Kissing in Italian

by Lauren Henderson

  “Violet!” Kelly calls, her voice high and thrilled. “Come on! Wait till you see this!”

  I turn back toward the river and plunge down the little path as if I were being chased by the hounds of hell. Away from a silhouette that’s making me think of things—want things—that I can never have.

  “Ciao, Violetta”

  “Look, Violet!” Kelly’s positively shrieking with excitement. “Look at this!”

  I tumble down the last few rough steps—really, they’re just slabs of stone wedged into the steep riverbank. I would have caught myself in time, but Evan holds out a hand in case I need to brace against him. He does it nicely, not in a patronizing, look-at-you-silly-girl-falling-over-again way; he just puts his palm out at chest height, leaving the choice to me whether I take it or not.

  Because he’s being so nice, I touch his hand briefly for balance, so he doesn’t look silly with it out like that, as if he’s carrying an invisible tray. And then I gasp as I take in what Kelly—and the other girls—are so worked up about.

  “They’re hot springs!” Kelly exclaims. “Now, this is mental!”

  “Thermal springs,” Kendra corrects her snottily.

  Kelly and Kendra are both brainy, and they know it. Unfortunately, that isn’t enough for either of them, as on this summer course they’ve been engaging in a competition to see who’s cleverer. It’s beginning to break into open warfare, and certainly Kendra’s tone is sharp enough to make Evan turn to look at her, obviously taken aback.

  But I’m staring at the thermal springs. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Along this bank of the river, several have bubbled up through the stone and formed pools, irregular ovals, beside the main river. They’re like hot tubs made by nature, and the steam rising off them is visible, pale swirls like vapor coming off a witch’s cauldron. No wonder the locals knew to wear swimsuits.

  Maybe the most amazing thing is that the water itself is white. Milky, cloudy white. The people sitting in the closest pool are completely invisible below the waist. I bend down and run my fingers through the water, but it’s clear on my fingers; it’s not the water itself that’s white.

  “It is the calcare that makes it white,” Leo says, seeing my disbelief. “Under, the stone under the water.”

  “Chalk!” Kelly says swiftly, scoring a point back at Kendra. “It’s chalky—that’s why it looks like that. ‘Calcare’ means ‘chalk.’ ”

  Dark freshwater flowing beside us, white steamy hot tubs dotted along the riverside, stars overhead, and a glowing white moon hanging low in the sky over the patio, beyond the lanterns; it’s magical, otherworldly. I stare at the steam rising from the white pool, hypnotized, and only snap out of it when Kendra’s dress comes flying past me and drops onto the grass bank. I know that, cross at Kelly’s one-upping her by knowing the word for “chalk” in Italian, Kendra has retaliated with her best weapon: her fantastic figure. It’s cheating, really, as the battle is about who knows more, who has the best brain, not who’s the slimmest; but as Leo and Andrea both rush to hand Kendra into the hot pool, and as a boy in there already openly sighs “Bellissima!” and kisses his fingers to her, it does feel as if Kendra’s won.

  Which is depressing.

  I pat Kelly’s arm in silent sympathy, but she’s not letting Kendra get to her. Pulling off her dress, she’s stepping into the pool as well, following Andrea. It’s packed in there, and they’re all squeezing up, laughing and squashing and obviously tremendously enjoying pressing in like sardines.

  But that’s the last thing I feel like. By the sounds they’re making, everyone in that thermal pool is attracted to someone else; it’s as if I’m the only one who doesn’t want to jump in and hope that the boy I like will throw an arm around me and pull me close. In a split second, I turn on my heel, kick off my own sandals, and slip away into the dark. A couple of steps take me to the edge of the river. Remembering that I’ve seen people diving in, which means the water must be reasonably deep, I take a deep breath and launch myself into a shallow dive, cleaving the surface, bracing myself against the shock of anticipated cold.

  But it isn’t cold. It’s lukewarm. Even though the water is flowing, not sitting in a swimming pool, it’s still been heated by the July sunshine, and it’s like swimming in a mild bath. Clear water, lapping all around me. I take a few strokes underwater, pulling hard with my arms, letting go of as much tension as I can, of the shock of seeing someone I mistook for Luca. The water holds me up; I stop swimming and float to the surface, letting the flowing river carry me along. I only need to make small movements with my arms and legs to stay buoyant. My hair is submerged, waving around me like river weeds; my face is upturned to the night sky. I watch the stars twinkle, and make out Orion’s Belt, the bright glow of Venus, the Big Dipper.

