Love & Gelato(37)

“Hey!”

He bumped his shoulder against mine. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant we’re both kind of different.”

“What makes you different?”

“I’m sort of American, sort of Italian. When I’m in Italy I feel too American, and when I’m in the States I feel too Italian. Also, I’m older than everyone in my grade.”

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen. My family lived in Texas for a couple of years when I was really young, and when we moved back I didn’t speak Italian very well. I was already kind of old for my grade, and they had to hold me back a year so I could catch up. My parents ended up enrolling me at the American school a few years later, but the school wouldn’t allow me to skip forward to the grade I’m supposed to be in.”

“When will you be eighteen?”

“March.” He looked at me. “So you’re really only staying for the summer?”

“Yeah. Howard and my grandma want me to stay longer, but the circumstances are obviously pretty weird. I barely know him.”

“But maybe you’ll get to know him. Chainsaw aside, I kind of like him.”

I shrugged. “It just seems so bizarre. If my mom hadn’t gotten sick, I probably still wouldn’t know anything about him. She’d always just told me that she’d gotten pregnant young and decided it was best to keep my father out of the picture.”

“Until now.”

“Until now,” I echoed.

“Where will you live when you leave Florence?”

“Hopefully with my friend Addie. I stayed with them for the rest of sophomore year, and she’s going to ask her parents if I can stay with them next year too.”

He looked at the journal. “So what have you been reading about in there?”

“Well, so far I know that they had to keep their relationship a secret. He was an assistant teacher at the school she was going to, and I guess the school wouldn’t have liked it. And she was hard-core about keeping it a secret. Like after they started dating, she stopped writing his name because was afraid someone would read her journal and find out about them. She just calls him ‘X.’?”

He shook his head. “Scandalous. Well, that’s probably your answer right there. Seems like most secret romances have a shelf life.”

“Maybe. But when I first got here Sonia told me that my mom lived with Howard at the cemetery for a while, so that’s not exactly secretive. And she said that one day my mom just left. She didn’t even say good-bye to Sonia.”

“Wow. Something must have happened. Something big.”

“Like . . . my mom got pregnant?”

“Oh. I guess that would be a big deal.” He chewed on his lower lip thoughtfully. “Now you have me curious. Keep me in the loop, would you?”

“Sure.”

“So she loved Ponte Vecchio. What other places did she write about?”

I took the journal from him and started flipping through it. “She talks about this club a couple of times, Space.”

“Space Electronic?” He laughed. “No way. I was there like two weeks ago. Elena loves it. She knows one of the DJs, so we usually get in for free. Where else?”

“The Duomo, Boboli Gardens . . . He also took her to a secret bakery. Do you know where one is?”

“A secret bakery?”

I handed him the journal. “Read here.”

He scanned the entry. “I’ve never heard of this, but it sounds awesome. Too bad she didn’t write down the address—I could totally go for a fresh cornetta.”

His phone started ringing and he pulled it out of his pocket and hesitated for a second, then hit SILENCE. It started ringing again right away and he hit SILENCE again.

“Who is it?”

“No one.”

He shoved the phone back in his pocket, but not before I saw the name on the screen. Mimi.

“Hey, do you want to get a gelato?”

I wrinkled my forehead. “What’s that?”

He groaned. “Gelato. Italian ice cream. The greatest thing that will ever happen to you. What have you been doing since you arrived?”

“Hanging out with you.”

“And you’re telling me I only have one summer.” He shook his head, then stood up. “Come on, Lina. We’ve got work to do.”





Chapter 12




SO . . . ITALIAN GELATO. TAKE THE deliciousness of a regular ice-cream cone, times it by a million, then sprinkle it with crushed-up unicorn horns. Ren stopped me after my fourth scoop. I probably would have kept going forever.

When I walked in the front door Howard was watching an old James Bond movie with his bare feet propped up on the coffee table. There was an industrial-size bucket of popcorn sitting next to him.

“Movie just started—want to watch?”

I glanced at the screen. Old-school James Bond was swimming toward a building wearing a disguise that basically consisted of a stuffed duck attached to a helmet. Normally I was all over cheesy old movies, but tonight I had other things on my mind. “No thanks. I’m going to get some rest.” And hopefully some answers.



NOVEMBER 9

Tonight was the best night of my life, and I have a statue to thank for it.