Flirting in Italian

by Henderson, Lauren

  Turning away, I frantically dab at my face with the backs of my hands, trying to matte myself down. I consider, momentarily, running off to the loo to do a better fix-up job on myself, but what if Luca comes back and doesn’t find me here? I can’t go over to the bar and tell him I’m going to the loo and to wait for me, because the mere thought of trying to communicate the word “toilet” to him makes me wish for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. What if he doesn’t understand? What if I have to do some sort of mime to explain? I’d rather die.

  So I pat my face down, pull out the lip gloss from my handbag and reapply it, pray that some of my perfume is still clinging to my pores—hopefully canceling out any sweaty stink—and surreptitiously lift the bodice of my dress and flap it back and forth, cooling myself down as much as possible.

  “Violetta!” I recognize Luca’s voice: light, husky, and with an edge of humor, as if he’s perpetually amused by a joke that only he can understand. Hearing him say my name—and in Italian!—is paralyzing. If I were with a girlfriend, I’d probably burst into hysterical, juvenile giggling; as it is, I bite my tongue, hard, take a deep breath to calm myself, and after a few moments, manage to glance around as casually as I can, spot Luca standing by a high bar table, and even raise a hand in acknowledgment as I walk toward him.

  There are lots of these tall round tables dotted around the terrace, with no stools drawn up to them; square tables with white-backed chairs are farther down, closer to the edge of the terrace, but Luca hasn’t chosen one of those. I wonder if this means he doesn’t intend to stay long, just have a quick drink with me and then head off.

  “Italians stand up a lot at bars,” I comment, taking the glass of water Luca’s pushing toward me. It’s fizzy, with ice and lime in it, and I drink it very gratefully.

  He smiles. I notice that one corner of his mouth lifts higher than the other when he does so, in a little quirk that sets off his handsomeness precisely because of its irregularity.

  “Italians like to show off their clothes,” he says. “They like clothes that are signed.” He hits his brow theatrically with one hand. “Firmati,” he says. “That is how we say ‘designer.’ They like designer clothes. If you stand up, people see them better.”

  Ha! I bet every single piece of clothing Elisa was wearing today is designer.

  “But your style, it’s very English,” Luca observes, and he reaches across the table to snag his index finger under the big strands of fake pearls around my neck, lifting them for a moment, then letting them fall back to my collarbone again. For a split second, his finger touches my skin, and he might as well have brushed me with a lit match.

  “Very …” He snaps his fingers, searching for the word. “Eccentrica,” he says finally.

  “Oh God!” My face drops. “It’s that bad?”

  “Cosa?” He looks confused. “Bad?”

  “In English, ‘eccentric’ is sort of like ‘mad,’ ” I explain. “If you’re really posh, especially. You could be a raving loony who eats bats for breakfast, and as long as you have a title, they’d call you eccentric and think it was charming.”

  Luca, clearly, hasn’t understood all of this. But he’s thrown his head back and is laughing so hard that I see people beyond us turning to look in curiosity. He looks absolutely gorgeous when he laughs, his mouth curving up, tiny lines creasing around his eyes; his usual cool demeanor is wiped away, and he looks younger, sweeter, much more approachable.

  “Bats for breakfast?” he says, when he manages to speak. “Pipistrelli per colazione? You are not eccentric, Violetta mia, you are mad.” I’m bridling, when he adds: “I like this very much. You are not boring.”

  “Wow,” I say as coldly as I can. “Thanks a lot.”

  My brain is racing at the fact that I think “Violetta mia” means “my Violet.” Which is, doubtless, just the way they talk in Italy, but sounds … I can’t even think about that. I push it to the very back of my brain to be pulled out much later, when I’m alone, and turned over and over like a precious stone glinting in my palms.

  I can’t meet his eyes. They’re full of amusement, bright and blue; it’s almost as if I’m afraid of being hypnotized, like a rabbit looking at a snake.

  “You like music,” he says; not a question, a statement, and I nod. “I see you sing to some of the songs when you dance,” he adds, and although this makes me want to scream inside my head—He watched me dancing? Oh no, did I look insane?—I manage to shrug as if it’s a matter of complete indifference to me that he saw me flailing my arms like a madwoman on the dance floor.

