One Hot Italian Summer

by Karina Halle

  My eyes nearly bug out of my head. “His cars are worth a million?”

  “Not all, but that one is,” she says, gesturing to the Ferrari out front as we leave Villa Rosa in a plume of dust.

  “Wow,” I say, unable to wrap my head around it.

  “My brother is very successful, yes?” she says, smiling at me. “I can see from your expression you weren’t sure how much.”

  “No,” I say shaking my head. “I mean, I know he’s successful. That is obvious. It’s just … that’s a lot of money. He never seems to, well, give off the impression that he has that much.”

  “That is part of his charm, I suppose,” she muses. “But that doesn’t mean other people don’t know. A lot of women have thrown themselves at him, do you know that?”

  A hot coal of jealousy flares up inside me.

  I swallow. “I can imagine.”

  My mind goes back to Marika, to Angelina. Who knows what other gorgeous women are out there that have tried in vain to win Claudio’s heart?

  “They throw themselves at him, because they know he is rich,” she goes on. “They are gold diggers, a lot of them. Or they fall in love with the idea of falling in love with an artist.” She lets out a dry laugh. “Little do they know, but loving an artist isn’t so easy. Of course, some say he is handsome too, but that is not for me to comment on.”

  I feel her eyes on me briefly, something on her mind.

  She adds, “But these women, they don’t have my brother’s best interest at heart. You see, he’s a very open person and I’m always so worried when I see them going after him. I don’t want him to get hurt.”

  “I’m sure he takes care of himself,” I say quietly.

  “He does. Doesn’t mean I don’t worry.”

  I give her a look. “Well, I can assure you that I’m not one of those girls. His money means nothing to me. As for him being an artist, well it just means we have something in common.”

  I’m not about to add that I find her brother ridiculously hot and that the sex is absolutely wild.

  She observes me for a moment, then brings her eyes back to the road, nodding. “I know that. I can tell. I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Is that why you’re taking me out?”

  “Yes,” she admits, no qualms in being honest. “But also, I want to get to know you. You mean so much to my brother and, well, I just wanted to welcome you into the family.”

  I stiffen up at that.

  “What is it?” she asks me.

  “Not everyone in the family knows,” I tell her. “Your parents do, and you do, and I’m sure your sisters do.”

  “I am sure everyone on Elba knows as well,” she adds.

  “Right. But there are two people who don’t. One is Jana.”

  Now it’s time for her to go stiff. “She is not part of the family.”

  “Not to you, but she is to Vanni. And Vanni is the other person. We haven’t told either of them. We’ve been putting it off because it’s just so new and, until now, it was just a vacation romance. We didn’t know if we would have a future together. But now we have to tell them. I just don’t think either of them are going to like it.”

  Maria starts to laugh. Her laugh is a lot like Claudio’s, loud and boisterous and taking up space. If I wasn’t so confused, I’d probably find it infectious.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I’m just picturing Jana’s reaction. Okay. Let us just get some drinks first, shall we?”

  To my surprise, she doesn’t take me to the walled city of Lucca, but to the space just beyond it, parking beside a restaurant that overlooks the Serchio River. We get a table outside overlooking the water, and the buildings of the walled city, including the famed Guinigi Tower, with its oak tree on top.

  “This is lovely,” I tell her as the waiter drops off some olives.

  “I prefer it,” she says. “Claudio is always dragging me to the gallery and to places in the city walls, but it’s too much for me, too busy, too many tourists. Too hot.” For emphasis, she picks up a menu and fans herself with it. “But here, it is peaceful. And I promise you, the wine is excellent.”

  I trust her on that, so when the waiter comes back, I let her do the ordering.

  “You sure?” she asks.

  “Please, I’m an author. I’ll take whatever you got.”

  She laughs and gets us a bottle of white from Sicily.

  “Allora,” she says. “You were saying. You haven’t told Jana or Vanni.”

