“This is your girlfriend?” the woman was asking. “The one you wrote me about?”
Jesse smiled and nodded.
“Look at him, so shy!” The woman winked in Lucy’s direction. “I’m Renata Bertolini.” She held out a hand for Lucy to shake. “Where you two met?”
“Right here.” Lucy told her. “Last summer.”
The woman smiled and clapped her hands together. “Firenze is the place for love, no?”
Lucy and Jesse beamed back.
“I will upgrade you to our best private room.” Renata glanced down at the desktop computer. “On the top floor. With a most beautiful view of the piazza.”
Lucy smiled to herself. “A view would be perfect,” she told Renata. “Mille grazie.”
The climb up to the fifth floor, knapsacks in tow, was harder than Lucy remembered. “I need to get my backpacking muscles back,” she gasped as they paused on the landing, Jesse fiddling with the key.
“We both do,” Jesse said, then pushed the heavy wooden door open with a flourish.
The room’s window had been left open, and a robust breeze blew back the lace curtains. For June in Florence, it was a relatively crisp day, the electric sky over Piazza Santa Maria Novella dotted with clouds. Someone had filled the square with many boxes of red flowers, creating a makeshift garden. Lucy knelt on the window seat for a better look, and Jesse joined her.
“It’s like seeing an old friend,” she told him. “An old friend I never thought I’d see again.”
Jesse’s new cell phone chirped in his backpack. He dug it out. “Speaking of old friends,” he said.
“Nello?” Lucy guessed.
“He says he’ll meet us here on Friday. He can’t wait to show us around Naples.”
“I never thought I’d get to see Naples,” Lucy said.
“Maybe we can lure him to Venice afterward. He says he has to get back to work on Monday, but I bet we could talk him into taking a few more days off.”
Venice. Lucy sighed happily at the very idea and shut her eyes.
When she opened them, Jesse was closer than he’d been a second before. “Of course, it would be okay if it’s just us in Venice,” he said, bending to kiss her. His hands spread to encircle her waist, the breeze from the window ruffling his hair as well as hers. “More than okay.”
“This is so much better than last summer,” she told him when she could speak. “Not that last summer wasn’t great…”
“Isn’t it, though?” he murmured, undoing the barrette that held back her cascade of hair.
Lucy made a sound deep in her throat, then pulled away. “Shouldn’t we be getting to work?” She gestured out the window. “We’ve got music to make.” They’d been rehearsing together ever since the final performance of Rent—that wonderful night when Lucy’s mother had managed at last to talk Lucy’s father into attending the play. Though he’d been too proud to speak to Lucy after the show, her mother had reported back the next day. “Sweetheart, I wish you could have heard your dad on the ride home.” Her voice deepened in her best impression of her husband. “‘I have to give her credit, Elise. She’s stubborn like her old man. When she wants something she knows how to work for it. I’m starting to think she could do anything if she sets her mind to it.’”
Though Lucy had already reconciled herself to finding a job and leaving school, at the last minute her father had paid her tuition on the condition that she get a part-time job to learn, in his words, “the value of hard work.” Lucy had readily agreed, relieved that she could stay at Forsythe and keep rooming with Britt after all.
Though Jesse had found himself a job in the campus copy shop and had started searching for an apartment he could share with Lucy, he was fine with the change of plans. Within a week he had found a room in a reasonably affordable apartment just off campus. By fall, he would be a part-time student at Forsythe, slowly but surely working toward his degree. He hadn’t settled on a major yet, but he and Lucy agreed there was plenty of time for that.
By the middle of Lucy’s second semester, she had signed up to be a drama minor. Soon after that, she landed the role of Cecily in the school’s spring production, The Importance of Being Earnest. When she wasn’t studying or rehearsing, she and Jesse worked up a repertoire of popular songs and even a few Broadway show tunes, the two of them taking turns on melody and harmony.
“We have to make money,” Lucy said now, a little breathless from all the kissing. “I need to pay my dad back for my plane ticket.”
Jesse fiddled with one of her curls, holding it under his nose like a mustache. “We have all summer,” he said. Jesse had been playing guitar around Center City in Philadelphia on weekends to pay for his own share of the trip. “Starting tomorrow, we’ll get serious.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and then her chin. “For this one day we can relax and just be together. In Italy.”
