Kissing in Italian (27 page)

“So!” he says, much later. We’re sitting on the floor now. The windowsill is narrow and uncomfortable. We don’t care that we may be getting splinters in our bums from the floorboards.

We’re curled up, me sitting between Luca’s legs, his arms wrapped around my waist, mine around his. His head is leaning on mine, and he’s kissing my hair.

“You remember that song by Jovanotti I say to you, in the river?” he asks.

“Yes!” I swivel a little to look at him. “I looked it up, but I couldn’t find it.”

“ ‘La Valigia,’ ”
he says. “The suitcase. The boy is a suitcase, he travels all around, but only one person, the girl, knows how to open the
lucchetto
.”

“The lock,” I translate, suffused with happiness at this.

“ ‘Ma chi l’avrebbe detto che la vita / ci travolgeva come hai fatto tu. Tu m’hai aperto come una ferita—sto sanguinando ma non ti lascio più,’ ”
he quotes.

“ ‘Who would have said that life—’ ” I start, but that’s as far as I get.

“ ‘That life turns us upside down,’ ” Luca says, “ ‘like you did to me. You open me like a wound. I am bleeding, but I don’t leave you anymore.’ ”

“Luca!” I exclaim in horror, and his body starts to shake with laughter.

“You remember? I say Jovanotti’s songs, they are not always pretty,” he tells me. “But they are true.”

“Still, a
wound …
”

“You are half Italian, Violetta,” he points out. “You must understand us. We are more …” He looks for the right word. “Dramatic,” he concludes.
“Esagerati.”

And then he raises his eyebrows as a thought strikes him.

“You are half Italian,” he says, “but me? I don’t know. That is very strange, not to know.”

“Oh—I can tell you,” I say. I wasn’t sure whether or not to volunteer this extra piece of information, but since he’s brought it up …

“Do you want to know?” I ask him: his winged black brows are still up as he stares at me in surprise. “The name of the guy your mother had the affair with? She actually told me that too.”

He shakes his head in disbelief.

“She
told
you? My parents are
crazy
,” he mutters.

“She’s so scared of your reaction, Luca,” I say. “She was shaking when she told me. Really shaking. I honestly don’t know if she’d ever have said anything if it hadn’t been for this crisis with me being—” I break off. “I don’t actually like
saying
it,” I admit. “My mum and dad are my parents. I don’t even like saying ‘biological parents.’ ”

Luca’s hands reach up so he can lace his fingers through mine.

“Oh,
carina
,” he says consolingly against my hair. I’m
so
glad I washed it this morning.

“She told me to tell you the name if you asked,” I say, reluctantly untwisting my right hand from his and reaching into my skirt pocket for my phone. I thumb through the menus and find where I saved it in my notes, holding the screen up for him to see.

He doesn’t say anything. Anxiously, I twist around to look at his face; mercifully, he doesn’t look upset.

“Ah, sì,”
he says quite mildly.

“You know him? This Antonio di Meglio?”

“
Sì
, he is in Rome.” He shrugs. “He is married, he has
a family too.
Stupendo
, I have some brothers and sisters, I think.” He blinks rapidly as he takes this in, his long dark eyelashes fluttering. “I always think he likes my mother, to tell the truth. So now we know.”

“Yes,” I echo. “Now we know.”

I don’t ask him what he plans to do, how he intends to let the principe know the real situation, because I doubt whether Luca has any idea at all. He’s going to have to let a lot of dust settle before he makes any major decisions. Right now, being together, being able to hold each other, to spend the entire day just sitting on the floor of this turret room, arms and limbs entwined, is all either of us can really think about.

“You realize that truly,” Luca says to me very seriously, “truly, this is all yours?”

He waves around him, and I know that he doesn’t just mean the room. He means the castello, the land around it, the vineyards, and, extending outward even more, the di Vesperi holdings over Italy; the house in Florence, and probably quite a lot more that I don’t know about.

“You are the di Vesperi here,” he points out. “Not me. I am just a bastard di Meglio.”

“Hey,” I say, not wanting him to be too gloomy. “I’m a bastard too.”

