Page 26 of The Roman Holiday Rule
I give him a thumbs-up. He grabs a handful of red grapes and saunters off, humming.
Mariella shakes her head. “Uncle Beppe is going to find revenge for that. ‘Football is the only sport!’” She air quotes our uncle’s favorite motto.
“Exactly.”
My phone buzzes with a notification. I pull open the email—the airline has delivered my luggage. They’ve attached a photo showing the “secure” location where they left it at my apartment, inside the lobby behind the potted plant. I zoom in on the picture and groan. It’s not my luggage, and I know by the scrap of bright fabric on the handle whose it is.
“What’s wrong?” Mariella holds her glass away and cranes her head toward my phone. There is nothing off-limits in this family.
“Got the luggage from my flight but it’s not mine.”
“So call the airline and have them switch it.”
I shake my head, ignoring the buzzing in my chest. “It’ll be quicker to do it myself. I know whose it is.”
“You knew someone on your flight?” Mariella’s dark eyebrows rise over the edge of her glass as she takes a fizzy sip.
Nonna emerges from the kitchen carrying another plate of crostini with olive paste.
“No, I met someone on my flight. Actually, in the airport.” As soon as the correction is out of my mouth, I understand my error. If I thought it would be bad having my sister Katie catch sight of Lexington, that’s nothing compared to the prodding and questioning I’d get if Nonna hears of it. She gets so fired up about women in my life. Nonna won’t care one iota that Lexington is in a competitive bet with me. If Lexington and I had a conversation, she’s fair game for Grandma’s plans for my future.
Actually, even if we only crossed paths and made eye contact, Nonna would consider her fair game. It doesn’t help that she can hear through doors, walls, and probably across cities. She’s gotten her hopes up so many times. I don’t want to do that to her now.
Mariella sets down her glass, glancing at the others seated around the table. Nonno is tickling my little cousin Rosa. The two uncles are rolling tobacco cigarettes and arguing, and Nonna is bossing the aunts on what dishes to rearrange on the table so there’s room for the platter she’s lowering over the food like a spaceship landing.
Mariella drops her voice, but not enough to clue the others into the fact we’re discussing secrets. A skill one learns quickly in this house. “As in, a girl?”
With disastrous timing, the conversation hits a lull at that exact moment. Nonna gasps, sets the platter down on the table right on top of the quiche, and bustles over to me, cradling my cheeks between her work-roughed palms.
Great. She heard. Sometimes in this family, I feel twelve years old.
“What about a girl? There’s a girl?”
I pull her hands from my face, gentle with the letdown. “It’s nothing, Nonna. Just a luggage mix-up.”
Lexington isn’t nothing—try a tornado with lightning inside it. Complete with the trail of destruction behind it. If there were such a thing as a tornado that was quick to laugh and whose silky hair tempted your fingers.
Nonno wraps his arms around Rosa, pausing her squirming. “Is this the lovely girl you were talking to at Trevi Fountain?”
He saw me.
And that’s how it happens, folks. One word in one ear, and we’re dealing with at least an hour of pandemonium. I shoot anI’ll-deal-with-you-laterglare to Mariella, who lets out a literal cackle. “How was I supposed to know?”
I have to shut this down ASAP.
“Hey, Danilo,” I shout, desperate, toward the kids playing a board game in the living room, “show your dad the hat I brought you from Boston.”
The distraction doesn’t work.
Seventeen
Lexi
That evening,walking down narrow, tourist-flooded streets lined with shops and restaurants, I keep fingering the chain around my neck, unused to its emptiness.
Halfway to the restaurant, my phone rings. That must be Julie, since I didn’t get a chance to call her yesterday when I landed. Without looking at the number, I answer, pausing in the orange glow of a lit, wrought-iron sconce.
“Sorry, I was going to call tonight.”