  “No. I have been meaning to talk to Vanni…”

  “That is Claudio’s role, no?”

  “It is. Definitely. But I just wanted to put my f-…I wanted to get a feel for things. I know that he’s had issues with his father’s girlfriends in the past, enough so that Claudio broke up with them.”

  “Ah yes, Marika. She was a nice girl but…Claudio didn’t look at her the way that he looks at you. He is crazy for you, Grace. I know this seems so big and hard to understand when you’re looking into a family from the outside, but even though Claudio will always do what’s best for his son, that doesn’t mean he can’t do what’s best for himself.”

  I nod, popping an olive in my mouth.

  “Do you love him?”

  I nearly choke on the olive, the brine tickling my throat.

  “So you haven’t told him, I take it,” she comments.

  I carefully chew the olive and then swallow it, buying time. “He told me he loves me.”

  “That much anyone can see. But what about you?”

  I want to be honest with her. It strikes me right now, after all this time, that I haven’t had a female friend to talk to since Robyn died. Everything I’ve been going through regarding Claudio, I’ve been going through alone. Thank god I’ve been channeling into my writing, otherwise I’d go insane.

  But can I trust her? She is his sister, after all.

  “I am close with Claudio,” she says, reading my expression. “But I am not that close.”

  I nod, taking in a deep breath. “Well, I don’t know. I think … I think I’m falling in love with him. I just don’t know how to separate it from infatuation. I’ve never been in love before … or at least, I don’t think.”

  “If you don’t know, then you haven’t,” she says.

  “So how will I?”

  She just gives me a knowing smile. “When you know, you know. What they say is true. Perhaps you haven’t let yourself fall yet. When you are so worried about the future and what other people will say, perhaps you are still protecting yourself. Once you move past all of that, once you feel safe and confident in your future, maybe then…”

  Maybe then.

  “Either way, this is Claudio’s son and he knows what is best for him. Vanni, no matter how he feels, will come around eventually.”

  I exhale, sinking back in my chair. “I hope so. I understand exactly how Vanni feels, too. When my parents divorced, I wanted nothing more than for them to get back together. They didn’t, and then my dad went and married someone else. And honestly, it made me feel like dirt. Like I was unwanted and forgotten.”

  “Well, was your father dirt?”

  I laugh at the sincerity of her question. “We have a complicated relationship. I love him still, but he could have handled that a lot better.”

  Understatement of the year.

  “But you turned out fine,” she says.

  “Did I? I’m a writer.”

  She chuckles. “Okay, so it was good for that. But I don’t think Claudio is like your father, and as much as I don’t like Jana, Vanni’s relationship with her is very different. It does seem to work for them. I think, no matter what happens, let Vanni be Vanni. He’s a smart kid. He’ll want his father to be happy and you can’t deny that he is, now that he’s found you.”

  The waiter takes the opportunity to drop off the bottle of wine, pouring us each a glass. They take their jobs so seriously here, back in Edinburgh they’d plunk it on the table and leave.

&nb
sp; We pick up our glasses and raise them to each other.

  “And when it comes to Jana,” Maria says to me, swirling the wine around in the glass. “You have to ask yourself, what it matters? If you can’t hide it from her forever and it doesn’t change how you feel about Claudio, then who cares? She can be mad if she wants, and maybe your career will hurt. But can you imagine caring so much that you leave Claudio behind? Can you imagine coming into success and having no one to share it with? Because that’s what will happen and you’ll end up feeling empty.”

  She raises the glass to her nose. “You are putting all your stock into the wrong person. Jana is just an agent. If you are a good writer, and I know you are, then you will find success no matter what happens. You will get another agent. But Claudio? There is no other Claudio. Capisci?”

  There is no other Claudio.

  He’s one in a billion.

  As am I.

  “Capisco,” I answer.

  I understand.

  She closes her eyes and breathes in the wine. “Perfetto.”