  The stars cut out as I’m carried slowly under the bridge, which seems to be a cutoff point for the party people flooding down from the dance floor. There’s no one around. I’m emptying my brain, feeling as if I’m in a flotation tank. My hair is heavy and damp around my face, and I move my head slowly back and forth, enjoying the sensation of the wet locks on my cheeks, like a cool compress on my skull, as I emerge on the other side of the bridge.…

  “Ciao, Violetta.”

  The sound of his voice, low and almost caressing, is such a shock that for a moment I think I’ve hallucinated hearing it. But as I jerk my head back, I see his shoes, his jeans, and swiftly I swing my legs under me, scrabbling for a foothold in the squishy mud of the riverbank, digging in my toes, and stand up waist-high in the water. Luca has bent his long legs now, and is sitting down in front of me, halfway down the bank on a stone outcropping, so we’re almost level. I stare at him, still disbelieving.

  “It was you!” I blurt out, and then feel stupid.

  “Cosa?”

  He lifts his dark brows. I can see his face clearly in the moonlight, the pale skin, the perfect bone structure, the black lock of hair that falls over his forehead, inky-dark.

  “Before,” I say. “Up by the club. You were smoking.”

  He nods. “Which you think is a disgusting habit,” he observes, amusement in his voice.

  “Yes, I do,” I say firmly, glad of the way the conversation is going; ticking him off is much easier than … anything else. “It’s revolting. Schifoso,” I add, having learned the word in Italian.

  “Bene.” He pulls the packet from his jeans pocket, raises it to show me, and then, quite unexpectedly, releases it, his long fingers empty, the packet falling into the river beside me. “No more cigarettes,” he says. “Since you say they are schifoso.”

  “You’re stopping? Just like that?” I fish out the packet before it becomes so waterlogged it sinks, and put it on the grass.

  He shrugs. “Perchè no?”

  I swallow. “You shouldn’t just throw things in the water like that. It’s bad for the environment,” I say, sticking with the severe, ticked-off voice, as it makes me feel safe. If I lose this voice with him, I’m in much deeper, more dangerous waters than this pretty little river.

  “Mi scusi,” he says lightly, an apology with not a flicker of contrition in his voice. “You are good for me, Violetta. The only one who tells me when I do wrong.”

  When he calls me by the Italian version of my name, I can’t help it: I feel like I’m melting. Dissolving, helpless, gone. I dig my toes deep into the yielding, sucking mud, clear my throat, and attempt to say his name firmly. But to my dismay, it comes out really feebly. A plea, not a reprimand.

  “Luca,” I say, and he leans toward me.

  “Sì, Violetta?”

  “Luca, we said we weren’t going to be alone together.”

  I’m almost whispering now. The water lapping around me, flowing past me, is a soft, gentle, seductive background noise. I’m aware, all at once, that I’m wet from head to toe, that the borrowed shirt is clinging to me, my bra probably showing through, and I don’t dare to look down to see if it is.

  “I know,
” he says quietly and sadly. “I see you go down to the pozze termali with all your friends, and I watch you, to see if you’re happy, if you laugh and jump in with them. If you are happy, I leave. But you don’t laugh with them. You dive into the river and you swim away, and I think you are all by yourself, and maybe not very safe, so I walk along the … riva …”

  “The bank,” I prompt as he trails off, unable to find the word in English.

  “Sì. I walk along, and then I see you floating like a mermaid, and I want to say something to you.”

  He shrugs again, but it’s very different from the last one; that was casual, dismissive. This is … wistful. And, to my horror, I hear myself confessing:

  “It’s nice to see you.”

  Stupid, silly, banal little words. Luca smiles, his dark blue eyes sparking.

  “Nice?” he says, and he starts to take off his shoes. “This is a very strong word in English, non è vero?”

  “No,” I say quickly. “It’s not a strong word at all.”

  “Oh, peccato,” he says cheerfully, which means “what a shame.”

