by Jinsey Reese
“Have you guys been to Trevi Fountain yet?” Shayne said as we were all relishing our respective desserts.
“Not yet,” I said.
“You should totally come with us tomorrow. There’s supposed to be this little place right near it that has the best gelato in Rome,” she said.
Tommy leaned forward. “Shayne is letting her taste buds lead the way through the city.”
She smiled and slapped his arm. “There is nothing wrong with appreciating ALL the benefits of Rome. Even the food.”
“Especially the food,” said Asher.
“Yes, but it’s Trevi Fountain. One of the most famous fountains in the world. People come from all over just to see it, to throw some coins in. It’s not just some random landmark to help one find good gelato.” Tommy laughed as he fought off Shayne’s hands again.
“Imagine how much more you’ll appreciate it while eating the best gelato, though,” Shayne said.
“But the question is,” Asher said to Shayne, “have you found good pizza yet? Because so far Skye and I have struck out.”
I know it was silly, but I was so relieved that he was talking about us together.
Julia slapped her hand on the table. “Shayne found the best pizza EVER.” She turned to Shayne who was raising an eyebrow at Tommy. “Can you find that place again? We could go tomorrow.”
“Of course she can,” Tommy said. “If it’s good food, Shayne can find it.”
Later that night, as I slipped into bed exhausted from another day of walking, walking, walking, I was still feeling out of sorts over Asher. We hadn’t had a chance to talk since our moment on the steps and so I didn’t really know where things stood.
I pulled out my phone and turned it on. I’d texted my mom first thing in the morning (a) to make sure I didn’t forget and (b) so I wouldn’t have to actually talk with her. If she thought that was the only time I was available, hopefully I’d get by without ever having to talk or text with her.
At least that was my Big Evil Plan.
And though I was worried she might call while my phone was on, I really wanted to text my brother.
ME: Still in Rome. (Which is still in Italy, just in case you forgot.)
JUSTIN: You’re still a pain in the ass. How’s Rome?
ME: Ancient. (HAHA) And Amazing. Excellent gelato. Ridiculous souvenirs.
JUSTIN: You buy me one?
ME: A gelato? YES. And ate it for you. You’re WELCOME. I’ll get you another one tomorrow. Supposedly the best gelato in Rome. I’ll let you know how much you enjoyed it.
JUSTIN: Ha. A ridiculous souvenir.
ME: I know JUST the thing for you. *evil grin* How’s Mom?
JUSTIN: Still pissed. I’m betting it’ll take years for her to get over this. (And again THANK YOU. That’s the best souvenir you could ever get me.)
ME: You can’t make that assertion until you’ve SEEN what I’m getting you. You’ll LOVE it. Also…SIGH.
We said goodbye and I turned off my phone. You know, if I’d waited just a week, Justin would have been done with school and could have come with me. Of course, there was no way I could have waited.
Sleep pulled at my arms and legs, sinking them deeply into the mattress, slowing my brain, making it fuzzy around the edges. As I drifted off I tried to push Asher from my thoughts, but no matter how I tried, my mind kept returning to him.
And what it might have felt like if our lips had actually touched.
eight
“What are you doing?” Asher said. I stood with my back to the fountain, eyes closed. “You know you can appreciate the fountain much better if you’re actually looking at it.”
Things were fine. Back to normal. Asher and I had met in the lobby the next morning while Shayne, Tommy, and Julia slept in, and we’d gone to breakfast. I’d apologized about the day before and he’d brushed it off like it was nothing. And we were fine.
So now I smiled, but didn’t open my eyes. The fountain was gorgeous—it jutted out from the outside wall of a palace and nearly filled the small square. A majestic statue of a man-god stood in the center, framed by two winged horses, each being led by a man. Clear water spilled over the rough rock-like edges of the massive sculpture into a crystal blue pool.