  I do the same, the notes of lemon and apples and hay wafting in my nose. Then I sip. The wine tastes like gold.

  In fact, the whole moment is golden.

  Because what Maria said is the truth.

  I have nothing to be afraid of anymore.

  After a moment I say, “I will talk to Vanni later tonight.”

  “Good,” she says. “And then tell Jana, and get it all over with so you can be with my brother. And maybe, somewhere along the way, you’ll fall in love with him.”

  I give her a shy smile at that, because, I know I’m starting to fall.

  It’s after dinner when Maria and Sofia drive off back home, and all the digestifs have been finished, that I decide to follow through with her advice and find Vanni.

  He’s not hard to find. After a day of running around with his cousin and splashing around in the pool, he’s up on the couch, reading a book. The house is silent, aside from the occasional muffled drill coming from Claudio’s studio.

  “Ciao Vanni,” I say to him, sitting beside him on the couch. “What are you reading?”

  “Space time continuum,” he says, glancing up at me from behind the book. “Though the author’s voice is a little dry. You ever think about writing about time travel?”

  I grin at him. “If I could understand it, maybe. Or I could make it a romance. Like Outlander.”

  He makes a face. “I told you. Outlander’s science is all wrong and romance is gross.”

  Ah. This might actually make a good segue.

  “You say that now Vanni, but in time, it won’t be so gross to you.”

  He mumbles something in Italian, and shrugs. Probably the equivalent of whatever.

  “I’m serious. One day you’ll fall in love with someone and you won’t find them so gross anymore. You’ll want to spend all day with them. Play all your video games with them. You’ll teach them about space stuff and time travel and they’ll eat it all up, and then they’ll tell you about things you’ll find interesting. And you’ll never want to let them go. You’ll want to spend your life with them.”

  “And then marry her?” he adds. “And have a baby? And get divorced? I don’t think so.”

  Well, shit. He has me there.

  “But that doesn’t always happen.”

  “It happened to my father.”

  I don’t know how to tell him that his father never loved his mother and I’m not about to. So I just say, “Things happen. But your mother and father are very happy now, just not with each other. They have other people to love. Big careers. They’re happy.”

  He shakes his head. “My father is not happy.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “I think he is.”

  “No,” he says. “He isn’t. The father in Gio’s universe? He is happy. He never divorced. He is in love. And Gio is happy. That’s why this is the darkest timeline. I got stuck in the wrong one. I should have been in the one where my parents are still together.”

  Crushed. I feel absolutely crushed. Not just that poor Vanni feels this way, but that the chances of him ever being accepting of me and Claudio have gone out the window. He will never accept us together. He will never understand.

  “What if…” I begin, grasping for straws. “What if neither timeline is better than the other? What if there are good things and bad things in each one?”

  He stares at me. I have his attention.

  I clear my throat and go on. “They say the choices we make every day are the things that influence our life. Our timelines. There are so many choices, though. What to eat, what to wear, where to go. Each of those choices have a direct influence on each other. You know Jurassic Park?”

  He sits up. “Which one?”

  “Uh, the first one. Jeff Goldblum said that a butterfly flaps its wings in Shanghai and you get rain instead of snow in … some other place. Okay, I don’t remember the quote exactly, but it’s the butterfly effect, right? So, with so many choices influencing our lives, aren’t there infinite timelines and versions of ourselves? And if that’s the case, can’t it be true that at least more than one of them are…happy?”

  He stares at me for a moment, and I think I might have gotten through to him.

  Then he looks back to his book, shaking his head. “That makes no sense.”

  I sigh, giving up. I put my feelers out and the feelers came back saying “good fucking luck.”

  I make my way downstairs to give Claudio the bad news.

  Twenty-One

  Grace

  We’re going to Florence.

