We order. A plate of grilled vegetables, seared octopus, creamy burrata and vine tomatoes, and lobster pasta. A tossed green salad and light dinner bread round out the meal.
I eat. And eat and eat.
“I could constantly consume food here,” I say. “I feel like I’m bottomless.”
“I know,” Adam tells me. “I told you. The food is amazing. Italian food has that effect. When the ingredients are high quality and simple, the meal is satisfying and doesn’t sit on you.”
I have a memory of Adam tapping his stomach, claiming to have gained ten pounds.
I take another sip of Sancerre. I’m pretty sure we’re now on our second bottle. My limbs feel pleasantly loose. There is a happy buzzing in my chest.
“Do you always come to Italy for work now?” I ask him.
“Not always,” he says. “We have a hotel in Rome, but Positano is a nice place to come in between when you have a little time off.”
“It’s pretty romantic,” I say out of nowhere. It’s the wine. I have the impulse to cover it with more words, but I don’t.
Adam raises an eyebrow at me. “Yes, I agree. It is.”
My stomach pulls, imagining Adam here with some other girl. Maybe he met her, like me, at the hotel. Maybe she was American, too. Or Swiss. Or French. Some fabulous brunette with legs a mile high and a tiny kerchief at her neck. Annabelle. No, Amelie.
“My most recent ex was more of a Rome person, truth be told,” Adam says, reading me. “She was from Tuscany and had some prejudice against Amalfi.”
“Is that a thing?”
Adam shrugs. “Some Italians think the coast is too overrun, too touristy, too expensive.”
“It is all those things,” I say.
“Yes,” Adam says. “But I mean, look at this.”
He gestures out to the ocean. To the rocks beyond. To the water and sky that look too technicolor to be real.
“What happened to her? Why did it end, I mean.”
Adam picks up his water glass. “She wanted to live in Italy, and she didn’t want me to travel. We fought about it all the time. She wanted a life she deserved to have, but it wasn’t realistic for me. Last I heard, she got married in Florence. That was two years ago already. Crazy how time flies.”
I can tell this still pains Adam. Or did, once. That there’s something open or unhealed there.
“How long were you together?”
“Three years,” he says. “Off and on.” He looks at me. “It’s hard for me to stay in one place. Sometimes I think it didn’t work because it wasn’t right, and sometimes I think it didn’t work because I refused to let it.”
I think about Eric, in our house, fifteen minutes from my parents. Our shared four restaurants, movie nights at the Grove. Concerts at the Hollywood Bowl. My whole life that has taken place in a ten-mile radius. I’ve been resistant to change, too. To letting someone change me.
Adam sets his water glass down with a clunk. “So what do you want to do now?” he asks me. “We could explore Capri. We can go shopping. We can go eat at the lemon tree.”
The city center of Capri is up the hill from us. The problem is that the only way to get there is by foot, scaling the pathway up from the ocean. And after this morning’s stair climb, I’m not sure I have the energy for ten thousand more steps.
“We could also go by boat to Marina Piccola and then walk,” Adam offers.
I sit back. I see our beach chairs below us.
“You know what I really want to do?” I say to Adam.
“Tell me.”
“Nothing,” I say.
Adam smiles. “You sure?” he says. “We’re already here. And Capri is pretty great. Great shopping, great bars.”
“I’ve seen pictures,” I say. “There’s a Prada store.”
“There are a lot of small boutiques. I thought that might be your thing. You dress well, different.”
“Thanks,” I say. Although, I’d never describe my style as different. Derivative with a twist, maybe. “I do like to shop, but today I just want to be here and not feel like there’s anywhere I have to go or anything I have to do. Is that okay?”
Adam gives me a slow nod. “Yes,” he says. “That is very much okay.”
For the next four hours, all we do is nap and swim. It’s heaven. I go from the ocean to the beach lounger to the rocks and back. That’s it, that’s all. Just the simplicity of water and rocks and stunning views. There is wine and water and icy lemonade. I reapply sunscreen, and Adam switches chairs with me once the umbrella can no longer cover us both. He reads. I close my eyes, and for the first time in months, there is a pleasant blankness there. I am not met with images of hospitals, or questions about my future, the uncertainty of what’s to come. All I feel is this—this complete embrace of the present.