Flirting in Italian (9 page)

But I’m on fire. I ignore them all. I’m really good at that; I have the technique of ignoring annoying boys on the dance floor down to a fine art. I spin and I twist and I never meet their eyes. I dance faster than them, harder, my arms flying out to my sides so they have to jump back to avoid being hit, so they can see that I don’t want to dance with them or anyone, and eventually they give up and turn to another girl instead, leaving me free to do exactly what I want, lose myself in my own world.

I have no idea how long I rule the dance floor; the DJ’s brilliant at mixing one song into the next so seamlessly that there’s never a pause when I can catch my breath, realize how long I’ve been going. What actually stops me, finally, believe it or not, is a
Grease
megamix. I was having a lot of fun with “You’re the One That I Want”—though I’m missing my girls more than ever, as
Grease
songs really need a couple of girlfriends to sing along with—but as it cuts off
halfway through, rolling over into “Greased Lightning,” I realize the full horror of the situation. My feet finally come to a halt.

I do
not
do megamixes. And “Greased Lightning” is a really silly song anyway.

And suddenly, I realize that I’m knackered. Catching my breath, wiping my forehead, deftly swerving to avoid some idiot boy who reaches out to try to catch me as I go past, I walk off the dance floor, feeling hot all over. On the far side, a breeze is lifting the long white muslin drapes that hang around the dance floor like an Arabian tent, hooked back here and there, looped around the palm trees; I head for the gently blowing wind, lifting my hair off the back of my neck; half of it has tumbled down with all my gyrating, and my neck’s all sweaty. I’m holding my hair up, pulling a couple of kirbigrips out of my curls so I can pin them back onto the crown of my head. I feel released, happy, the tension all gone, my limbs loose and easy, my mind clear.

The cool breeze caresses the back of my neck. I take one of the grips out of my mouth and anchor it through a handful of curls; I’m just about to do the same with the other one when a shadow moves behind a white fall of muslin like a ghost, one long-fingered hand, ringed with silver, reaching up to pull back the curtain.

It’s Luca.

The curtain billows gently in the breeze behind him as he steps out to meet me, his hair jet-black by contrast with the translucent white fabric. I jump, gasp, and nearly swallow the grip that I’m still holding between my lips; quickly, I pull it out before it goes down my throat and chokes me. It’s wet with drool.
Lovely, Violet. Really attractive
. I shove it into my hair, anywhere, praying it will stay and not fall on the floor, still dripping with spit.

Luca’s smiling down at me. His face is half in light, half in shade, from the spots playing across the dance floor, his blue eyes gleaming.

“You like to dance,” he observes conversationally.

“Yes.…”

Safe question, safe answer
. Well, at least I didn’t babble. But he doesn’t say anything else; he’s just looking me up and down, and I feel incredibly awkward under his scrutiny. I’m sweaty, catching my breath; my eyeliner’s probably running. I desperately need to escape into the dark night beyond the dance floor, where the breeze will cool me down and the shadows will hide my shiny face.

“I want to get some fresh air,” I say, and move around him, stepping off onto the stone slabs and promptly sinking with one heel into the narrow space between them.

“Oops!” I say idiotically, ignoring the hand that Luca is stretching out to help me. The last thing I need right now is to touch him, for all sorts of reasons. I keep walking, pulling my heel out from between the paving stones; mercifully, it comes out without catching or ripping off. I honestly think that even if it did, I would keep going; I’d walk on a sandal without a heel all night, balance on my toes, pretend nothing had happened, and think it a fair price to pay for my flight into the comparative darkness of the chill-out area, where Luca can’t see the sweat on my face.

He’s following me. I can hear his leather-soled shoes on the stone. And I have no idea where I’m going. I feel ridiculous. Luckily, ahead of me I see a terrace with tables, and I walk toward it as if I’d planned to head there all along.

“You want a drink?” he asks. He gestures over to the right, and I see the white gleam of the long bar, the translucent milky-white pillars shining as if we’re underwater.

I don’t need to drink any more alcohol tonight. Especially in the company of Luca. “Maybe some water. I’m really thirsty.”

He nods, turns, and walks toward the bar. I watch him go. Tall, lean, with a nice firm bum in his black jeans.
Exactly what I like in a boy
. And then I feel my face flaming, because this isn’t just some boy at an airport, or viewed from a car. This is real.
He’s
real. He’ll be back in just a few minutes, and I won’t have the faintest idea what to say to him.…

Turning away, I frantically dab at my face with the backs of my hands, trying to matte myself down. I consider, momentarily, running off to the loo to do a better fix-up job on myself, but what if Luca comes back and doesn’t find me here? I can’t go over to the bar and tell him I’m going to the loo and to wait for me, because the mere thought of trying to communicate the word “toilet” to him makes me wish for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. What if he doesn’t understand? What if I have to do some sort of mime to explain? I’d rather
die
.

