A wave tossed her forward and rubbed her against him. “Which is?” he asked huskily, not actually caring about the answer, but loving how her face lit up at his question. If pretending to care kept her in his arms and smiling, he would listen to her read a dissertation on the history of every bridge in the city.
“It’s a city that shouldn’t have been. It should have failed a hundred times over. The wooden pillars they built it on should have rotted away, but the clay beneath the city protects it. Everything about Venice is a battle with nature. The soil is full of salt, so if you wanted to plant something, you had to bring in your own dirt, your own seeds, and protect both from the very place you planted it on. A place that is struggling so desperately just to survive shouldn’t care about beauty, but it does.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I love to read travel blogs,” she said. “They say that if you want to make Venetians smile, give them a flower. Because a flower doesn’t serve any purpose outside of bringing a person joy. And some would ask if a flower is then worth the effort. A Venetian would tell you that it is. That those simple pleasures are worth any price.”
Julia’s words cut through Gio. He was confused with his own choice to run to the same city where his father had found refuge. Could he find his own answers there?
What do I do with this burning anger? How do I stop it from consuming me?
Julia wants me to believe in love, but how can I when everywhere I look I see a twisted version of it?
An impatient frown creased Julia’s brow. “If you don’t intend to enjoy yourself at all, why are we here? Why come to this amazing place and choose to be miserable? Because it is a choice, Gio.”
She looked up at him from beneath her long lashes and, right then, he chose her. “I’ll play tourist with you for a day, Julia, on one condition.”
“That is?”
“We leave everything else behind us. Just you and me in Venice. Come away with me, Julia. Let’s leave all this behind.” His phone rang in his breast pocket. He took it out and groaned. “That’s Luke. Probably wants to know where we are.”
Julia grabbed his phone and threw it into the lagoon. When he opened his mouth to say something she put her hand over his mouth softly. “Step one to running away—no phones.” Then she smiled. “Before you get upset, now we’re even.”
The irritation he expected to feel didn’t surface. Instead, it was as if she’d cut him free from suffocating tethers. No one knew he was in Venice. No one expected him back at his office. He wanted to lose himself in Julia—not just in her body, but in the full experience of her. He pulled her roughly against him and kissed her until they were both shaking with need.
The driver turned and called back to them. “Do you still want me to stop, or would you like me to circle around?”
Gio raised his head and looked into Julia’s eyes. “What do you want to see?”
She smiled up at him. “Everything.”
He addressed the driver. “Do you give guided tours? It’s her first time here.”
The driver shrugged one shoulder. “Me? No. I don’t do the tour so much.”
Gio said, “I’ll pay you triple whatever you charge.”
A large smile spread across the driver’s face. “Ah, then coming up is the Rialto Bridge. There is a bar nearby, very nice. You look at the ceiling and all you see are women’s . . . how do you say . . . bras? Tell them I sent you. On your left is a hotel that if you go by at night sometimes the women, they don’t close the shutters. I don’t judge, I just enjoy.”
A chuckle rumbled deep within Gio. He met Julia’s eyes and said, “He did say he doesn’t normally give tours.”
Julia smiled up at him. “I can’t imagine why not.”
They laughed together as the taxi driver continued to give them insider tips that were surely not mentioned in more formal tours.
After the boat tour, Gio walked with Julia up and down a maze of streets. They crossed bridges. They stopped for gelato. They laughed as they watched young American children chasing pigeons in St. Mark’s Square.
Julia enthusiastically asked a fellow tourist for directions to the Gallerie dell’Accademia and headed off with Gio to find it. They wandered in and out of the many shops along the way. Julia stopped frequently to study a feature of a building or to share a factoid she’d read about Venetians battling the rising waters and its effect on their homes. It was a day out of time, and even though Gio knew it couldn’t last, he felt happier than he had since his father had passed.
When they eventually found the museum, they spent a couple of hours viewing its extensive collection of Venetian and European paintings. It was early afternoon when they reentered the sunshine and the crowded streets. Just outside the museum, they found a wooden bridge that arched across the Grand Canal. Julia paused at the top of it, and Gio stopped beside her. “Have you ever seen anything more beautiful?” she asked without looking away from the view.
Gio didn’t answer. He’d spent too many years hating the city to ever truly find it beautiful. The day had given him one answer, though. It was possible to find pleasure in denial.
So, perhaps he was more like his father than he knew.
Which was not good news.
*
Julia glanced over her shoulder expecting to see Gio smiling, but instead she caught him fighting back whatever inner demon he denied having. “What are you thinking about, Gio?”
“Nothing,” he said dismissively.
Julia chewed her bottom lip. “I thought you were enjoying this as much as I am.”
He stood behind her, pushed the hair off the back of her neck, and kissed her gently. “I was enjoying you.”
“So, you’ve been humoring me all day?”
He turned her in his arms. “Let’s not argue. It doesn’t matter.”
His words were a cold slap of reality. “It matters to me. I want to know how you really feel.”
“Do you?” He looked down at the structure they stood on and shook his head in disgust. “Take a good look at what we’re standing on. Wood over hideous steel. A fa?ade to keep the tourists happy. You want the truth? It’s ugly. Fake.”
Julia froze in his arms. “Like our day here?” she asked softly.
He didn’t deny it.
“Like us?” Julia searched his face for some hint of how he felt. “You asked me to leave it all behind and I tried to. I tried to tell myself it’s okay that you don’t want to tell me what happened on the island—that you don’t want to tell me anything. These last few weeks have been amazing, but you shut me out of everything that’s important. What are we doing together, Gio? Are we working towards something, or am I just this summer’s entertainment?”
Still he held his silence.
“Say something.” She pushed him away with both hands, then stood in front of him, chest heaving with emotion. “I keep waiting for you to open up to me. I keep thinking that if I give you more time you’ll let me in. But you’re not going to, are you?”
“What do you want me to say, Julia?” The coldness of his tone tore into her.
Her eyes filled with tears. “Just the truth. Do you love me?”