Love & Gelato(70)

My phone starting ringing and I jumped off my bed and crossed the room in two flying leaps. Please be Ren. Please be Ren, please be— Thomas.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Lina. This is Thomas.”

“Hey.” I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked like a puffer fish. Who’d suffered some kind of emotional breakdown.

“Did you get my text?”

“Yes. Sorry I didn’t answer. Today’s been kind of . . . crazy.”

“No problem. What do you think about the party? Do you want to come with me?”

His voice was so uncomplicatedly British. And he was talking about a party. Like it mattered. I ran my hand through my hair. “What is it exactly?”

“Eighteenth birthday party for one of the girls who just graduated. She lives in the coolest place—almost as big as Elena’s. Everyone will be there.”

“Everyone” as in Ren and Mimi? I shut my eyes. “Thanks for asking me, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”

“Oh, come on. You have to celebrate with me. I passed my driver’s test yesterday, and my dad said I could pick you up in his BMW. And you really don’t want to miss this party. Her parents hired an indie band I’ve been listening to for more than a year.”

I tucked the phone between my ear and shoulder and rubbed my eyes. After everything that had happened today, a party seemed laughably normal. Also, it seemed weird to go out with someone when I’d clearly fallen for someone else. But what do you do when your “someone else” wants nothing to do with you? At least Thomas was still talking to me.

“Let me think about it.”

Thomas exhaled. “All right. You think about it. I’d pick you up at nine. And it’s formal, so you’d need to dress up. I promise you’ll have a good time.”

“Formal. Got it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

We hung up and I tossed my phone on the bed, then walked over to the window and looked out. It was a clear night and the moon winked at me like a giant eye. Like it had been watching this whole complicated story play out, and now it was having the last laugh.

Stupid moon. I put both hands on the window sash and practically threw myself on top of it, but the window wouldn’t budge.

Fine.





Chapter 24




THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE just before dawn. I’d passed out on my bed fully dressed, and there was a dish of spaghetti perched on the edge of my dresser, the tomato sauce pooled in oily clumps. Guess Howard had tried to bring me dinner.

Gray hazy light was filtering through my window, and I got up and walked quietly over to my suitcase, rummaging around for some clean running clothes. Then I picked up the journal and crept silently through the house, leaving through the back door.

I made my way toward the back gate. Not even the birds were up yet and dew covered everything like a big, gauzy spiderweb. My mom was right. The cemetery looked completely different at different times of day. Predawn cemetery was sort of muted-looking, like gray had been swirled in with the rest of the colors.

I went through the back gate then broke into a run, passing where I’d met Ren for the first time. Don’t. Think. About. Ren. It was my new mantra. Maybe I’d have it printed on a bumper sticker.

I shook the thought out of my head, then took in a deep breath, settling on a medium pace. The air was crisp and clean-smelling, like what laundry detergents are probably going for with their “mountain air” scents, and I was crazy relieved to be running. At least now it wasn’t just my mind that was in overdrive.

One mile. Then two. I was following a narrow little footpath worn into the grass by someone who had made this route a habit, but I had no idea if their destination was the same as mine. For all I knew, I was headed in the complete wrong direction. Maybe it didn’t even exist anymore, and then—BAM. The tower. Jutting out of the hill like a wild mushroom. I stopped running and stared at it for a minute. It was like stumbling across something magical, like a pot of gold, or a gingerbread house in the middle of Tuscany.

Don’t think about gingerbread houses.

I started running again, feeling my heart quicken even more as I neared the tower’s dark silhouette. It was a perfect cylinder, gray and ancient-looking and only about thirty feet tall. It looked like the kind of place where people had been falling in love for years.

I ran right up to the base, then put my hand on the wall, trailing it behind me as I circled around to the opening. The wooden door Howard had moved for my mom was long gone, leaving a bare arched doorway that was so short I had to duck to walk under it. Inside it was empty except for a couple of shaggy spiderwebs and a pile of leaves that had probably outlasted the tree they’d come from. A crumbly spiral staircase rose through the tower’s center, letting a pale circle of light into the room.

I took a deep breath, then headed for the staircase. Hopefully all my answers were at the top.

I had to walk carefully—half the steps looked like they were just waiting for an excuse to collapse—and I had to do this acrobatic hurtle over the space where the final step had once been, but finally I stepped outside. The top of the tower was basically an open platform, its circumference lined by a three-foot ledge, and I made my way over to the edge. It was still pretty dark and gray out, but the view was stunning. Like postcard stunning. To my left was a vineyard with rows of grapevines stretching out in thin silvery ropes, and everywhere else was rich Tuscan countryside, the occasional house marooned like a ship in the middle of an ocean of hills.