Page 52 of Duke for the Summer

“You have someone waiting for you at home,” Lucia said.

“No, I–”

“Oh. I’m sorry, I just assumed. You’re different. I thought maybe you had met someone.”

“Lucia.” Jacopo looked at her, and it all came tumbling out. Meeting Nate, falling in love. The fight on the stairs. Telling the truth. Losing him. Jacopo’s cigarette burned down to the filter as he talked. His heart was thudding, somewhere far away in his chest, but he felt calmer than he’d ever been. His cheeks were wet. He couldn’t remember beginning to cry. Lucialistened, her eyes wide and luminous, her expression giving nothing away.

“I ruined it,” Jacopo said. He tasted salt, and he wiped a hand across his face. “I ran away, and now he never wants to see me again.”

“Hm.” Lucia crossed her arms. “Did he actually say that?”

“Well, no, but–”

“Maybe you should call him, Jacopo. Give it a try. Don’t wait eleven years, like I did.”

*

He didn’t call him the next day, or the day after that. It was Jacopo’s thirty-sixth birthday, and he spent it wandering aimlessly around Dublin’s downtown, through the Temple Bar district where live music spilled out of the pubs at all hours of the day, haunting traditional songs about lost love blending with covers of Tom Petty and Aerosmith. A young woman with pink hair sang an acoustic version ofI Will Always Love Youthat made him weep into his Guinness, not even drunk yet but hopelessly sentimental at two in the afternoon, not caring who saw. Nate was at the forefront of his mind, shining there like a star. Jacopo thought about how much he would love the vibrancy of the street, the collective feeling of celebration. And how much he would probably complain about the music.

Jacopo stared down at the call log on his phone. Three missed calls from Nate on the day he had left, and nothing after that.I can be your family, he had said, right before Jacopo had ruined everything. Lucia was right; he had to talk to him. And he’d already made the most terrifying phone call of his life, a few days ago. He could manage another, couldn’t he?

Later. When he hadn’t been drinking. When his emotions didn’t feel like syrup in his throat, threatening to choke him.

His phone stayed in his pocket as he walked throughthe grounds of Trinity College, keeping company with his last cigarette, rattling around in its box. Jacopo found a little slice of heaven in the long room at the library, the great arched ceiling and the rows of books that stretched off into infinity. The order of it, the alphabetical labels on the stacks, were an injection of pure serotonin into his brain. If he ever got a chance to continue reorganizing the library in Carmosino, this would be his model.

It was beginning to rain as he walked to the Oscar Wilde statue, a misty rain that saturated his hair and covered his shoulders with tiny beads of moisture. Jacopo knew that Noemi liked this author, and he knew also that Wilde had been gay, in a time when it was even harder than it was now. He felt an obligation to go see the representation of this man, felt it was significant somehow.

Only a few tourists had braved the weather and were taking selfies with Oscar Wilde, who lounged on a rock with one half of his face smiling, the other twisted in sadness. Jacopo sat there for a while, thinking about the tragedy of hidden lives and the freedom to be oneself and how, even now on the first day of his thirty-sixth year, he didn’t really know who he was, or how to be himself. Or maybe he did. But to actually do it would be like falling. Impossible to stop, or to take back.

His phone was buzzing, and he felt a jolt of surprise when he saw Gracie’s name on the screen. She never called him. Jacopo’s pulse was fluttering in his throat as he answered. Had something happened back on the island? Had something happened to Nate, or–

“Jacopo,” Gracie said in a rush. “I’m so glad you picked up. Where are you? Mirabella’s having her baby, and she wants her big brother here.”

*

There weren’t any flights available until early the nextmorning, so he ate a last dinner with Lucia, Caitlin, and Noemi, apologizing for having to rush off. Noemi wasn’t terribly impressed by the prospect of a new cousin, as she already had plenty on her Mum’s side, but she was excited to hear more about Jacopo’s family, and full of uncomplicated optimism about meeting them. Jacopo promised that she would, someday, though he had no idea what that would look like. He knew Gracie would absolutely love her, if nothing else.

“Wait,” Noemi said as he stood in the entryway of the flat, suitcase in hand, waiting for the taxi that would take him to his hotel. “Mamma said it’s your birthday. I have something for you.”

She thundered up the stairs, then galloped back down them with something in her hand. A battered green textbook, its pages curling, doodles and scuff marks on the cover. “It’s my Irish grammar book from primary school.” Noemi looked down at her feet, suddenly shy. “I know you like languages. And–and I have to practice it, for school, so I thought maybe–maybe you’d like to learn it too? And maybe we could write to each other? And–oh–I’m sorry, don’t cry, please–”

It was too late, the tears were pouring out of him, and it was a relief; he was in freefall and all the things holding him down had slipped away, and Jacopo felt the purest sense of exhilaration as Noemi hugged him for the first time, awkwardly, her long, skinny arms not quite sure where to go or what to do.

“Don’t cry, Dad.”

But that just made him cry harder.

19.

Nate was in Venice, ostensibly to paint, but really, to sulk, and drink a lot of prosecco, and do endless sets of push-ups on the ornate tile floor of his hotel room. It was a gorgeous, decaying hotel room in a gorgeous, decaying city, the walls of the building corroded by past floods, the ironwork on the windows scabby with rust, and everything was beautiful and everything hurt. Thea had given up on blowing up his phone a few days ago. He was alone, in this crumbling jewel of a place, and he had more money than he knew what to do with and endless opportunities for the future, and all he wanted was to be back in the little caretaker’s hut on the castle grounds, cuddled up against Jacopo’s side as they made fun of ghost hunting shows.

He had told Thea he wouldn’t get his heart broken, but in the end it had been his own fault. Nate wasn’t the most emotionally intelligent guy out there, but even he knew that freezing up and rejecting someone when they finally told you their deepest, darkest secret was–not great. Especially when they’d already been rejected by their parents. And Jacopo obviously didn’t want to hear his apology, because he hadn’t picked up his phone. He was probably too busy, Nate thought darkly, imagining him laughing somewhere in a bar, his smile lighting up the life of some other man. Someone he could fully be honest with, someone without any ties to Carmosino. Nate should never have hoped for a relationship with Jacopo in the first place. There was too much baggage there, too much history, and he’d plopped himself down in the middle of it like a dumbass and just expected things to work out.

Even now, he was far too entangled with Jacopo’s family, and Nate didn’t know what to do about it. Gracie had texted him this morning, a picture of Mirabella in a hospital bed, Antonio beaming at her side, their new son cradled in her arms. And so Nate had spent the last few hours furiously researching florists in Palermo, because he was too scared to actually go visit and he felt guilty and the least he could do was spend some of his ridiculously large inheritance on the best flower arrangement Mirabella had ever seen.

He would have to go back at some point. All of his stuff was still in the castle. And he had to do something with the property. Get it renovated enough for tourists to visit, or sell the thing altogether. He couldn’t live there, not when every inch of it was filled with memories.

It killed him to think of strangers tromping through the library, taking selfies on the ramparts, scaring away the cats.

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