The Villa(18)
She is, actually. Happy.
For the first time in ages.
Pierce leans out the window, the wind ruffling his curly brown hair as he smacks his hand against the side of the car. “My girl is happy, Italy!” he yells, and Mari laughs, tugging him back into the car.
“The villagers are going to come after you with pitchforks now, you nutter,” she tells him, and he gives an easy shrug, his blue eyes bright.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Pierce actually does seem to thrive on people’s dirty looks, on whispers behind hands, Mari thinks. It cements his idea of himself as a rebel, the iconoclast who turned his back on his conservative family for a life of adventure and music and art. His blood isn’t quite as blue as Noel’s, his defection not quite as shocking, but there’s still money there, a baronet in the family tree, and a big Georgian mansion in the countryside. All of it, Pierce has told her, is deeply boring and stultifying, a life he couldn’t imagine leading.
His willingness to go his own way had seemed so brave when he’d first told her about his family. But sometimes, Mari thinks about his parents, how Pierce is their only child, and what it must feel like to be so thoroughly, irrevocably left behind.
The car follows a long dusty road through the hills, finally turning onto an even narrower dirt track, and finally, the villa comes into view.
“Oh my fucking god,” Lara murmurs from the backseat, and Mari blinks, equally stunned.
It’s … perfect. Even lovelier than she’d let herself imagine. Warm and yellow in the sunlight, surrounded by green and flowers, a jewel box of a house tucked into a lush, beautiful setting. As Mari gets out of the car, it’s all she can do not to jump up and down like a little kid.
Lara doesn’t hold back, though, grabbing Mari’s arm and doing just that, her curls bouncing as she says, “It’s perfect! Oh, Mari, isn’t it perfect?”
But then the front door opens, and Mari turns toward it, shading her eyes with her hands as Noel Gordon strolls out onto the lawn.
It’s surreal, watching a man whose face she’s seen on posters, in newspapers, smirking out from album covers at the record store, from the wall of her own childhood bedroom, walk toward her, his arms open, his smile wide.
He is both everything she imagined and nothing she expected, all at once.
Noel wears an old-fashioned velvet dressing gown over a pair of black jeans, no shoes, the sides of that ridiculous robe flapping open to reveal his bare chest. His hair is dark, curling over one brow in a way that has to be purposeful, and as he gets closer, Mari can see that he limps slightly.
She remembers reading about that now, some accident when he was young, but it doesn’t slow him down. If anything, it just adds to the weird halo of glamour that seems to surround him.
“So, you’ve found me, Sheldon,” he calls to Pierce, who rushes forward. Mari thinks he’ll envelop the other man in a hug—Pierce has always been very easy with his affection—but he catches himself at the last moment, instead grabbing Noel’s hand and pumping away in the world’s most enthusiastic handshake.
“This place is unreal, mate,” he says to Noel. “Thank you for letting us bum around it with you.”
Noel smiles, waving his free hand. “Been bored off my tits out here on my own. Needed some fresh blood.”
He looks at Mari then, and she can already see it, that assessment she gets from so many people. They look at her, and they see how much she resembles her mother, how she has her father’s red hair. And sometimes, she thinks, they look at her and wonder what it is about her that made Pierce leave his wife and family behind.
Then his eyes slide over to Lara.
Even though Noel Gordon is a stranger, Mari feels a strange kinship for him in that moment because his expression says exactly what he’s thinking. A sentiment she’s felt herself.
Ah, yes. You’re here.
How many times has she had that sinking sensation in her chest, coming home from a café or food shopping, only to find Lara perched on the sofa next to Pierce, her chin in her hand, a sly smile playing across her face?
Too many.
And now, here is someone who finally understands what it’s like to wish Lara were anywhere else, and even though Mari knows she should feel a sense of outrage—or at the very least, some sympathy for her obviously besotted stepsister—she just feels a kind of fierce gladness.
It’s not just her. She’s not just jealous or small-minded or, god forbid, bourgeois as Pierce sometimes likes to accuse her of being.
“And I see Miss Janet has made the trip safely,” Noel says, his smile twisting a little, and at her side, Mari feels Lara pause.
Janet is Lara’s real name, a name she hasn’t used in several years, deciding at fifteen to rechristen herself “Lara,” after a summer obsession with Doctor Zhivago.
And, Lara had reasoned, lying on her stomach on Mari’s bed, stockinged feet kicking in the air, it sounds better with Larchmont. Lara Larchmont. It’ll look so good on posters, don’t you think?
Mari hadn’t asked what kinds of posters Lara planned on gracing—that changed frequently. Actress, singer, model … whatever Lara had decided was the most glamorous identity that week.
Now her stepsister shakes a finger at Noel, her smile bright even as Mari sees the uncertainty in her eyes. “Naughty Noel,” she says. “You know I hate that nickname.”