  He’s pulling off his socks.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, which is stupid too, as it’s obvious; he’s standing up now, his hands at his waistband, unbuckling his belt. The sight is incredibly disconcerting. I back away, into deeper water, on the tips of my toes now. “Luca—”

  “I am hot,” he says. “That’s correct, isn’t it? Not ‘I have hot.’ ”

  I know what he means: in Italian, you say you “have” hot or cold, not that you “are.” It takes a bit of getting used to. Especially with the double meaning, which I’m certainly not going to explain to him now.

  “Yes,” I say even more feebly as Luca’s jeans drop to the ground and he steps out of them. Thank goodness he’s wearing boxers! His legs are long and almost too thin, a bit storklike. I’m ridiculously glad to have found a defect in him. As he starts to unbutton his shirt, I take another step back and find myself treading water frantically, out of my depth now. I can’t look at his mostly bare body: I turn away, feeling a blush suffusing my cheeks. So I hear, rather than see, him dive into the river.

  He surfaces next to me, shaking his wet hair back from his face. It plasters down to his skull, and that makes his bone structure much more pronounced, his cheekbones sharp as knives. I stare at him, tongue-tied, as he treads water easily next to me.

  “Now you must be cross with me,” he says, a thread of laughter in his voice. “You must tell me that I’m wrong, that we must not be alone together.”

  “We mustn’t,” I say, suddenly angry. “You know we mustn’t.” I can’t keep treading water; my legs feel too wobbly. I put my head down and swim away from him, a couple of strokes to the far bank, where I can stand.

  He follows me; he swims right to me, and when he comes up, he’s so close, so tall, that he blocks out the moon. His bare chest is dappled with drops of water clinging to his skin. I can’t look anymore, so I raise my eyes, and then I’m looking into his, and oh no, that’s a really terrible idea, that’s the worst idea in the world.…

  “Se scorre un fiume dentro ad ogni cuore, arriveremo al mare prima o poi,” he says, looking down at me. “More Jovanotti,” he adds, smiling, as he sees me staring at him in confusion.

  Jovanotti is Luca’s favorite singer; he’s quoted songs of his before to me. But I don’t know this one.

  “ ‘If a river runs inside every heart, we will arrive at the sea,’ ” he translates. “I think of this because we are in a river.”

  “It’s very pretty,” I mumble.

  “The rest of the song is maybe not so pretty,” he says. “It is a love song, but Jovanotti tells the truth about love. That it is sometimes not pretty at all.”

  I nod, even though hearing the word “love” spoken by Luca is enough to make me feel as if I’m blushing all over.

  He reaches out to stroke my wet hair, smoothing it back from my face. “Just once,” he says softly. “Just now, just for a few moments …”

  We lean into each other at the same time, wet skin pressed against wet skin, cold water over cold skin, warming each other, heating up so fast it feels as if the river droplets are burning off us already as our lips meet. I’ve never kissed anyone in the water before, never been so—comparatively—naked as I press against someone, and it’s dizzying. My hands slip over his shoulders, run over his back, feel the lean muscles there, the strength as his arms tighten around my waist, pulling me up toward him, onto the tips of my toes again. He’s kissing me hard, his tongue cool in my mouth, and I can’t help kissing him back just as hard.

  His hands slide under the loose shirt I’m wearing, up my bare back, and I moan against his lips; I press against him and feel his nipples, hard little points, through the cotton fabric of the shirt, the lace of my bra. It’s an odd, entrancing sensation, and it makes me want to rub against him even more. I’m clinging to him, my hands rising up to stroke his scalp, burrow into his wet hair, and he almost purrs against my mouth with pleasure, a sound that starts deep in his chest. I feel the vibration. It makes me think of a cat, a big, predatory cat, and I shiver from head to toe and pull my mouth from his and bury my face in the bony hollow of his shoulder, against his bare skin, and just hold on to him.

  I’m shaking. It’s too much, it’s not enough. Luca’s hand closes over the back of my head and smoothes my hair down, his other hand still firm around my waist, holding me to him. I feel his lips press to my scalp, kissing it.

  “Violetta,” he says, with utter desolation in his voice. “Violetta, cosa mi fai?”

