that the memory of being sick fades, the more I look back and think that I must have caught a tummy bug, or had a bout of food poisoning, and that Kelly and I, overexcited by being in a foreign country, where you’re always more likely to imagine mystery and intrigue, got carried away and saw lurid conspiracies where there was nothing at all.

And of course, the castello means Luca. The closer I get to it, the more chance of seeing him. I’m honest enough with myself to admit that the Luca factor alone has me putting on some makeup, climbing into Elisa’s little Fiat, and sitting there as she bumps it down the drive and along the road that leads through the village and up to the castello on its high hill.