  It was a completely impromptu, last-minute trip, and all Claudio’s idea. After I told him about my talk with Vanni, he said he would talk to him personally and set him straight. Tell him the truth about us. I didn’t want him to hurt Vanni’s feelings in any way, but he’s his father so I know I have to back off and give them space. He knows what’s best.

  But Claudio also thought a trip might make the news go down easier.

  Plus, his friend I met at the gallery, Lorenzo Ducati, is playing in that weird violent sport thing, and apparently that’s a big deal and something not to be missed.

  We’re currently in the Range Rover, zooming down the motorway through verdant hills and small towns, and I’m actually really excited. We’re going for three nights, which Claudio says is just enough to get a taste of the famous city, and that we can always go back for more at any time. Florence is only an hour drive, though we have been making plenty of touristy stops on my behalf. The countryside is just begging to have its photo taken.

  “There’s the Duomo!” Vanni yells as the city appears. “Oh wait. That’s another church. There’s a lot of them.”

  We hit a bit of traffic and then try to find a parking space outside of the city. The parking situation is very strange and capricious in Florence, and even though the hotel has legal parking, Claudio decides to park elsewhere. I have a feeling he doesn’t trust valets, even with his Range Rover.

  Now I’m regretting my decision to pack so much. Claudio grunts as he picks it up, insisting he carry it to the hotel, which I think is just an excuse to complain about it.

  Florence is hot as hell and absolutely alive with people. Even though it’s lunchtime, everyone is drunk and wearing shirts in either white or red, beers in hand, shouting and chanting. The atmosphere is electric.

  “They are all here for the game, Calcio Storico,” Claudio explains as some guy gets in his face and yells something joyous, before running down the street, drink spilling. “That guy, he’s in a red shirt, so he is cheering for his neighborhood, Santa Maria Novella. The white shirts represent Santo Spirito. Those are the teams that made it to the final.”

  “I am upset that San Giovanni isn’t playing,” Vanni says, pouting. “They are my namesake.”

  “They are the green team,” Claudio says to me. “You may see some blue or green shirts here anyway, people who refuse to accept they lost.”

  �
��So, it’s different Florentine neighborhoods competing?” I ask, trying to understand.

  “That is correct. Each is named after the main church in that neighborhood. Don’t worry. It will all make sense later. I think.”

  “Which neighborhood does Lorenzo play for?”

  “He is from Santa Maria Novella. Red shirt. Which is fitting, because when he plays, he is out for blood.”

  “He’s barbaric,” Vanni whispers to me. “I’ve seen him play on the internet and…” He trails off, shaking his head in quiet disgust.

  Okay, this game definitely sounds more interesting now.

  Soon we arrive at our hotel, which is the nicest hotel I have ever stepped in. It’s The Savoy, and it feels like you’re walking into a palace. But as much as I want to luxuriate here and hunker down in a beautiful room with a cocktail, we’re on a schedule today. We need to meet up with Lorenzo to get the tickets, then Claudio wants to take us to the famous Duomo, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, all before the parade that starts at four p.m., with the game starting after.

  We put our stuff away in our rooms (of course, I have a room to myself while Vanni and Claudio share a suite), and then we make our way out of the hotel. In the lobby I pass a couple of statues that seem to have Claudio’s workmanship.

  “Did you do those?” I whisper to him, jutting my thumb at the statues.

  He shrugs, a humble smile on his lips. “Perhaps that’s why I get a discount when I stay here?”

  I laugh, and we step out into the stunning expanse of the Piazza della Repubblica. Claudio leads us across the street, holding both me and Vanni’s hands because it is so busy here, holy crap, and then we see Lorenzo waiting by an old carousel.

  “Claudio,” Lorenzo says as they greet each other warmly. They embrace quickly, a few hearty slaps on the back. If Lorenzo hits Claudio any harder, I think he might jostle a few organs loose.

  Lorenzo eyes me and nods. “Ciao. Grace, right?”’

  I nod, smiling, and then he looks down to Vanni and holds his palm out for a high five.