Amma has heard the saying three’s a crowd her whole life, but she’s never experienced it for herself quite the way she does in Italy. Chloe slides into their life like she’s always been there, like she was a part of this trip from the beginning.
From the first night they meet her in that café, Chloe is with them every step of the way, waiting outside their hostel or meeting them at some restaurant, and while Amma doesn’t want to resent her, especially given how much Brittany seems to connect with her, it’s getting harder and harder not to.
Chloe says …
It’s how Britt opens every sentence.
Chloe says that restaurant has the best carbonara.
Chloe says the Spanish Steps are overrated.
Chloe says that part of the city has gotten really touristy.
Chloe says, Chloe says.
Chloe is suddenly the authority on everything, and Brittany can’t stop parroting all of her opinions.
Even though it sometimes feels like Brittany is her closest friend, Amma reminds herself that she’s only known her for a little over a year. Maybe this is just who Brittany is—maybe she’s always looking for someone to follow. First it was Amma. Now, it’s Chloe.
Amma understands the impulse, in a way—after everything that’s happened to both of them, handing over the reins to someone else can feel easier.
But as they sit in a wine bar in the Trastevere neighborhood, Brittany laughing at some story Chloe is telling about her gap year in England, Amma tries to remind herself that Britt has been better since Chloe showed up. No more crying at night, no more talk of going home.
Which is why Amma had actually been relieved at first when Chloe had asked if she could tag along with them. The group she’d been with that first night had been a group of American grad students who were, according to Chloe, “getting really fucking boring,” and at the time, Amma had thought there was something a little glamorous about being able to do that, to float between various groups of people, making new friends all along the way. No responsibility, no attachments.
No guilt.
Amma can’t imagine what it would feel like to live without guilt. It’s her permanent companion, has been since the moment she first looked up Brittany’s Facebook, needing to see the girl whose life she’d ruined.
Learning they were both at the same school, that Brittany was only a year behind her at UMass, had made her stomach lurch, hard enough that she’d run to the bathroom and thrown up. It had felt too close, too … fated somehow. That she would be in Florida for spring break at the same time as this girl, a girl she might’ve seen walking across campus, a girl she might have bumped into in the bathroom at a party, drunkenly complimenting her lipstick or her hair.
Only later, when her head had cleared and her stomach had settled, had Amma understood. It was fate.
Fate giving her a chance to try and make this right somehow.
That’s what led her to that counseling session at the church, what led her to sit down on a metal folding chair next to Brittany. Fate—and some bizarre notion of penance—had made her tell Brittany the biggest lie of her life.
At first, Amma had just wanted to see her. To hear her talk. And maybe there had been some sick part of her that felt compelled to hear Brittany’s version of events. All Amma really knew was that she needed to actually see this person whose life was now as irrevocably altered as Amma’s.
So that’s why, even though there’s something about Chloe—about her quick, wide smiles and her easy camaraderie with everyone she meets—that unsettles Amma, she will put up with their new friend and ignore the shit that irritates her. Like how Chloe had announced, the second they sat down, that she didn’t have any cash, and could one of them cover her?
It’s not the first time she’s done this, and given how quickly they’re going through their money, Amma is especially irritated, but Brittany quickly agrees, and now Amma is watching Chloe drink what are probably Brittany’s last few euros.
She feels ready to leave, even though she’s just had one glass of wine, when a group of guys comes in, taking the table next to them.
They’re clearly Americans; the baseball caps give it away. In the month they’ve been traveling in Europe, Amma hasn’t seen anyone from any other country wearing them.
Chloe leans forward, with that crooked smile of hers, red hair swinging. “I will bet the two of you twenty euros that those guys have the worst Instagram accounts you’ve ever seen.”
Amma bites back what she really wants to say—Do you even have twenty euros?—but Brittany twists slightly in her chair to look at the trio. All three guys are sitting around a small metal table, their knees spread wide. They’re also all wearing some variation of the same outfit—long khaki shorts, button-downs, the caps. All three wear aviator sunglasses and have giant glasses of beer sitting in front of them.