  “You like Italian music?” he asks, sipping some Prosecco.

  “I don’t really know any,” I admit. “Just opera, I suppose.”

  He laughs. Luca does seem to find me very amusing. “I like music a little more modern than that,” he says. “Vasco Rossi, you know him? He is our rock star. I think you will like him to dance to. And Jovanotti. Maybe I will play you some songs of his. He writes very beautiful songs. About love, politics, the world, all in the same song.”

  “That’s very difficult,” I say frankly. “I mean, lots of people try that but mostly it just comes off really pretentious. Like Coldplay.”

  “Ugh! I hate the Coldplay!” he says. “The singer, he tries to look so serious when he sings, but instead he just looks like a sheep.”

  “I know!” I say enthusiastically. “With that curly hair and that silly expression he makes …”

  I try to imitate it, and Luca laughs again, his eyes bright blue with amusement.

  “And the words are silly too,” I say. “They don’t make sense.”

  Luca leans forward, propping his elbows on the bar table, and I think he’s going to ask me something, maybe what some particularly nonsensical Coldplay lyrics mean: but instead he starts to speak in Italian, so smoothly, the words so soft and liquid, that I swiftly realize he’s quoting some lyrics. The words flow over me, winding around me like velvet:

  “ ‘Ci sono trenta modi per salvare il mondo, ma uno solo perche il mondo salvi me—che io voglia star con te, e tu voglia star con me.’ ”

  I gaze at him, and now I do feel hypnotized. I have no idea what he’s saying—he could be reading the phone book in Italian and I’d stare at him across the little bar table, unable to take my eyes from him.

  “That is from a song by Jovanotti. Shall I translate for you?” he asks gently.

  All at once, I panic. What if the words are so lovely I can’t bear them? It’s as if he’s casting a spell over me, and I need to break free before it settles so tightly around me that I’m completely in his power. I manage to drag my eyes from his, and with a huge wash of relief, over his shoulder I see a whole group of people sitting at a table at the brightly lit end of the bar, where the party is: a big crowd of boys encircling a blond head and a darker one. Paige and Kendra have a lot of admirers.

  “Oh, look!” I point over to them, my voice unnaturally high. “The girls! I should probably go over and say hi—they’ll be wondering where I am.…”

  “They don’t look very preoccupate,” Luca remarks, casting a glance in their direction. “In fact, they are very busy without you.”

  He’s quite right. But I need to get away from this tête-à-tête; it’s too intimate, too like being on a date with him. I can’t think why he’s singled me out. Maybe he wants to practice his English. But I’m sure that any moment, some gorgeous, pin-thin girl in designer labels will come up and drape herself around his neck, and he’ll introduce his girlfriend, and she’ll pull him away, and I’ll be left standing alone at this table with a half-finished glass of water and a humiliated smile plastered to my face.

  Anything’s better than that.

  “I should probably just go and tell them I’m okay …,” I mumble.

  I set down my glass and take a couple of steps around the table, heading toward Paige and Kendra. And then, I feel the lightest of clasps surround my wrist. Like a bracelet closing around it: delicate, almost
weightless, a question, not a command. A fine gold chain that I could shake off instantly if I wanted to, keep walking without breaking stride.

  But I don’t want to. I stop at the touch of his hand on my bare skin, my heart pounding in shock. I turn to look up at him, meeting his blue eyes, half hidden by his black lashes. I swallow hard.

  “I would not go over to them if I were you,” he says softly.

  “Why?” I frown, not understanding: Is he saying that Paige and Kendra are cross with me? But they can’t be … I haven’t done anything to them.

  “They are busy with the boys,” he says, his long fingers still encircling my wrist. “And those boys, they will not be as …” He considers, looking for the right word. “Interested in you,” he finishes.

  “What?” I drag my hand away, furious now. “What’s wrong with me?”

