Page 72 of 32 Days in May

His lips twitch. I love you, too, he mouths back.

While Marco sleeps, I sit on the balcony with my bare feet pressed against the wrought iron bars, letting the sun soak into my skin. I don’t know why but after months of ignoring almost every part of my “old” life, I open my email. It’s an absolute moratorium for a world I no longer recognize.

One email stands out to me. The subject line is just “Hey” and I see it’s from K. W. McClain. The sight of his initials sends an immediate, reptilian jolt through me, like a betta fish seeing its own reflection. If I were a cat, I’d be hissing.

Kai.

Hey, not super proud of how we left things. Not gonna lie, I miss ur energy. If it were up to me, I would have pushed for a personal improvement plan and some vacation time. Srsly, ur talent is missed greatly.

Btw, New York office is hiring a Creative Director. Ud be perfect.

No hard feelings?

-K

I stare at the email until my eyes go dry.

No hard feelings. A long-lost rage needles at my stomach. Is this who I used to subject myself to? Grown men who can’t be fucked to type out an entire three-letter word or attempt an apostrophe? He didn’t even have the decency to send such an anemic, vacuous email from his iPhone. No, he opened his laptop and chose to type like a seventh-grade boy who’d recently discovered negging.

I miss ur energy?

Such a load-bearing sentence. So few words with such little substance and yet he’d been relying on them to do so much. In Kai’s mind, I was probably still sitting dead-eyed and exhausted with tearstained cheeks, gripping my last advertising award for Best Thirty-Second Short, praying he’d call. I was never capable of moving on from the emotional potency of our situationship. It was just too good, wasn’t it? Watching him talk, uninterrupted, about A24’s latest juggernaut after five minutes of vigorous, silent humping.

Forget about me moving to a new city, getting a new job, and finding someone so wholly, so globally better than him.

What an embarrassing little fuckface.

Oh, Kai, I want to type. You sweet idiot. There’s no going backward for me now. And you are so very, very backward. I’ve met a man who takes my picture. Who gets jealous of whales for being my favorite animal. Who brings me to Italy and makes love to me in a way that makes me want to use the phrase “make love.”

But I won’t do that. The door to that part of my life is closed, locked.

There is no going backward.

My fingers quiver with energy, with excitement, as I delete his email.

“Paola invited us to her family home in Fregene tonight. It’s about twenty minutes away, right on the sea. She said we can stay the night.”

“Wow.” I look up from the creased paperback I’d been trying and failing to read. Marco’s sitting across from me at the breakfast table situated in the corner of our bedroom, eating an apple in front of his laptop. It’s kind of funny, and I think back to Allie’s wonderment and delight. Celebs—they’re everywhere. Eating apples. Typing on their laptops. Going to the beach. Making people fall in love with them. “That sounds amazing.”

“Good.” He stands and stretches, idly running a hand over the soft, curly hair that runs down the center of his chest. Then he comes around, looping an arm around my neck and bringing his sticky, sweet lips to my temple. “Bring your bathing suit.”

“Oh, no way am I letting any of them see me in a bathing suit.”

“What the fuck?” Marco jerks back, away from me. He sounds genuinely pissed. “I love your body.”

“Sorry to yuck your yum. I’d just feel weird in a bikini around people like that. They’re all bony in that generationally wealthy sort of way.” I shrug, shutting my book and tossing it onto the table. “I’m not their type of person.”

Marco brings his hands to rest on my shoulders, fingers crossing over my throat. “You’re exactly their type of people, Nadia.”

I’m flattered he thinks I could somehow be a person in his world, but certainly not delusional enough to believe him. I tilt my head back against his stomach. “Are any of them writers?”

“Not like you.” He gently chucks me under the chin. There’s a hum of pleasure through me. Not like you. “I think Giorgio runs an online Marxist zine.” We both roll our eyes. “Paola directs plays for the English theater, but I don’t think she writes anything.”

I guess I am a real writer, even if I’ve sold my soul for pennies on the pound. “Won’t they call me a sellout?”

Marco’s mouth twists into a wicked grin. “From behind their designer glasses? Maybe.” He presses his lips to my hairline. “Everyone loves you already, I promise.”

He pulls away and heads for the bathroom, but before he disappears behind a closed door, I call out to him. “Wait! I hate to ask this, but . . . will you be the most famous person there?”