Page 165 of Valentino

A sound leaves him through his nose, one dry huff that, in Valentino currency, counts as a full belly laugh. The lime-green lanyard group surges past us, and he draws me closer before they can bump me. We stand there with his arm around me under five centuries of judgment.

"Hey." I tip my head back to find his face. "Nine more days."

"I know."

"You promised me ten."

His thumb brushes my side.

"One is gone already."

His mouth curves. Actually curves. Both corners. Rare enough that I want to take a picture, except I've stopped doing that.

"I'll give you nineteen days," he says. "The whole city. You'll beg me for a taxi by Thursday."

"I will never beg you for a taxi."

"You begged me for other things."

Heat climbs my neck so fast I'm grateful for the low light. A nun stands eleven feet away.

"You can't say that in here," I hiss. "We're in the Pope's house."

"The Pope isn't home."

I press my face against his shoulder to smother the laugh, and he holds the back of my head with one scarred hand.

Above us, God keeps reaching for Adam, forever an inch short. The chapel hums with a hundred whispered languages. The guard calls for silence again, and no one listens.

None of it touches us.

This is what I want.

Not the photo of the moment.

The moment.

Us.

Valentino

The tiramisu is from a pasticceria the size of a confessional booth two streets behind the Pantheon, and Amanda is eating it with a tiny plastic spoon like she's defusing a bomb made of mascarpone.

"Okay," she says, mouth half full, "this is illegal. This has to be illegal. Nothing legal tastes like this."

I take a bite of mine. Espresso, cream, the cocoa bitter on the back of the tongue. My grandmother would've called it acceptable, which from her was a standing ovation. "If it were illegal, half the Roman judiciary would be in prison. They're all customers."

"You know the judges' dessert habits."

"I know everything about this city that's worth knowing."

She laughs, and the sound carries down the street ahead of us, bouncing off ochre walls and shuttered windows. Evening is coming down slowly over the rooftops, that golden hour where the whole city looks like it's been dipped in honey, and the air smells like exhaust and jasmine and somebody's dinner frying in olive oil three floors up.

Tourists drift past us toward the Spanish Steps in loud little clusters. I track them out of habit. Hands, bags, sightlines. But it's background noise now, low volume. My right hand is free. My left is occupied with dessert.

"You know what's insane?" Amanda says. She licks the spoon, and I make myself watch the street instead, because we're in public and I'm a grown man, allegedly. "Walking with you. Eating tiramisu. This feels out of space. Like we left the planet and nobody told anyone."

"Eating tiramisu isn't out of space, bella. It's the most natural act a human body can perform." I scrape the bottom of my cup. "I could eat one in my sleep. I've probably done it."