The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany(46)

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Lucy navigates using an app she’s loaded onto my phone. “Where the hell is this place?” We round another corner, cross another bridge.

“Sorry. I’m no help without my glasses.”

“This damn island is like a house of mirrors.”

“Maybe we should go back to the hotel, Luce. We can go out tomorrow, when we’re in Florence.”

She cranes her neck to find a street name on the corner of a building. “Okay, this way.”

She leads me into Campo Santa Margherita, and we navigate the perimeter. “Aha!” she says, pointing to a nondescript door with a tiny sign that reads Il Campo. “Here we are.” She gives me a quick once-over, then fishes a lip pencil from her purse. She uncaps it and aims it at me.

“Stand still.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I say, and step back.

“You heard what Pops said. You’ve got yourself a kick-ass battle scar if there ever was one.”

My heart beats erratically as she outlines my lips. Next, she dabs them with thick wet gloss. I fight the urge to swipe my mouth with the back of my hand. She stands back and smiles.

“Nice.”

It’s funny how words can affect a person, how, with the slightest shift in perception, along with one person’s faith, a lifelong belief can rise up like a flock of sparrows and fly away. I’m still a bit self-conscious. Others will notice my mouth now, and with it, my scar. The jagged blue line below my glossy bottom lip is as obvious as the sports bra beneath my blouse.

Tonight, I’m choosing to reveal, rather than conceal.

I follow Lucy through the door. Immediately, we’re assaulted by techno music and a cloud of cigarette smoke. Lucy sidles up to the bar. Without my glasses, everything’s a bit blurry. I blink and, for a moment, things come into focus. Throngs of kids—college aged, mostly—stand shoulder to shoulder. The entire place, it seems, is orange. Orange walls, orange chairs, orange sofa, orange rugs. I feel a headache coming on.

Lucy hands me a drink. My glossy lips stick to the rim of the glass, and I sip something that tastes like lime . . . but has a spicy hotness.

“Green chile and citrus vodka,” she shouts over the music.

“Oh. It’s . . . thanks,” I say, and choke down another sip.

She pays the bartender, seeming not to notice the dark-skinned guy with bloodshot eyes whose nose is practically pinched in her cleavage. His friend, a redhead who looks like a five-foot, three-inch version of England’s Prince Harry, smiles at me. I spin away and walk alongside Lucy toward a shaggy orange sofa that looks super comfy. Thank God I’ll get to rest these aching feet. How does my cousin prance around in these heels twelve hours a day?

We near a small round table, where a guy and a cute brunette stand, drinking martinis. As we pass, the guy looks me up and down without the slightest pretense.

“Asshole,” Lucy snaps. She turns to me. “I can’t stand a guy who checks me out when he’s with another woman.”

We arrive at the empty orange sofa and I plop down. “My feet,” I groan, and kick off my—Lucy’s—heels.

“Drink,” she orders.

“Oh, Luce. I’ve already had wine with dinner.”

“Drink,” she repeats.

Cautiously, I take another swallow of my chile citrus vodka and shudder.

“Good girl,” she says, smiling. “You really are trying to change, aren’t you?”

I take a long swill of the awful drink, hoping for courage. We ignore what our heart—and stomach—tells us when we think it could make someone love us.

Thirty minutes and two citrus whatever-they’re-calleds later, Lucy and I have befriended a quartet of tall blond women from the Netherlands. They speak perfect English—better than mine at the moment.

“You guys are great!” I say, but it sounds more like, “Who died in the lake?”

“To new friends,” Lucy says, and we clink glasses. I throw back my delicious drink. Beside me, Lucy scans the place from wall to wall, as if measuring for carpet. She slams her glass on the table and rises.

“C’mon! Let’s dance!”

The blondes jump to their feet and make their way to the dance floor. I try wedging my feet into my shoes, my heart battering in my rib cage. Lucy grabs my hand and yanks me from the chair.

“Wait,” I say, as I stumble forward. “I haven’t danced in . . . forever.”

The room sways. She pulls me onto the wood floor, crammed with sweating, writhing bodies. I shift awkwardly and tug at the hem of my skirt. A guy with a scarf around his neck scoots up behind me, thrusting his crotch dangerously close to my rear. I yelp and spin around. My tongue feels thick and I shout in Lucy’s ear.

“Did you see that?”

She shimmies her shoulders and laughs. “Be nice!”

I look around at this blurry crowd of happy millennials, laughing, bobbing, hopping up and down with their arms raised to the ceiling. I’m probably the oldest person here. Besides Lucy, I don’t know a soul in this entire place, or the entire city. A refreshing surge of freedom washes over me. Here, I can be whomever I choose to be.

I find my rhythm. People look at me, smile at me. Thanks to the alcohol, I’m almost able to ignore my aching feet—and the couple to my right who are basically dry-humping. It’s actually fun, dancing with this laughing group of girls.