Flirting in Italian (8 page)

Oh my God. Paige is brave enough to tell him to his face that he’s handsome, while I can’t even say hello. I am completely pathetic
.

“Questa è Kaiindra,”
Andrea says, his arm resting on the back of Kendra’s chair, as Kendra smiles at Luca and says hi.

There’s a pause. I hold my breath. And then Luca turns his head to me and says:

“E tu? Come ti chiami?”

This means “What’s your name”; I know that much. But he’s looking straight at me. His cheekbones could cut glass, and his dark eyebrows, elegantly raised in a query, are two perfect ink-black arches.

“Violet,” I manage to say. I’m so nervous that it comes out casual, dismissive, as if I don’t give a damn about him. Which, actually, is no bad thing. He nods, taking a last drag on his cigarette and stubbing it out in the ashtray on the table, before he pushes off the table to stand once again.

“Allora,”
he says, nodding toward the road.
“Andiamo?”

“Come no!”
Leonardo jumps up from the bench, pulling me with him. “We go to dance!” he says happily. “In Firenze!”

“I’m not so sure,” Kendra says, looking up from her
conversation with Andrea, who seems mesmerized by her. “I’m not so crazy about dancing.”

“Oh,
dai
!” Andrea pleads with her. I’m trying to pick up as many words as I can:
“dai”
seems to mean “come on.” He pushes back his hair with both hands dramatically. “You must come! We all go! To make celebrate you come to Italia!”

Andrea’s accent is the heaviest of all the boys who’ve talked our language so far, his English the most broken. It’s very engaging, and Kendra can’t resist his entreaties; despite herself, she breaks into a really pretty smile. Kendra is so poised most of the time, that when she lets herself go, it’s actually quite adorable; her teeth flash white against her plum-glossed lips, and her eyes half close, lashes heavy on her cheeks.

She’s adorable
, I reflect,
when she’s not laughing at your mum making a fool of herself. Be careful, Violet. You don’t know these girls well at all
.

I catch myself.
Only one battle at a time
. I glance over at Elisa, who’s standing in the doorway of the bar now with Ilaria, talking to some other girls, who are equally intimidatingly thin. Elisa’s looking straight at our group, and I think she’s staring at Luca.

I don’t blame her.

Kendra is still hesitating.

“I don’t know,” she’s saying. “It’s getting kinda late already, isn’t it? Maybe I’ll just go back to the villa.…”

Paige and Andrea look panicky at this suggestion. Leonardo throws his arms wide.

“But how?” he asks. “No, we must all go together.”

I’ve never been out partying in the countryside before, but this dilemma is bringing home to me the brutal reality that cars are few, as are designated drivers. Everyone needs to travel as a group. If Kendra goes back to the villa, we’ll all have to go. The momentum will be lost. And the evening will end here.

Which means I’ll barely have spent any time with Luca.

“Oh no, Kendra, do come!” I hear myself say, loudly and enthusiastically. I give a little jerk of my head over to Elisa. “We’ll have so much fun out with the boys … come on, there’s one for each of us!”

Luca’s eyebrows rise again, his lips quirk in amusement, and I realize that he understands English very well; I’m mortified.
Now he’ll think I’m a total party girl
. But quick-witted Kendra catches on immediately; she flicks her eyes sideways, taking in Elisa, who now has her hands on her hips, frowning as she watches us. Elisa says something to Ilaria, and they start to walk toward our group: that’s enough to make Kendra’s decision for her.

“Sure, okay, I’m in!” she says, jumping up with an athlete’s speed, and taking Andrea’s proffered arm. “Let’s get going!”

The boys don’t need telling twice; they shoot us off, probably afraid Kendra will change her mind again. We head for Luca’s car, a big Audi, sturdier and more solid than I expected; Luca looks as if he should be driving a sports car, a convertible, something lean and long and low to the ground. This is a grown-up’s car, something you drive to work. But it does fit six of us in; with much giggling, Andrea nominates himself as the one to sit in the back with
the girls, squashing in between me and Kendra, dragging the seat belts over so we’re all sardined together, buckled in.

I look out the window and see Elisa on the pavement, talking urgently to Ilaria, a frown on her face. That’s enough to have me settling back smugly in the seat. I squeal as the car takes off, shooting off down the road so fast we’re all plastered to the back of our seats with the g-force. Luca drives like the Audi is a race car, whipping it around the tight curves of the road till I feel dizzy. We’re all clinging to each other in the back, laughing, our eyes wide with excitement; even Paige, who was carsick earlier in the day, seems relaxed enough, maybe because of the wine from dinner, to giggle with the rest of us as Luca fires the car like a heat-seeking missile up and down the hills between Chianti and Florence.

