I meet his glass with a clink.
“Do you ever wonder how people used to find this place? Before there were travel brochures or even word of mouth.”
“I think there was always word of mouth.”
“You know what I mean.” I put my elbows on the table and lean forward. “So, okay, that ship. What must it have felt like to step onto this shore for the first time? I can’t imagine that people built this place. It feels like it’s always been, I don’t know, undiscoverable. Like it’s always just existed exactly as it is today.”
Adam sits back, thoughtful. He takes a sip of wine.
“Sometimes, I guess,” he says. “I feel that about Italy in general. All this living history. Different eras and experiences, joy and suffering stacked up on top of each other like sheets of paper.”
“Sheets of paper. That’s the perfect way to describe it.”
I think of one of the final scenes in The Thomas Crown Affair, the remake with Rene Russo and Pierce Brosnan. Thomas Crown has stolen a painting from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, replacing it with a forgery. As the plot crescendos, the museum infiltrated and the sprinklers on, the forgery begins to disintegrate, revealing that the original painting has been there all along, just underneath it. The same canvas.
One thing on top of another on top of another.
“How often are you at home?” I ask Adam. “I have a vision of you in an apartment with gray walls and gray furniture. Maybe a red headboard.”
He raises an eyebrow at me. “That’s specific.”
“Masculine and minimalist,” I say.
Adam laughs. “I’m not a pack rat, you’ve got that right. But I like Navajo pottery. Not sure where that fits into the equation.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he says. “I bought my first piece on a trip with my mom to Santa Fe, and I’ve been collecting ever since.”
I imagine Adam in a room filled with colorful vases. It’s hard to picture.
“But in answer to your question,” he says, “I am not home that often.” He rolls his neck from side to side. “What about you?” he asks. “What does your home look like?”
I think about the gingham wallpaper in the bathroom, the wicker furniture, the mid-century dresser.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It looks like me, I guess. It looks normal.”
Adam clears his throat. “You don’t look normal.” He holds my gaze for a beat and then looks back down into the marina.
“Positano was really just a modest fishing village,” he says. “Although, legend has it that the town was created by Poseidon himself, god of the sea.”
“It seems like there are a lot of legends to this place.”
Adam leans forward. He tips his wine to me. “Many people believe that Positano was and still is full of very real magic.”
“Magic,” I repeat. “Do you believe that?”
Adam’s face hovers even closer. If he wanted to, he could lift his hand from where it rests on the table and cup my chin with it. It would take no more than a heartbeat, an instant, the space of a millisecond.
“How could I not right now.”
Chapter Fourteen
Adam drops me off at half past two at the hotel. “You sure you don’t want to have dinner tonight?”
“I told you I’m going to that restaurant.”
“With your friend, right.” He tilts his head to the side. His face is a little red at his cheeks and nose—the first hints of too much sun today.
We’re standing in the lobby. The front desk is vacant. From upstairs, the sounds of guests at the pool trickle down.
“What?” I ask. “What’s that look?”
Adam turns his palms up, then down like he’s disregarding gathered sand. “Nothing,” he says. He exhales out. “All right, enjoy your date. Call my room if you’d like a nightcap.”
I put my hand up to wave goodbye, and then all at once Adam leans forward and kisses my cheek. His lips are soft and warm on my skin. I feel his body close to mine, right there, and something in me reaches out and hooks on. I lean into him.
“Thanks for a wonderful day,” he says, and then he is moving away, his body now a separate entity, heading up the stairs.
I stand there, blinking after him.
My face is hot where his lips were. My whole body feels rooted to the marble floor beneath me.
“Buonasera!”
I jump and turn to the desk to see Marco behind it. He throws his arm up like he’s tossing a hat into the center of the lobby.