Lucy leaned forward for another look down at the piazza. “In Italy,” she parroted with satisfaction. Then she pointed. “Look! Over there. Those two girls checking out the menu,” Lucy said. “The petite one in the blue T-shirt and the tall one in yellow.” From their body language, it was pretty clear they were arguing over whether or not to go into the restaurant.
Jesse looked bemused. “What about them?”
“Don’t they remind you of anyone?” Lucy smiled. “It’s like looking at Charlene and me. And look over there.” She pointed at a red-haired woman sitting cross-legged in the grass, staring down at her iPad. “It’s Ellen Lavish, taking notes, planning an article for next year’s edition of Wanderlust.”
“Or maybe she’s just checking her e-mail?” Jesse guessed.
Lucy pursed her lips and shook her head. “That’s absolutely this year’s Ellen. See how she’s frowning, trying to think of something clever to say about how authentic the piazza is?” She scanned the scene. “And look over there!” She pointed at the base of the obelisk, where a young man with shaggy hair was opening his guitar case. “I don’t have to tell you who that is, do I?”
Jesse laughed, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her so close she could feel the heat of him through his T-shirt. “I can’t believe your dad let you come here with me,” he said.
“Me, neither,” Lucy admitted. In January, when she had taken Jesse home to have dinner with her parents, her father hadn’t been thrilled. He’d even made a comment afterward about Jesse being a “scruffy underachiever.” Still, he’d been polite enough in Jesse’s presence, and on subsequent visits he’d seemed almost friendly, offering to help Jesse find a decent used car at a reasonable price. “He may be the most stubborn man in the universe, but he’s not blind.” Lucy clasped Jesse’s wrists, one in each hand, and gazed up at him. “He sees how we feel about each other.”
Jesse looked solemnly back at her, not quite convinced. Lucy struggled for the words to make him believe.
“I’m serious. He’s beginning to understand.… When a person really loves something… or someone…”
“Yes?” Jesse asked, softly, his lips brushing her ear.
“You just have to…” Lucy looked away, over to the sun-drenched piazza, then back into Jesse’s smiling face, into his warm, searching eyes, and the words came to her. “You just have to stand back and let them.”
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Acknowledgments
As I worked on this book, I had not one but two amazing editors, Pamela Garfinkel and Julie Scheina. Thanks to both of you for believing in Lucy and helping her reach her destination.
A generous summer research grant from Saint Joseph’s University allowed me to revisit Italy a few summers ago. Without that assistance I simply would not have been able to research and write this book.
Thanks also to the many others who helped me along the way
:
My agent, Amy Williams, whose honesty and expertise I cherish.
Ann Green and Ted Fristrom, for giving me crucial feedback on an early draft.
My mother, Grace Lindner, who brought me back to Italy for a follow-up visit, and my sister, Melody Lindner, who knows Mickey Mouse.
Laura Pattillo, Renee Dobson, and the Saint Joseph’s University Theatre Company.
My Facebook Brain Trust: Heather Goldsmith, Gina Tomaine, Lauren Boyle, Clare Herlihy Dych, and especially Mike Zodda, who schooled me in the anthropology of the college party. Gregory Dowling, Alicia Stallings, Eric Coulson, Emily Hipchen, Melissa Goldthwaite, Sharon Dyson-Demers, and Amy Montz, who helped me with air-travel logistics and imaginary airlines. Fly Etruscan Airways!
The Tent in Munich, for the most memorable hostel experience in all my travels, and for letting me return three summers ago to wander the place and take pictures. You’re still as magical as you were the first time I visited.
My husband, Andre, for being even more excited about my writing projects than I am, and for being eager to watch A Room With a View and Roman Holiday with me—over and over and over. We’ll always have Rome.
My sons, Eli and Noah, for putting up with my wanderings.
Finally, everyone I have ever met on the road, for fellowship and inspiration. While writing this book, I looked through my photo albums and thought fondly of every face I saw there. I hope your travels have been happy ones.
ALSO BY APRIL LINDNER
Jane
Catherine
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Part One: Italy Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Part Two: Philadelphia Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Coda: Florence
Acknowledgments
Also by April Lindner
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by April Lindner
Cover art © Britt Erlanson/plainpicture/Cultura
Cover design by The Black Rabbit
Cover © 2015 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: January 2015
ISBN 978-0-316-40065-7
E3
Love, Lucy Page 21
