“Don’t you worry your pretty head,” the driver, Orla, returns. Her own accent is Irish.
“Do not seduce me unless you mean it,” the man says cheekily before catching sight of us. “Ah! The last two! Meraviglioso!”
As he bounds down the steps, the London gray erupts into steaming Napoli amber. This must be Fabrizio, the man listed as our guide in the email the tour company sent out with all the final information. He’s outrageously good-looking, dark hair waving over the nape of his neck, coarse stubble across his defined jaw artfully blending into the hair at his open collar. He looks made-up, like the guy who gives Kate Winslet her first orgasm in a movie about a divorcée in Sicily.
He flips a page on his clipboard, looking at me.
“You must be Stig Henriksson.”
“Uh—”
He tosses his beautiful head back and laughs. “Joking! Only joking! Ciao, Stig!” He steps up to Stig and kisses the cliff face of his cheek. “And that makes you Theodora!”
And then he’s pulling me in too, drawing his mouth across my cheek.
“Theo.” I rest my hand on his bicep and kiss his cheek, assuming that’s the right thing to do. When he pulls away, he’s smiling.
“Ciao bella, Theodora.” Almost no one calls me Theodora, but I like how it sounds in his mouth.Tay-o-dooora,with theRflipped on its back and the secondOdrawn out slow and tender, like he’s taking it out for a drink. I wouldn’t mind ifthiswas a meet-cute. “Andiamo!”
Orla slams the luggage compartment.
“Very full, this tour,” Fabrizio tells us onboard. “Maybe a seat in the back? And I have one next to me!”
From beside the driver’s seat, I can see every row of passengers, my companions for the next three weeks. I glance over at Stig—we’re the only ones who came on this trip alone.
Of course. A trip like this is meant to be shared. Float together down the Seine, toast champagne glasses, take windswept photos of each other on a beachside cliff, eat from the same plate and talk for the rest of your lives about that one incomparable bite. Those are the kind of memories built for two to live inside, not one.
I tip my chin up and march down the aisle, leaving the seat for Stig.
I pass two Australian guys shouting with laughter, a pair of older women with matching visors speaking Japanese, a few retired couples, two girls in crop tops, several sets of honeymooners, a Midwestern mom and her bored-looking adult son, until finally, I see it. The very last aisle seat is empty.
I can’t get a good look at the person huddled against the window, but I don’t catch any red flags. They wear a soft-looking T-shirt and faded jeans, and their hair hides their face. They might be sleeping. Or at least pretending to sleep so nobody sits beside them. They probably want a seatmate as much as I do, which is not at all.
I take a breath.
“Hi!” I say in my friendliest voice. “Is this seat taken?”
The person stirs, brushing loose waves of brown hair back from their face. The only warning I get before they turn to face me is a smudge of paint on their left hand, from the first to third knuckle.
I know those hands. They’re always stained the same way, with ink or food dye or watercolor pigment.
Kit looks up, furrows his elegant brow, and says, “Theo?”
Maybe that cab did hit me.
Maybe I was flattened in a zigzag crosswalk, and afternoon commuters are gathered around saying what a shame such a hot young piece of ass should have to go out as roadkill outside a Boots. Someone atThe Sunis drafting a headline—GOOD NIGHT FLOWERDAY!“Theo Flowerday, oldest and most disappointing daughter of Hollywood director power couple Ted and Gloria Flowerday, dead after wandering into traffic, to no one’s surprise.” Maybe everything since has been a dying fever dream, and I’ve arrived in hell, where I’ll be forced to share three weeks of the most sensuous, romantic sights and flavors of Europe with a stranger whose perineum I could describe from memory.
All that seems more likely than the reality that the person seated in the last row is actually Kit.
“You—” I keep staring at him. He keeps being there. My ears are ringing, suddenly. My legs have gone numb. “You’re not here.”
He holds up a hand as if to prove he’s corporeal. “I think I am, though?”
“Whyare you here?”
“I have a ticket.”
“So do I. They—they gave me a voucher, but I—”