So I pat my face down, pull out the lip gloss from my handbag and reapply it, pray that some of my perfume is still clinging to my pores—hopefully canceling out any sweaty stink—and surreptitiously lift the bodice of my dress and flap it back and forth, cooling myself down as much as possible.

“Violetta!” I recognize Luca’s voice: light, husky, and with an edge of humor, as if he’s perpetually amused by a joke that only he can understand. Hearing him say my name—and in Italian!—is paralyzing. If I were with a girlfriend, I’d probably burst into hysterical, juvenile giggling; as it is, I bite my tongue, hard, take a deep breath to calm myself, and after a few moments, manage to glance around as casually as I can, spot Luca standing by a high bar table, and even raise a hand in acknowledgment as I walk toward him.

There are lots of these tall round tables dotted around the terrace, with no stools drawn up to them; square tables with white-backed chairs are farther down, closer to the edge of the terrace, but Luca hasn’t chosen one of those. I wonder if this means he doesn’t intend to stay long, just have a quick drink with me and then head off.

“Italians stand up a lot at bars,” I comment, taking the glass of water Luca’s pushing toward me. It’s fizzy, with ice and lime in it, and I drink it very gratefully.

He smiles. I notice that one corner of his mouth lifts higher than the other when he does so, in a little quirk that sets off his handsomeness precisely because of its irregularity.

“Italians like to show off their clothes,” he says. “They like clothes that are signed.” He hits his brow theatrically with one hand.
“Firmati,”
he says. “That is how we say ‘designer.’ They like designer clothes. If you stand up, people see them better.”

Ha!
I bet every single piece of clothing Elisa was wearing today is designer.

“But your style, it’s very English,” Luca observes, and he reaches across the table to snag his index finger under the big strands of fake pearls around my neck, lifting them for a moment, then letting them fall back to my collarbone again. For a split second, his finger touches my skin, and he might as well have brushed me with a lit match.

“Very …” He snaps his fingers, searching for the word.
“Eccentrica,”
he says finally.

“Oh God!” My face drops. “It’s that bad?”

“Cosa?”
He looks confused. “Bad?”

“In English, ‘eccentric’ is sort of like ‘mad,’ ” I explain.
“If you’re really posh, especially. You could be a raving loony who eats bats for breakfast, and as long as you have a title, they’d call you eccentric and think it was charming.”

Luca, clearly, hasn’t understood all of this. But he’s thrown his head back and is laughing so hard that I see people beyond us turning to look in curiosity. He looks absolutely gorgeous when he laughs, his mouth curving up, tiny lines creasing around his eyes; his usual cool demeanor is wiped away, and he looks younger, sweeter, much more approachable.

“Bats for breakfast?” he says, when he manages to speak. “
Pipistrelli per colazione?
You are not eccentric, Violetta
mia
, you are mad.” I’m bridling, when he adds: “I like this very much. You are not boring.”

“Wow,” I say as coldly as I can. “Thanks a lot.”

My brain is racing at the fact that I think “Violetta
mia
” means “my Violet.” Which is, doubtless, just the way they talk in Italy, but sounds … I can’t even
think
about that. I push it to the very back of my brain to be pulled out much later, when I’m alone, and turned over and over like a precious stone glinting in my palms.

I can’t meet his eyes. They’re full of amusement, bright and blue; it’s almost as if I’m afraid of being hypnotized, like a rabbit looking at a snake.

“You like music,” he says; not a question, a statement, and I nod. “I see you sing to some of the songs when you dance,” he adds, and although this makes me want to scream inside my head—
He watched me dancing? Oh no, did I look insane?
—I manage to shrug as if it’s a matter of complete indifference to me that he saw me flailing my arms like a madwoman on the dance floor.

“You like Italian music?” he asks, sipping some Prosecco.

“I don’t really know any,” I admit. “Just opera, I suppose.”

He laughs. Luca does seem to find me very amusing. “I like music a little more modern than that,” he says. “Vasco Rossi, you know him? He is our rock star. I think you will like him to dance to. And Jovanotti. Maybe I will play you some songs of his. He writes very beautiful songs. About love, politics, the world, all in the same song.”

“That’s very difficult,” I say frankly. “I mean, lots of people try that but mostly it just comes off really pretentious. Like Coldplay.”

“Ugh! I hate the Coldplay!” he says. “The singer, he tries to look so serious when he sings, but instead he just looks like a sheep.”

“I know!” I say enthusiastically. “With that curly hair and that silly expression he makes …”

I try to imitate it, and Luca laughs again, his eyes bright blue with amusement.

“And the words are silly too,” I say. “They don’t make sense.”