“Don’t tell me you don’t know the legend of this fountain,” I said. And when he didn’t answer, I opened my eyes and looked at him. “If you toss in one coin, it means you’re destined to come back to Rome someday. And if you toss in another, a wish will be granted.”
He looked at me for several seconds, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He turned his back on the fountain, standing so close his arm brushed against mine.
It felt good, I won’t lie to you about it. And even though I should have, I didn’t move away.
Neither did he.
I closed my eyes again and threw the first coin over my shoulder. I would come back to Rome one day. I’d sealed that into my fate.
The other coin felt heavy in my hand as I tried to figure out what to wish for. I didn’t want to waste it on something frivolous. Not if I was going to have a wish actually granted. (It’s not like I REALLY believed my wish would come true, but I think it doesn’t hurt to cover all your bases…just in case.)
Asher took hold of my hand, which set butterflies to swirling in my stomach.
I started to wish them away, but then stopped because I didn’t want THAT to count as my wish. Stupid butterflies.
“You ready to make your wish?” he said very close to my ear. “Maybe if we do it together, that’ll give it more oomph.”
“Good idea.” But that meant I needed to figure out my wish right away. I would have wished for world peace or the end to starvation or war, but my mind wasn’t thinking on a grand scale at that moment. It was clouded by the warmth of Asher’s hand in mine and the fact that I did not want to be feeling all fluttery about him.
I mean, I liked him.
As a person.
And after spending every waking minute with him for the past few days, he already felt like a close, trusted friend. I didn’t want that to get screwed up.
“On the count of three, then,” Asher said. “One…two…THREE!”
I launched my coin up and over my head, and the word that popped into my mind was Love.
I’d wished for love.
Which, I supposed, was what I’d been wishing for all my life, in many ways. Still, it felt like such a girly wish.
Asher squeezed my hand. “So what did you wish for?”
“To taste the World’s Best Gelato.”
“Your wish is my command,” he said. “Let’s go find Shayne and the others.”
Fifteen minutes later we were sitting on the edge of the fountain eating, I kid you not, the equivalent of frozen heaven.
“Oh my god. This is amazing. Maybe we should Quest for the Best Gelato instead,” Asher said.
“I think we may already be eating it,” I said. “So I’m just going to have to veto that idea. We’ve got to stick with tacky souvenirs.”
“We are so NOT going to top David’s twig and berries on those boxers.”
“I’m sorry,” Shayne said. “What?”
Asher, his hands held out in a picture-this sort of way, said, “Michelangelo’s David. His junk is placed in an anatomically appropriate position on the front of a pair of boxers.” He pulled out his phone to show them the pictures.
“Dude. You bought a pair, right? Because THAT’s a conversation piece if ever there was one,” Tommy said.
Asher shook his head as he passed his phone around.
“But I need to get a pair for my brother,” I said. The thought of my mother’s face at getting a glimpse of those boxers made me giddy. I had to do it. And I had no doubt Justin would wear them.
“That is AWESOME,” said Julia. “And possibly the worst souvenir I’ve ever seen.”
“Right?” Asher said, then turned to me. “See?”
I leaned forward so the ot
hers would hear me in the crowded piazza. “Where are you guys going next because I may just have to follow Shayne around.” I took another lick. “This is delicious.”
“We’re off to Spain tomorrow. You two want to come?”
I actually hadn’t planned to go to Spain. I wanted to see a little more of Italy first, then Austria or Switzerland, and then Germany, England, and Ireland, before going back to France for several weeks. That had been my vague plan. And it occurred to me, all of a sudden, that Asher and I hadn’t talked about travel plans at all. I had no idea where he planned to go next and I suddenly really wanted to know.
Like today.
And I was hit with how much I wanted to travel with him. We were well matched—we got up and out early, and seemed to like a lot of the same things so far. And in just a few days I’d gotten completely spoiled by having someone to hang out with.
I really didn’t want to go back to being alone.
And yes, I was attracted to him and that presented a problem, but I was an adult. I could control myself.