  I’m burning up with anger, and I wish I hadn’t asked that question: it makes me sound so insecure. Before I can correct myself, however, he’s saying:

  “Italian boys, in a club in the summer …” He shrugs, smiling. “They like foreign girls. Foreign girls are more facile—more easy. And they look different. It is exciting to be different—not like their sisters. You may be English, eccentrica, but your face, your body—you look like an Italian girl, from the south. With many brothers, who carry big knives. So you are not different, and maybe not easy. They will think they will not get what they want from you.”

  I’m gawping at him in shock as he nods toward the table where the American girls are sitting.

  “The blond one,” he adds, “she is funny. Like a toy for a little girl, come to life. The Barbie, and also the one who cries when you pull the string in her back. Una bambola per ragazzine.”

  I flash instantly and disloyally on what he means: Paige does look like a cross between Barbie and a little girl’s doll, one with round cheeks and big eyes and enviably cascading blond ringlets.

  “She looks easy,” Luca continues. “Because she likes too much to be liked.”

  I glance back at the girls’ table. Paige is throwing her head around, blond curls bouncing, as she whoops with laughter at something Andrea is saying. The boys are standing behind her chair, leaning on its back, too close to her, in her personal space, and she’s letting them get that near, something I wouldn’t do with boys I’d just met an hour or so ago. Reluctantly, I see why Luca’s made that observation: Leonardo’s waving his glass around, and his hand is coming pretty near Paige’s fabulous bosom. Too close again.

  “But the black girl,” Luca observes, “she is more difficult for a boy. Not so easy. She puts a high valore—value—on herself.”

  It’s true: Kendra is sitting up straight, elegant, like a goddess, her posture excellent, the boys around her staring at her worshipfully instead of trying to snuggle up to her while she’s laughing.

  “She is …” Luca kisses his fingers to Kendra. “Bellissima. The African beauty, so elegant. Sofisticata. Her”—he nods at Kendra—“the boys, they will follow her everywhere in Italy. Molto elegante.”

  If there’s anything more annoying than a boy praising another girl’s beauty to your face, I can’t think what it is. Besides, I also don’t like the way he’s judging Paige and Kendra and me. It’s so cynical.

  “I think you’re really rude,” I say angrily. “And superficial.”

  Luca shrugs once again.

  “I tell the truth,” he says. “E la cosa più importante nel mondo. The most important thing.”

  “You can know what you think is the truth,” I snap, “but no one’s making you say it out loud.”

  Like that Italian boys won’t fancy me, I think bitterly. He couldn’t have told me more clearly that he isn’t interested in me if he’d written it on a big sign and held it above his head.

  Luca leans toward me, an expression of intense interest on his face.

  “So,” he starts slowly, “if I am thinking that I want to kiss you, I should not say it out loud?”

  Oh, he’s completely messing with me now. Taunting me. I feel tears of shame and rejection rise to my eyes.

  “Please,” I manage to say in as withering a tone as I can manage, “I thought you were all about telling the truth. And now you’re nothing but a big liar.”

  His lashes lift as his eyes widen. His lips part and I watch, hypnotized now, as he says softly, so softly that I find myself tilting toward him to catch every word:

  “Violetta, cara mia, you are wrong. I am not a liar.”

  He doesn’t reach out to take hold of my shoulders, or take my hand to pull me in. He’s so sure of himself that he simply leans down, so close I can feel his breath scented with Prosecco warm on my face, for a split second, and then his lips meet mine.

  His confidence is breathtaking; when I’ve been kissed in the past, the boys always touch you just as they’re about to do it, make sure you’re willing, put an arm around you, hold your hand. It gives them a moment’s grace, a few seconds of self-protection, so if they’ve misjudged the situation—if you pull away—they won’t be left standing there looking like a fool, with their head craning toward you and their lips pursed like one of those baby dolls he mentioned that blows kisses when you pull the string in its back.

  Luca, however, doesn’t lay a finger on me. He simply kisses me. And not in a soft, tentative, exploratory way; his mouth is long and narrow, his lips hard and insistent. It’s not the kind of kiss I’m used to at all.

