I pour another shot of limoncello so that I don’t have to answer right away.
“Think about it,” she says, warming to the idea. “It was one thing to write that story when we were teenage girls ourselves, but now? With life experience and shit? We could really do something there, Em.”
I think about those nights in Chess’s dorm room or the library at UNC, our heads together, each of us throwing out ideas that the other would immediately respond to. We were good at that kind of creative partnership, the whole “Yes, and!” thing, but hours of plotting and talking and gassing each other up didn’t actually result in a book.
Which was maybe for the best.
“Can we be honest and admit that the idea was kind of dumb?” I say, and she widens her eyes in mock outrage.
“Dumb? Dumb? Um, it had a brilliant title, if you’ll recall.”
I giggle. “Chess, you wanted to call it Green. Just that, nothing else. Green. As in ‘not easy being.’”
“Because of the double meaning!” she insists. “Their uniforms were green, and they were green in the … you know, metaphorical sense. Just starting out and all.”
I laugh even harder, nearly spilling my drink as I go to set it down.
“Can you seriously not hear how dumb that sounds?”
She pauses, pours another glass.
And then, with a nod of her head, gives in. “Okay, it was really dumb. But!” She reaches out and slaps my knee. “The idea of us writing something together while we’re here isn’t. So, think about it, Em. Promise?”
I know better than to get my hopes up even if the idea of working on something that isn’t Petal Bloom sends little fizzy sparks of excitement racing through me along with all that alcohol. In the morning, Chess will forget we even had this conversation, or she’ll get absorbed in whatever “Girl, Straighten Your Hair!”–type manifesto she needs to write next, but for now, in this perfect little room, I give in.
“Promise.”
Sun rising over the water/clouds floating so high
A place where I can settle/a home without goodbye
Have I searched for this too long?/Have I finally lost my way?
Or is this the beginning/of a new and brighter day?
“Dawn,”Lara Larchmont, from the album Aestas （1977）
MARI, 1974—ORVIETO
It’s strange, the three of them once again driving through the Italian countryside.
They have a nicer car this time, courtesy of Noel Gordon, who sent Pierce some cash before they left. Apparently, Lara hadn’t been exaggerating when she said that Noel was interested in Pierce and his music, and the letters he and Pierce had sent back and forth had quickly been full of the kind of easy affection and camaraderie that usually characterizes old friends.
Not only that, Noel had told Pierce that he had some studio time already booked in London once the summer was over. He had an album that was massively overdue, and the trip to Italy was something of a last-ditch effort to get some songs ready.
That had made something in Mari’s chest feel less tight about the entire endeavor. The fact that there was a goal in place, not just an endless stream of parties—plus, a real chance for Pierce to break through to a new level at Noel’s side. Now, as she sits in the passenger seat, the warm breeze blowing in through the window, Mari tilts her head back to gaze up at the sky and breathes in deep.
It’s a bright, cloudless blue that feels uniquely Italian, and the sun is already turning the skin of her forearm a slight peach, bringing up freckles that Pierce will later trace with one delicate finger, telling her she has constellations written on her.
Mari pulls her arm back in from the window, twisting around in her seat to look at Lara.
She’d fallen asleep earlier, but she’s awake now, her dark eyes wide, taking everything in.
Mari remembers that from their last trip, too. Lara always seemed to be watching, waiting, afraid to miss one single second, and now, as they begin climbing the steep road up to Orvieto, she leans forward, as excited as a little kid.
“Look at it!” she breathes, fingers clutching the back of Mari’s seat.
The town is worthy of the reaction. Set high on a hill, Orvieto is surrounded by a massive wall and in the city center itself, there’s a cathedral, its spires reaching into all that blue.
Mari wonders if they’ll be able to see it from the house.
Pierce lays a hand on her knee, shaking her leg. “Happy, darling?” he asks, looking over at her, and Mari smiles back, nodding.
She is, actually. Happy.
For the first time in ages.
Pierce leans out the window, the wind ruffling his curly brown hair as he smacks his hand against the side of the car. “My girl is happy, Italy!” he yells, and Mari laughs, tugging him back into the car.
“The villagers are going to come after you with pitchforks now, you nutter,” she tells him, and he gives an easy shrug, his blue eyes bright.
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Pierce actually does seem to thrive on people’s dirty looks, on whispers behind hands, Mari thinks. It cements his idea of himself as a rebel, the iconoclast who turned his back on his conservative family for a life of adventure and music and art. His blood isn’t quite as blue as Noel’s, his defection not quite as shocking, but there’s still money there, a baronet in the family tree, and a big Georgian mansion in the countryside. All of it, Pierce has told her, is deeply boring and stultifying, a life he couldn’t imagine leading.
His willingness to go his own way had seemed so brave when he’d first told her about his family. But sometimes, Mari thinks about his parents, how Pierce is their only child, and what it must feel like to be so thoroughly, irrevocably left behind.
The car follows a long dusty road through the hills, finally turning onto an even narrower dirt track, and finally, the villa comes into view.
“Oh my fucking god,” Lara murmurs from the backseat, and Mari blinks, equally stunned.
It’s … perfect. Even lovelier than she’d let herself imagine. Warm and yellow in the sunlight, surrounded by green and flowers, a jewel box of a house tucked into a lush, beautiful setting. As Mari gets out of the car, it’s all she can do not to jump up and down like a little kid.
Lara doesn’t hold back, though, grabbing Mari’s arm and doing just that, her curls bouncing as she says, “It’s perfect! Oh, Mari, isn’t it perfect?”
But then the front door opens, and Mari turns toward it, shading her eyes with her hands as Noel Gordon strolls out onto the lawn.
It’s surreal, watching a man whose face she’s seen on posters, in newspapers, smirking out from album covers at the record store, from the wall of her own childhood bedroom, walk toward her, his arms open, his smile wide.
He is both everything she imagined and nothing she expected, all at once.
Noel wears an old-fashioned velvet dressing gown over a pair of black jeans, no shoes, the sides of that ridiculous robe flapping open to reveal his bare chest. His hair is dark, curling over one brow in a way that has to be purposeful, and as he gets closer, Mari can see that he limps slightly.
She remembers reading about that now, some accident when he was young, but it doesn’t slow him down. If anything, it just adds to the weird halo of glamour that seems to surround him.