  “What are you doing to me?” he’s saying. And I want to repeat his words back to him, but I know he doesn’t expect an answer.

  I keep my face pressed into his shoulder, because it will be the last time. I try to smell his skin, but the fresh flowing water carries scents away, and when I eventually pull back, there’s an extra little rush of heartbreak because I know it means that I will never have Luca’s scent in my nostrils again, will never again be close enough to him to have that luxury.

  There’s nothing to say. His hands fall from me and he steps back, enough to let me slip past him, turning my face away, because I’m shallow, and the sight of him with his hair slicked back and his mouth red from kissing will make me do what I know I can’t: throw myself at him all over again.

  I dive down and swim as many strokes as I can underwater. Coming up briefly for air, I dive straight down again, swimming against the current, pulling hard with strong strokes of my arms, beneath the bridge, out the other side, emerging breathless to find Kelly, Paige, and Kendra in the river, splashing one another with squeals and shrieks. The boys, of course, are joining in eagerly, a commotion that completely camouflages my reappearance. Kelly glances at me and says:

  “Oh! There you are!” and then some boy cannonballs in, drenching us all, and she screams happily along with the rest of them, and I make my way to the bank and slide into the now-empty thermal pool, soaking in the milky-white, sulfur-smelling hot water, watching them all cavort blissfully and saying to myself, over and over again:

  He can’t be my brother. He can’t be my brother—half brother! He can’t be! How could I possibly feel like this about him if he were my brother?

  I keep my eyes away from the right bank of the river, the side with the roadhouse restaurant. In fact, I turn my back to it. That’s simple enough. I don’t want to see Luca, and somehow I know that he won’t stay in the river; he won’t want to come and join our merry group now. There’s no danger of that, of having to smile and pretend that everything’s okay while being horribly, intensely aware of Luca’s presence; or worse, having to watch him talk and laugh with other girls. The thought of that makes me shiver in repulsion. I remember how jealous I’ve been of Elisa, Leonardo’s sister, who’s made a huge play for Luca. Even though I know that I’m the one Luca wants, what difference does that really make when Luca and I can’t be together?

  Bodies crash ba
ck into the thermal pool, slippery as they slide past me, chilly from the cooler river water, wet hair slapping against backs, breath being caught; Kelly, plopping in next to me, wraps an arm around my shoulders, drops her head against my arm, and says blissfully:

  “This is the best night ever!”

  Andrea and Leo, squashing up opposite us, have their hair plastered over their faces, their eyes shining with the success of their evening plans. I look at them and see that Leo’s arm is around Paige, who’s half on his lap. Andrea is staring at Kendra, who’s ignoring him, chatting with Evan; I give her points, because even with the rivalry she has with Kelly, she’s not using the fact that Andrea prefers her to wind Kelly up.

  “Andrea—” Kelly says, and I watch him turn to look at her, his eyes passing over me, not in an unfriendly way, but simply as if I’m not here. To Andrea and Leo, I’m part of the furniture, just another girl who looks like so many other Italian girls: not different, not special in any way, not a strapping blonde or a black goddess or a redheaded, charmingly freckled Irish girl.

  As Andrea decides to push himself off his side of the thermal hot tub and over to Kelly, I reflect that maybe that’s why I’m so obsessed with Luca. He’s the only boy I’ve ever known who looks at me as if I’m the only girl in the world, as if, when he’s with me, he doesn’t even notice anyone else. As if he and I are in a bubble, suspended out of time.

  Andrea is hugging Kelly now, whispering in her ear, snuggling up next to her, setting his shoulders against the stone surround of the pool, pulling her familiarly back against him. I know how happy this will make her, that the boy she’s so keen on, has been crushing on since she first saw him, is finally singling her out, showing her attention. I cross my fingers, hoping that it isn’t just to make Kendra jealous, that Andrea has realized now he has no chance with Kendra and is turning his focus to someone who actually likes him back.

  But as I glance sideways, I see that Andrea, though stroking Kelly’s arms, is not looking down at her head, nestled below him. His chin is up, his gaze directed to the other side of the pool, where Kendra is chatting with Evan about some people they both know in the States, her skin glowing dark and luminous against the milky water and the white of her bra. Her hair is pulled back into a short ponytail, showing off her strong jaw and full mouth.