But of course, I realized Asher may have had other plans. And my stomach clenched at that. He probably wanted to spend some time on his own. What if he wanted to go to Spain next? I didn’t want to miss out on countries I’d always dreamed of visiting, that I may never get a chance to visit again, but I didn’t really want to go off on my own either.
The gelato turned to tasteless mush in my mouth as worries flooded me. I didn’t want to travel alone. I could do it, sure, if I needed to, but it was so much better when you had someone to share and talk about it with, and exclaim over it like an idiot as I sometimes did. (Okay, I may have done that a lot.)
“Hey,” Asher said quietly. “Let’s go check out those souvenirs over there. Find your brother those shorts.” To Julia, Shayne, and Tommy he said, “We’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I got up, my feet feeling heavy as we made our way through all the people to the edge of the square. This was it. He was going to tell me it’s been fun, and then go on his merry way. My stomach started to hurt and I had to force myself to smile. I dropped the rest of my gelato into a garbage can.
He stopped at a little souvenir shop and started looking around. Tiny replicas of the fountain were piled next to Colosseums and Pietàs. Baseball hats with famous landmarks embroidered onto them hung next to photo books of Rome in almost every language. “I don’t think they’re going to have them here,” he said. “This stuff is not nearly tacky enough.”
When I didn’t say anything, he turned to look at me. I stared morosely at the table of trinkets.
“You okay?” he said. “You’re looking totally stressed out. What’s up?”
I looked at him for a moment and then glanced around. There were so many people. Too many. I didn’t want to have a conversation in the middle of this jostling crowd. The side streets looked pretty quiet, so I grabbed his hand and pulled him over to the nearest one.
When I got him there, I let go of his hand. We were finally alone and I was suddenly at a loss for words. I wasn’t very good at improvising. I did better at these things when I planned what I wanted to say. So I looked at him, this guy I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to yet, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“I don’t want you to go.” Which, I realized as soon as I said it, was not exactly clear.
Asher just looked confused. “Where am I going? You mean to Spain? You don’t want me to go to Spain?” And then he took a step back, his eyebrows tilting toward each other, hurt clouding his eyes. “Are you saying you want to go to Spain with them but you don’t want me to come, too?”
“No,” I said, and shook my head hurriedly. Shit. I was screwing this up. “No! That’s not what I meant at all.” I grabbed his hand before he could step farther away. And I went ahead and put the truth in his hands. My truth. I trusted those hands. I just had to hope my trust was well placed. “I don’t want you to go away. I don’t want to be without you. We haven’t discussed whether we’re going to stay together traveling and I…I want to stay with you. I know you might have other plans, and if you do then please tell me now because I don’t want to be that annoying person that won’t go away, you know? And, yes, I’ll feel like a total idiot and want to crawl in a hole and die, but I’m sure it won’t be too hard to find one somewhere around here—that someone dug like two thousand years ago, even. Which, come to think of it, is probably a pretty exotic way to die—in a two-thousand-year-old hole. So if that’s what I am to you, then just tell me now and I’ll…I’ll go find a hole.”
Asher bit back a smile and squeezed my hand. “So, what you’re saying is you like me and want to keep me around?”
“Yes, in a manner of speaking.”
“Good, then we’re on the same page. I promised to meet up with someone in London in August. What would you say to spending the next couple of months traveling together until then…unless one of us gets tired of the other?” He held out his pinky. “Deal?”
My mouth fell open. Yes, yes, yes! I wanted to say. Instead I wrapped my pinky around his.
“Deal.”
“Okay, then. I actually don’t want to go to Spain right now, but there is a place I’d like to go next, if it sounds good to you.”
“Anywhere sounds good…as long as we add the Gelato Quest,” I said, smiling like an idiot. But I was so relieved that I didn’t care. “We can have two quests at once, right?”
“Absolutely. Now let’s go find your brother those boxers.”