I’m sitting behind him. Which means I can stare at the back of his head, as much as I can see around the headrest. His black hair is silky, long enough to reach to the collar of his shirt; I can’t see any of his skin, but I can make out the line of his shoulders, see the muscle move as the fabric of his shirt pulls over his arm, and the pleasure of being able to watch him like this, with no one realizing what I’m doing, is more intoxicating than the wine at dinner.

I have no idea why he has such a powerful effect on me. I’ve met lots of boys before, out dancing, at parties; for instance, my friend Milly’s brother Ronan is great-looking and always flirts with me—we’ve kissed a couple of times. I’ve had a bit of a crush on him for years. He’s blond, sporty, with a lovely open smile, much more the physical type I’ve
always been attracted to. But now all I can see is Luca’s face.…

I must not make a fool of myself
, I tell myself with conviction.
I must not drool over him like some idiotic panting dog with its tongue hanging out
.

The Audi shoots around a big roundabout and dives into a warren of narrow streets, buildings rising high on each side: my first view of Florence. There are cream-painted buildings with shuttered windows, bright restaurants lit up briefly as we pass, Vespa scooters buzzing past us, weaving in and out of traffic in a way that would utterly panic me if I were driving. We cross a bridge, and all of us girls gasp in unison and crane our necks to the right-hand window of the car, pushing each other to get a sight of Florence by night—the dark velvety river lit up with glittering lights; narrow bridges farther down, the famous one with all the houses on it clustered tight together; a cathedral dome, terra-cotta and white, rising above the marble buildings, illuminated with soft spotlights, exactly like—

“Oh, it’s like a movie!” Paige exclaims in delight.

“
A Room with a View,”
Kendra agrees. “I
love
that movie.”

I do too; I think the bit where Julian Sands goes up to Helena Bonham Carter in the cornfield and kisses her is one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen. I’m just about to agree, when Luca says, “Oh, yes. Italy is
very
romantic,” so dryly that the words die on my lips. His accent’s light, his English seems very good. “Lots of corruption, lots of bribes. Very romantic.”

“Well,
he’s
a load of fun, isn’t he?” Paige says in my ear,
giggling, as the car swoops down through an underpass, up the other side, and into a huge open-air parking area. Luca finds a space that’s half legal and half not, the left-hand side of the car bumped up onto the pavement, and the other boys seem to consider this perfectly normal; they bounce the doors open and pile out, talking loudly, full of enthusiasm, laughing and joking as we follow them over to a big archway with a sign reading
CENTRAL PARK
. It’s bordered with silver stands with red velvet ropes dangling between them, and behind them a lot of bouncers in black trousers and black bomber jackets over white shirts are hanging around, looking bored.

“Central Park!” Paige exclaims loudly. “Oh my God, like in New York City! That’s so funny! You know, Kendra?”

“Yes,” Leonardo says to her, amused, “but that is just a park. This is a club, in the middle of Florence. Better than just a park,
si
?”

“Si!”
Paige repeats enthusiastically, nodding for emphasis. “Much better!”

“It’s kinda quiet,” Kendra says, which is just what I was thinking. “No line at the door.”

“È presto,”
Leonardo says to us. “It’s early.”

I file away the word
“presto”
for future use as Paige says:

“Really? But it’s past eleven!”

“We do not usually go dancing in Italy till midnight, past midnight,” Luca says over his shoulder as he goes to talk to a couple of club promoters, a hypertanned guy in a shiny shirt and a girl in what’s basically a bikini top over sprayedon metallic trousers. I feel a rush of jealousy as he puts a hand on the girl’s bare waist, leaning in to kiss her on both
cheeks. She laughs and touches his shoulder intimately, and the jealousy rises in me like bile till I have to look away, furious with myself for having this kind of reaction about a boy with whom I’ve barely exchanged a word.

I’m just going to throw myself onto the dance floor
, I tell myself firmly.
Distract myself by getting all hot and sweaty and too tired out to even remember his name
.

Luca turns to us and gestures with his arm, waving us all over; apparently he’s got us in free because he knows the promoters. We pile past the bouncers, feeling very cool indeed, and Luca hands us each a black card.

“It is for drinks,” he informs us. “You give it to the barmen when you want a drink and they will put a stamp on it. Then we pay when we leave, okay?”

