Page 80 of The Villa

His hand goes limp in hers, and Mari has the strangest feeling he might begin to weep.

“You’re still seeing the best in us,” he says, pulling his hand free. “In spite of it all.”

Mari is grateful when their food comes because it derails this mawkish stroll down memory lane. Soon, Noel is regaling her with tales of how he found this restaurant, of other little holes-in-the-wall he’s discovered all over the world, and by the time the meal ends, Mari feels on much more solid ground.

The air outside is frigid after the warmth of the restaurant. Mari wishes she’d brought a heavier coat because even though the snow has stopped, the night has turned bitterly cold, the kind that slips underneath collars, making her eyes water.

Seeing her shiver, Noel unwinds the paisley scarf he’s wearing.

“Here.” He wraps it around her neck, but holds on to the ends, tugging her close and looking down into her face.

“Mistress Mary, quite contrary,” he murmurs, still smiling that odd little smile at her, and finally, Mari understands that it isn’t mocking or knowing at all.

It’s sad.

She doesn’t know it then, but this is the last time she’ll see Noel. In a month, he’ll leave for Nepal, seeking inspiration, but also wanting to do something grander with his life. It’s an impulse that will kill him, less than a hundred days from now, when the tiny plane he’s flying in crashes into the sideof a mountain. Mari will spend the rest of her life thinking about that moment, wondering if he knew what was coming, wondering how Noel Gordon could be snuffed out so quickly.

And there will be a little part of her that thinks,Now it’s just me and Lara.

Now we’re the only ones who know.

She’ll hate how much that thought warms her.

Noel leans down then and kisses her, his lips cold but gentle against hers.

When he pulls back, there are tears in his eyes, and it might just be the frigid air, but Mari doesn’t think that it is.

“I wish I’d never said it,” he tells her now, and she knows he’s thinking of the same moment she was earlier.

That day in the sun by the pond.

Cut yourself free.

“I don’t,” she replies, and he gives a huff of laughter, letting the ends of the scarf drop.

“No, you wouldn’t, would you?”

Then he turns and leaves. Noel Gordon, once the most famous rock star in the world, now just another man on the cold, damp streets of a December night in New York.

Mari starts walking in the other direction, intending to hail a cab at the corner, but she spots a phone booth, and before she knows it, she’s ducking inside, fumbling with gloved hands to pull out the necessary change.

She’d gotten the number months ago, not long after she’d heard that Lara had moved to California. She kept it jotted down on a scrap of paper in her purse, but she’d looked at it so many times, she now knows it by heart.

Punching in the numbers, Mari tells herself that Lara won’t even be home, that this is a wasted call and a stupid whim that she’ll feel silly about in the morning.

So, when she hears Lara’s familiar, “Hello?” Mari is so surprised, she almost hangs up.

She stops herself, though, and stammers, “L-Lara? It’s me, it’s—”

“Mari. I know.”

The last time Mari saw Lara, she was onstage at the Scala in London, the stage lights making a halo around her. She’d played all ofAestasfrom beginning to end, and Mari had listened in the dark, her hands clenched against her chest, her eyes full of tears.

She hadn’t tried to go backstage, hadn’t even wanted Lara to see her in the audience.

“I don’t know why I’m calling,” she says now. “I just… I suppose I missed you.”

There’s silence over the line for so long that Mari thinks maybe Lara hung up, but then she hears a sigh, and Lara says, “I don’t think that’s it. I’ve been waiting for you to call, actually. I knew you would one day.”

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