“Bastardi insieme,”
he says, hugging me. “We are bastards together.”

“Okay, stop with the bastard stuff,” I say. “Enough. You do this sometimes, you get all dark and unnecessary.”

I frown up at him.

“You have to be more cheerful,” I tell him. “Sometimes I think you think it’s cool to be, you know, gloomy and brooding. You need to tone that down from now on. Smile more.”

Luca’s eyes spark bright with amusement.

“You are very good for me, Violetta,” he says, taking my hands and kissing them. “You make me happy. You make me smile. You are the only girl that does this for me.”

“I hope so!” I blurt out.

“Eh, sì,”
he says. “
Ti prometto
. The only girl. I stop smoking because you tell me to.”

“I
saw
you weren’t smoking,” I say. “But I didn’t want to believe …”

“I tell you, I stop,” he says. Then he tuts. “I tooold you,” he corrects himself. “I need to do the
passato
. The—past?”

“The past tense,” I say. Then I shake my head. “That’s funny. I mean, ironic funny.”

“Cosa?”
He kisses my fingertips, one by one.

“You’re learning the past tense.” He’s distracting me with his kisses, but I push on. “Of course you have to learn it, but do you see what I mean? It’s all been about the past! I’m sick of it! And not even our past, stuff we did—things that happened before we were
born!
I’m
so
over the past!”

I’m panting with the conviction with which I say this, the words pouring out of me. I mean it with every bone in my body. Enough with the past. Enough of Luca and me suffering for other people’s mistakes. We need to be free of them now, to start our own lives.

To try to get things right.

“Basta con il passato,”
I say in Italian for good measure. To make things absolutely clear.

“Va bene,”
Luca says, wrapping his arms around me, pulling me close. “No more past. I study the future, okay?” He kisses me, so sweetly my heart melts. “Only the future.”

I know I’m looking up at him with stars in my eyes, and I don’t care. I love that, at last, I can show Luca exactly how I feel, and he can do the same. We’re free. Finally, we’re free.

“The future is here in this room, Violetta,” he says to me.
“Questo è il nostro futuro.”

“This is our future.”

And with those words, I find myself thinking not just of Luca and me, but of the other girls who’ve been on this Italian adventure too. Vividly, I picture Kelly in a few years’ time, having studied art history at Cambridge, coming back to Italy to do more research. Visiting the castello, cataloging its art, becoming a full-fledged art historian. Perhaps even working with Kendra somehow; now they’ve bonded, it would be wonderful if they realized how strong they could be together, as a team. And Paige—will Paige come back with her Miguel?

I realize I’m imagining myself here: assuming that I’ll be in Italy, at the castello. That they’ll be coming to visit me as I paint in this room, Fiammetta’s turret, mine now.
Maybe I’ll get a cat, like her
, I think with a smile.
I’ve always liked cats
.

Sensing that my thoughts have strayed from him, Luca pulls me even closer, kisses me again possessively.

I think I will be here
, I decide.
And I think they’ll all come to
visit me and Luca. That this Italian summer has made friends of the four of us girls for life
.

Who knows exactly what the future will bring? I’ve had so many surprises over these last few weeks that I’ve learned it’s very hard to predict anything. But one thing I do believe with all my heart: that Luca and I will make our future together.

Lauren Henderson is the author of
Flirting in Italian
, the companion to
Kissing in Italian
, as well as the Scarlett Wakefield mystery series:
Kiss Me Kill Me
,
Kisses and Lies
,
Kiss in the Dark
, and
Kiss of Death
. She has also written several acclaimed “tart noir” mystery novels for adults and the witty romance handbook
Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating
, which has been optioned for film development. She was born and raised in London, where she lives with her husband. Visit her online at
laurenhenderson.net
or on Facebook as Lauren Milne Henderson.

“Cute Italian boys, jealous Italian girls … 
and plenty of tantalizing romance.”
—Publishers Weekly

“
Flirting
stays true to its title: Henderson delivers lots of
crushing and a bit of mystery with a dash of Italian 101.”
—School Library Journal