“You must keep it safely,” Leonardo chips in. “If you lose it, you pay fifty euros.”

Our eyes widen as we stow our cards safely in our bags. Mine’s a small cross-body; again, it’s madly lucky that I grabbed this one, as it’s perfect for dancing. And dancing is all I’m going to be doing. I can hear the bass line already. Not pounding up from the floor or bouncing off the walls, because the floor is stone, and there are no walls. I see why it’s called Central Park: it’s almost all open to the air, like a beach party in the center of town. Wooden posts hold up trellised roofs draped with white canopies, palm trees between them, their trunks lit up by lights at their base, bright green fronds glowing verdant against the white fabric.

The boys know exactly where they’re going, leading us along stone paths as we gawk. I’ve never seen anything like this club; it’s amazing. Paige is oohing and aahing as well,
exclaiming loudly at how gorgeous it is. Kendra, of course, is too cool to stare around or make a comment, but I bet she’s secretly just as impressed. We reach a long bar, illuminated pillars like mother-of-pearl radiating light; a whole ceiling with little inset lights is built above the bar; translucent glass gleams behind it; and the bottles shine lights themselves, the colored liquids inside bright flashes of ruby and sapphire and chartreuse on the radiant glass shelves. Tables stretch out onto a terrace beyond, open to the black velvet night; stars glitter in the sky, tiny and distinct, and I can see the bridges in the distance across the dark ribbon of river, the streetlights of Florence turning the sky over the city pale mauve with their reflected glow.

Everything in Italy is as beautiful as a picture
, I think.
There’s something about this country that makes me want to capture what I’m seeing, paint all the sights, show other people how lovely it is.…

They’re heading for the bar, Leonardo raising a hand in greeting to a bartender dressed all in black; but I don’t want another drink—not yet, anyway. And I’m much too restless to sit down with them and make halting Italian-English conversation; my limbs are twitching with excess energy I need to burn off.

“I’m going to dance,” I say to Paige, nodding my head in the direction of the throbbing bass line pounding from beyond the bar. “I’ll see you back here, okay?”

I dash off before anyone can say anything, or decide to follow me. I need, very badly, to do my own thing, to move exactly as I want to, without having to accommodate my dancing style to anyone else. It’s been a long, stressful, confusing day. My mum, of course, has been sending me screeds
of guilt-inducing texts to which I’ve sent only short, unsatisfactory responses. Elisa needs dealing with, Kelly needs looking after, and Luca is making my head spin. Time to forget about everyone for a while and pound some holes into the dance floor.

And that’s exactly what I do. There are already quite a few people dancing and the DJ’s playing a disco remix that, though a bit cheesy, gets my feet moving straightaway. Besides, it’s Italy! Florence! In an outdoor club, under the stars! The usual rules don’t apply—I don’t have to worry about looking cool, whether a band’s in this week or already out. I can dance to anything that keeps me moving, and I do; it’s mostly Europop, some R&B, silly, sexy, and fun, songs that make me giggle when I hear them come on, and keep me spinning around.

I realize quickly that Italians don’t dance like we do in London. Back home, we take no prisoners, or at least my lot don’t; we throw ourselves around, we do silly choreographed moves to cheesy songs, we chest-pump, we pogo to the rock songs and swing our hair back and forth. We get sweaty.

Which seems to be completely contrary to the Italian way. Most of the boys and the girls are basically standing and wiggling a bit, smiling, throwing back their hair, shaking their hips; nothing that would do more than bring a light glow to their glossy, tanned, olive skin.

I know there’s an expression “When in Rome,” which means that when you’re in a foreign country, you should do what the locals do. But I’m too wound up, too buzzed by all my new experiences today to be able to restrain myself. I need to let off steam. When the DJ plays some Pink,
I actually pogo, my heels bouncing off the shiny wooden dance floor, my arms flailing, a silly smile plastered on my face; I wish Milly and Lily-Rose were here, singing the words back at me, because we know every Pink song by heart:
So what? I’m still a rock star! I’ve got my rock moves! And I don’t need–you–tonight!
But even without my girls, I’m representing London here in Florence, showing the Italians how it’s done. A few boys try to dance with me, put themselves in front of me with what’s supposed to be sexy hip swivels—or worse, imitate my moves with a stupid grin, which is the single worst thing you can do while someone’s dancing. I can’t believe anyone would think it’s cool to copy someone and expect them to like it.