One Italian Summer(35)

“You may want to double it,” he says.

“Wouldn’t mind if I do.” I chase it with another.

Afterward, I focus my attention on him. He’s wearing a light blue linen shirt and jeans, like Jude Law in The Talented Mr. Ripley. He looks extremely handsome. I can admit that. Hot, even.

“You good there?” he asks, grinning. I have not stopped staring at him.

“Yes,” I say. “I just need some air.”

He opens his arms out wide. “We got a sky full of it. Come on.”

He holds his hand out to me, and I take it. He walks us over to two side-by-side lounge chairs. I sit down in one, and then stretch out. I sink into the length of it—my body feels heavy, like I’m in a warm bathtub.

“Thank you,” I say. Even here, away from the lights of inside, I can make him out surprisingly well. It’s like the moon is always full here. There is no waning.

“You’re making me think I have something on my face,” he says. He glances at me and then looks up at the sky.

I realize my gaze is still stuck on him, but I’m not sure I can do anything about it. It feels like my body: weighted down, impossible to move.

“Hi,” I say.

He turns his head to me. “Hi.”

“I saw my mom tonight,” I say.

His face doesn’t change. “Oh yeah?”

“Yes. She’s here. She’s… here.”

“Where?

“It’s hard to explain.”

“I see,” Adam says. “Do you want to try?”

I shake my head. “The point is just that I’ve found her.”

Adam nods. “I understand,” he says. “You’re processing.”

“No, it’s truly…” I tuck my hand under my head. “It doesn’t matter, but it’s making everything a little fuzzy. Like it’s hard to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “What’s true?”

“I see.”

Adam reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. He runs his fingertips down to cup my elbow. I feel it. I feel it everywhere.

“Like that,” I say. “That is also making things fuzzy.”

He nods, considering. And then all at once he’s close to me. Are our chairs this close? It’s like he’s separate, like I can see all of his details, all of his specific, individual parts, and then he’s right here, indistinguishable. A blur of smell and skin and pulse.

“I’d like to kiss you,” he says. I hear it in my rib cage. “But I’m not going to unless you tell me it’s okay. I know you’re in a weird spot. I also know we’re here, and there is a very big full moon, and your lips look like watermelon. The good kind. The breakfast kind.”

Wherever we are, my words aren’t here. I just find the one.

“Okay.”

I’m confused by the fact that there still seems to be space between us. It feels like he’s everywhere already. I am caught in the impossibility of this, all of it. Of Carol and Remo and Adam here, millimeters from my lips.

Adam touches my chest, right below my collarbone. He moves his hand from my arm and just lays it flat there, right where my heart beats beneath. And then he kisses me. He kisses me like he’s done it many, many times before. A professional kiss. Tender and gentle and with a simmering urgency just right there, right under the surface. I sit up, and in another moment I’m on his chair, in his lap, my hands everywhere.

He presses his palms into my back and kneads the muscles there underneath.

My blood thumps to the rhythm of more more more.

I feel his hands move up to cup the back of my neck, and I run my fingers, unthinking, through his hair. It feels like velvet. Impossibly soft.

His hands move farther up, to my face, and then he takes me and lifts me closer to him, so my chest is pressed against his and his lips are directly on my neck. I lob my head back; his hand catches it. He kisses behind my ear, down my neck, and then presses his lips into the dip in my collarbone. I gasp forward. And then, like a lightning bolt, Eric’s face flashes in front of my closed eyes.

I scramble away.

“What?” Adam says, breathing hard. “Are you okay?”

I sit back. I rub my hands down my face. “I shouldn’t be doing this.”

“Yeah,” he says. He blows some air out of his lips. “Right.”

We sit there, not speaking, for as long as it takes our breath to calm.

“For what it’s worth,” Adam says, “that was a great kiss.”

I touch my thumb to my bottom lip. “That wasn’t me.”

Adam moves so both his feet are on the ground. I’m sitting on the other chair, and we’re facing each other now. “Yes,” he says. “It was.”

I focus on staying put with an intensity that feels almost cartoonish. I’m afraid of what will happen if I move.

Adam inhales next to me, and then he stands. “So listen,” he says. “I’m going to see you at breakfast tomorrow. And there is no reason for this to be embarrassing or anything else. We’re two adults. This is Italy. Shit happens.”

I look at his face. His eyes look black in the moonlight. “Right.”

“And hey, Katy?” he says.