Love Your Life(19)

“Too late.” He chuckles.

I’ve also just hinted that I live in England, it occurs to me. Honestly, I’m rubbish at this.

“I’m not necessarily from England, by the way,” I say quickly. “I might have been double bluffing. Maybe I don’t even have a permanent abode.”

“Aria.” Dutch shakes his head incredulously. “Do we need to stick to the rules?”

“Yes! We need to try, at least. Only one personal question each, and you still haven’t asked yours. But here’s an idea,” I add in sudden inspiration. “Let’s talk about the future. When you’re ninety, what will you be doing? Give me a snapshot.”

“OK.” Dutch nods and thinks for a moment. “I’ll be looking back over a full life. I hope I’ll be content. In the sunshine somewhere. The good sunshine,” he clarifies with a quick grin. “And I’ll be with friends, old and new.”

He sounds so sincere, I feel a little pull at my heartstrings. He could have said so many other things. He could have said, “I’ll be on my yacht with my fifth wife.” That’s what Russell would have said. In fact, now I recall, that’s what Russell did say.

“That sounds perfect,” I say in heartfelt tones. “And…same. Good sunshine, friends around me. Plus I’ll be eating ice cream.”

“Oh, so will I,” says Dutch at once. “For sure. The only reason I came on an Italian holiday is because of the ice cream.”

    “What flavor?” I demand.

“Is that tomorrow’s personal question?” counters Dutch, and I laugh.

“No! I’m not wasting a personal question on that. Forget it. I don’t need to know.”

“Shame.” His eyes crinkle at me. “Then you’ll never know how much I love nocciola.”

“That is a shame.” I nod. “And you’ll never know how much I love stracciatella.”

I lie back down on my towel, too, and Dutch’s hand idly strays over to take mine. Our fingers enmesh and I can feel his thumb circling my palm, and then he’s pulling me all the way over to his towel and finding my mouth with his.

“You taste better than nocciola ice cream,” he murmurs in my ear.

“You don’t really mean that,” I murmur back, and Dutch seems to think.

“OK, tied,” he allows. “Tied with nocciola ice cream. And you beat mango sorbet.”

“I beat mango sorbet?” I open my eyes wide in mock-amazement. “Wow. I don’t even know what to say. That’s a compliment I’ll never forget.”

And of course I’m joking…but at the same time I’m speaking the truth. I’ll never forget this charmed, intoxicating, sunlit day.

As afternoon turns to early evening, we finally stir. We’ve been lying, kissing, dozing, and idly chatting all afternoon. As I get up, my limbs are stiff and my legs are patterned with the imprint of twigs, but I can’t stop smiling dreamily.

We gather our things and head back toward the car and, as we do so, pass some teenagers playing a game of football on a stretch of scrubby land. The ball suddenly veers toward us, hitting Dutch on the head. He catches it, smiles, then heads it back into the game.

    “Signor!” In a stream of Italian, one of the teenagers invites him to join in. Dutch pauses for a moment, then says to me, “Two minutes.”

As he joins the game, he instantly becomes utterly absorbed in it, and I watch, fascinated by seeing him in a different setting.

He seems to understand what the teenagers are yelling, even though they’re speaking Italian. (I guess they’re all communicating in the international language of “football.”) When one of the players slams into him with an aggressive tackle, Dutch brushes off his apology with an easygoing nod. He has a natural authority, too, I notice. The kids are deferring to him, even while they’re challenging him. Everything is another clue to who he is. Everything is another insight.

At that moment Dutch glances over at me and says, “I have to go now, guys, thanks for the game.”

The teenagers start exhorting him to stay (even I can translate that), but Dutch lifts a hand in smiling farewell and comes to rejoin me. “Well played!” I say, whereupon he laughs, takes my hand, and we turn our steps toward the car.

As we drive away with the evening sun still baking through the windscreen, I look back, trying to imprint this precious place on my memory, until we’ve turned the corner and are speeding along a main road.

“I wish we could have brought the pebble tower with us,” I say wistfully, and Dutch laughs again.

    “I’m serious!” I say. “It would have been an amazing souvenir of the holiday.”

“You would have carried those eleven heavy stones back to the car?”

“Yes.”

“And all the way back home on the plane?”

“Of course!”

“And how would you have remembered what order they were piled up in?”

I pause, because I hadn’t quite thought that through. “I would have had a system,” I say at last with dignity. “And then every time I’d seen the pebbles back at home, I would have remembered—”

I break off abruptly, because if I’m not careful, I’ll say too much. I’ll open my heart too wide; I’ll scare him off.