  I lean in. My back arches, my head tilts up, and I meet his insistence with equal fervor. I can’t help it. You’d have to lasso me around the neck and yank me away to stop me from kissing him back. Even if this is some kind of awful joke, even if he’s kissing me to somehow lure me in and make a fool of me, I can’t help it.

  Our lips part; our bodies are pressing together now. I’m really glad I’m wearing heels, even if they’re not that high; Luca’s much taller than I am. And then I feel his hand in the small of my back, his fingers splayed out, lifting me toward him, and his other hand slides around my neck, tilting me up more. It’s the most incredibly intimate sensation I’ve ever felt; a spark flares up in the pit of my stomach, like the head of a match scratching along the rough powdered glass and phosphorus of a striking strip on a matchbook.

  Ripping, tearing the flame into life. Not pretty, not romantic, not the kind of kiss you expect under the stars with white muslin curtains blowing in the distance. Not at all. Luca’s tongue is in my mouth, mine meeting his eagerly, so eagerly I’d be embarrassed if he weren’t dragging me to him now with a powerful flexing of his muscles. And I’m gripping his upper arms, feeling the biceps swell, long and lean, like tensile steel rather than the big plump muscles of more solidly built, sporty boys.

  My brain is racing. It has to. If I stop thinking, I’ll be completely lost, overwhelmed with sensations I don’t know how to process. Right now, feeling Luca’s body all down the length of mine, his tongue warm and wet, all the excitement bursting up in me, all the emotions swirling around, plug right back into the kiss, making it more and more intense with every moment that passes. It’s as if we’re creating a cyclone around us, wrapping tighter and tighter, spinning us around with enough energy to lift us right off our feet.

  I’m clinging to Luca not just to pull him closer, but for support now too: I don’t trust my ability to stand up on my own.

  And that realization jolts me back to some sort of reality.

  I’m in public, in a club in Florence, snogging a boy who I met only a couple of hours ago, so madly that I’m weak at the knees … in full view, if they looked over, of his friends and two girls I barely know.…

  My eyes snap open, and I drag my mouth away from Luca’s, gasping for breath. I find my feet under me, pull back from him, and promptly grab the edge of the table to steady myself. My hair’s fallen down again; I can feel it tumbling down my back. My lips are wet. I raise a hand to wipe them dry, aware that my eyes are stretched wide with shock. I literally cannot believe what just happene
d. I feel like someone just gave me a violent electric shock.

  Luca looks equally disheveled. His hair’s tumbling forward in straight black lines, his blue eyes wide, his lips redder from kissing me so hard. He looks as amazed as I am.

  “Ammazzati,” he mutters.

  I’m still too close to him. I can feel the force field between us. I take another step back, still gripping the table’s edge, because I see his expression change unexpectedly. His blue eyes darken, and his mouth twists cynically.

  “So,” he says, his tone sarcastic, almost bitter, “you are a success in Italy, Violetta. Congratulazioni. You spend only one day here and already you are kissed by a boy! Your friends will be envious.”

  My blood boils. He’s making it sound as if I asked him to kiss me, as if I’m the kind of girl who would flirt with him and lead him on just so I could get a first notch on my belt, to score one up on Paige and Kendra and Kelly. I stare at him, furious, and then he raises his hands and claps his long clever fingers together, once, twice, as if he’s applauding me for getting kissed. Against the odds, because, as he’s already pointed out, Paige and Kendra are much more attractive to Italian boys than I am—

  The clapping is insufferable, the last straw. He’s mocking me; he’s deliberately ruining everything that just happened between us. I don’t understand why, but it makes me so angry that, to my absolute amazement, my hand raises, my open palm slapping his cheek with more force than I even knew I had, a smack that seems to echo all around the bar.

  We stare at each other for a moment, both of us in shock. I don’t say a word. I don’t trust myself to come up with anything sufficiently articulate. All I can do is swivel on my heel and walk away, toward the table where Paige and Kendra are sitting. It takes all the courage I have, because people are glancing our way; I don’t know how much they saw, but the noise I made slapping Luca has definitely attracted attention.