Luca leans forward, propping his elbows on the bar table, and I think he’s going to ask me something, maybe what some particularly nonsensical Coldplay lyrics mean: but instead he starts to speak in Italian, so smoothly, the words so soft and liquid, that I swiftly realize he’s quoting some lyrics. The words flow over me, winding around me like velvet:

“ ‘Ci sono trenta modi per salvare il mondo, ma uno solo perche il mondo salvi me—che io voglia star con te, e tu voglia star con me.’ ”

I gaze at him, and now I do feel hypnotized. I have no
idea what he’s saying—he could be reading the phone book in Italian and I’d stare at him across the little bar table, unable to take my eyes from him.

“That is from a song by Jovanotti. Shall I translate for you?” he asks gently.

All at once, I panic. What if the words are so lovely I can’t bear them? It’s as if he’s casting a spell over me, and I need to break free before it settles so tightly around me that I’m completely in his power. I manage to drag my eyes from his, and with a huge wash of relief, over his shoulder I see a whole group of people sitting at a table at the brightly lit end of the bar, where the party is: a big crowd of boys encircling a blond head and a darker one. Paige and Kendra have a lot of admirers.

“Oh, look!” I point over to them, my voice unnaturally high. “The girls! I should probably go over and say hi—they’ll be wondering where I am.…”

“They don’t look very
preoccupate
,” Luca remarks, casting a glance in their direction. “In fact, they are very busy without you.”

He’s quite right. But I need to get away from this tête-à-tête; it’s too intimate, too like being on a date with him. I can’t think why he’s singled me out. Maybe he wants to practice his English. But I’m sure that any moment, some gorgeous, pin-thin girl in designer labels will come up and drape herself around his neck, and he’ll introduce his girlfriend, and she’ll pull him away, and I’ll be left standing alone at this table with a half-finished glass of water and a humiliated smile plastered to my face.

Anything’s
better than that.

“I should probably just go and tell them I’m okay …,” I mumble.

I set down my glass and take a couple of steps around the table, heading toward Paige and Kendra. And then, I feel the lightest of clasps surround my wrist. Like a bracelet closing around it: delicate, almost weightless, a question, not a command. A fine gold chain that I could shake off instantly if I wanted to, keep walking without breaking stride.

But I don’t want to. I stop at the touch of his hand on my bare skin, my heart pounding in shock. I turn to look up at him, meeting his blue eyes, half hidden by his black lashes. I swallow hard.

“I would not go over to them if I were you,” he says softly.

“Why?” I frown, not understanding:
Is he saying that Paige and Kendra are cross with me? But they can’t be … I haven’t done anything to them
.

“They are busy with the boys,” he says, his long fingers still encircling my wrist. “And those boys, they will not be as …” He considers, looking for the right word. “Interested in you,” he finishes.

“What?”
I drag my hand away, furious now. “What’s wrong with me?”

I’m burning up with anger, and I wish I hadn’t asked that question: it makes me sound so insecure. Before I can correct myself, however, he’s saying:

“Italian boys, in a club in the summer …” He shrugs, smiling. “They like foreign girls. Foreign girls are more
facile
—more easy. And they look different. It is exciting to be different—not like their sisters. You may be English,
eccentrica
, but your face, your body—you look like an Italian
girl, from the south. With many brothers, who carry big knives. So you are not different, and maybe not easy. They will think they will not get what they want from you.”

I’m gawping at him in shock as he nods toward the table where the American girls are sitting.

“The blond one,” he adds, “she is funny. Like a toy for a little girl, come to life. The Barbie, and also the one who cries when you pull the string in her back.
Una bambola per ragazzine
.”

I flash instantly and disloyally on what he means: Paige
does
look like a cross between Barbie and a little girl’s doll, one with round cheeks and big eyes and enviably cascading blond ringlets.

“She looks easy,” Luca continues. “Because she likes too much to be liked.”

I glance back at the girls’ table. Paige is throwing her head around, blond curls bouncing, as she whoops with laughter at something Andrea is saying. The boys are standing behind her chair, leaning on its back, too close to her, in her personal space, and she’s letting them get that near, something I wouldn’t do with boys I’d just met an hour or so ago. Reluctantly, I see why Luca’s made that observation: Leonardo’s waving his glass around, and his hand is coming pretty near Paige’s fabulous bosom. Too close again.

“But the black girl,” Luca observes, “she is more difficult for a boy. Not so easy. She puts a high
valore
—value—on herself.”

It’s true: Kendra is sitting up straight, elegant, like a goddess, her posture excellent, the boys around her staring at
her worshipfully instead of trying to snuggle up to her while she’s laughing.

“She is …” Luca kisses his fingers to Kendra. “
Bellissima
. The African beauty, so elegant.
Sofisticata
. Her”—he nods at Kendra—“the boys, they will follow her everywhere in Italy.
Molto elegante
.”

If there’s anything more annoying than a boy praising another girl’s beauty to your face, I can’t think what it is. Besides, I also don’t like the way he’s judging Paige and Kendra and me. It’s so cynical.