He grinned at me, held out his arm. And those butterflies were back, but there were more this time. I was starting to think I wasn’t going to be able to wish them away much longer. And that keeping my feelings in check might be a lot more difficult than I thought.
nine
Our train pulled into Venice late in the afternoon. We’d said goodbye to our friends at the train station in Rome, headed in very different directions. I was sad to see them go, but I’d been so glad to have travel plans with someone, that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be. It was all part of the adventure, right? People were always walking in and out of your life—it just happened more quickly, with more intensity, when you were traveling around Europe for the summer.
On the train, Asher and I mapped out our plans for the next two months.
“What if after Germany, we head to London, and you can meet your friend. Oh!” I said and looked up at him. “Do you think your friend would want to travel with us?”
The hesitancy on his face made me realize my mistake right away.
“Oh, god. Sorry. Never mind. You have plans with them. I wasn’t trying to butt in…I just wasn’t thinking.” I could feel the blood rushing to my face and was kicking myself for being so stupid.
“It’s not that, Skye. It’s just who I’m going to see.” He shook his head. “I can’t really show up with you at my side.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, nodding like I understood. But honestly? I didn’t. All I could think was that there had to be something wrong with me.
Asher was quiet for a few moments, and I tried to sink farther and farther into my seat.
“It’s my ex,” he finally said. “She spent last semester in London and is taking summer classes. When she heard I’d be coming to Europe this summer, she asked me to meet her after classes were over.” He paused, ran his finger along the window. “She wants us to give it another shot.”
“Oh.” I watched him staring out the window, purposefully not looking at me. “Why’d you two break up?”
He turned to look at me then, shaking his head a little. “I don’t know. She dumped me. I never knew why.”
“Wow. How long ago was that?”
“Five months. Right after she left for England.”
“Maybe she didn’t want to do the long distance thing?”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “She never said.” He was quiet, then said, “I got the feeling she met someone, but I never asked outright.”
I nodded,
thinking. “So, do you want to give it another try?”
He stared at me for a moment. “I thought I did…but I don’t know.” And then he shrugged.
I didn’t ask any more questions.
Walking out of the station in Venice was like entering a completely different world. It was quiet. Like strangely quiet after the bustle of Rome. I mean, there were plenty of people around and you could hear the chugging of motor boats, but there were no cars, no horns beeping, no crazy traffic. Water spread out all around us, and boats passed by, making small greenish waves.
We hopped on a vaporetto, a bus boat, that took us to St. Mark’s square. We had to hurry past the gorgeous, Eastern-style church with its really cool onion domes because we needed to make sure we had a place to sleep, and it was late in the day.
We went straight to the hostel and managed to reserve beds in the dorms. Then we headed back out to wander and get some dinner at a little café we found not far away.
It was perfect—watching the sun set over the burnt orange roofs of Venice (of VENICE!), the city turning a deep amber in the fading light. The buildings were more colorful than in Rome—orange, red, pink, yellow, and cream. And lots of green shutters. (What was it about the colors in Europe? They seemed richer, deeper somehow.)
We sat and talked while tourists and locals meandered about. Life here felt slow. I liked that. And it was exactly what I needed, today especially. To be soothed by the relaxed pace and the lapping sounds of the water. I was a tangle of conflicting emotions. I’d texted Paige on the train, and let my mom know that I was still alive. I was not up for talking with her today of all days—the wedding day—so my phone was turned off. Again.
Paige’s texts had made me smile, though.
ME: Herein lies my daily text to prove I’m Not Dead Yet.
PAIGE: Wow. Italy makes you talk funny.
ME: Pasta! Pizza! Gelato! Spaghetti!
PAIGE: I see your Italian has improved.
ME: Grazie! (I’m sure there’s a phrase for that in Italian. There are all SORTS of words in this language, too.)
PAIGE: Hahaha. I’m glad you’re there. Especially Today.