She held up a hand. “Can we just . . . this is such an unnecessarily elaborate way to get me to finish the series.”
Nick’s voice was strong, tight, all joking gone. “Feck the series. I’m not here because of the series. You’ll finish it or you won’t. I couldn’t care less.”
She would finish the series. She was a professional. That was never in question, even if she’d given Jason the opposite impression. She’d only needed time. But the fact he hadn’t come for business softened her a bit and compelled her to say, “Of course I’ll finish the series.”
“Well. I guess I’ll be going, then.” But he didn’t move.
She huffed a small laugh. “What are you doing here? And will you please get up?”
He stood, brushed off his knees. “We never had our date.”
“You flew to Italy for a date?”
He grinned. “Well, I’m the ’round-the-bend guy.”
“Are you?”
His grin wavered. “No, not really. I used to be. I want to be again.” He swallowed. “I don’t want to be afraid of oysters anymore, so I got on a plane.”
At his honesty, Sewanee looked at her feet. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry I left. The other night, but also the country. I was just . . . you know.” She brought a flat hand up parallel to her jaw. At capacity.
“Yeah, well, it was a lot. For all four of us.” His attempt at levity made her smile and he matched it. “So you’re not angry?” He sounded hopeful.
She had to think about that. Was she? She was a lot of things, but was she mad? “No. Not at you. Not anymore.”
The Italian moon was full in his eyes when his tone shifted and he said, “You’re so beautiful.”
“Nick–”
He cringed. “Sorry. Right, we have to talk first. I’ll throw myself at your feet later.”
She held up a hand again. “No. No feet-throwing. Please.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “Let’s go sit in the lobby, it’s chilly.”
“You sure? I don’t want to pressure you–”
“Oh, now you’re worried about boundaries? Go.” It felt so good to tease him, to remember that, all the confusion and convolution aside, they actually enjoyed each other. They always had, each iteration, each interaction.
They commandeered a table in the empty lobby and the bored desk manager was more than happy to set them up with a pot of peppermint tea and some biscotti. Nick excused himself to the bathroom and arrived back just as the tea did, looking like he’d splashed water on his face and run his hands through his hair.
She poured them both a cup and they sipped in silence while Sewanee embedded herself in the moment. The buttercup glow from the deco floor lamps, streaks of moonlight limning the ripples of the canal out the window behind Nick’s chair, the occasional creak of a floorboard from a hallway above them. Eventually, Sewanee felt warm enough, inside and out, to ask, “So, what would you like to talk about?”
Nick took a sip of tea. “My aunt.”
Not what she’d expected. She’d thought they’d immediately start exhuming their relationship, sorting what was truth from what was fiction. To go back to the beginning and dig themselves out. But, really, what was more formative than family?
NICK’S MOTHER HAD been pregnant at twenty-one and dead from an overdose at twenty-five. He had no memory of her. Which he knew sounded sadder than it actually was. He hadn’t known who his father was until a 23andMe test five years ago, which led him to a middle-aged finance guy living in New Jersey with two kids in college and no honest-to-God memory of Nick’s mother, either. But he’d been nice and apologetic and had wanted to hear Nick’s story and this is what Nick had told him:
His aunt, Deborah June Sullivan, had been older than his mother by about a decade. She’d been a radical feminist （at least by Prescott, Arizona, circa 1994 standards） doing graduate work in Ireland. She hadn’t wanted a toddler; she was, after all, intentionally husband-and child-less. But Nick was the only family she had left and June could be sentimental when she wasn’t being contrarian. They lived in Dublin for twelve years, but when June broke up with Tom, the closest thing Nick had to a father, she moved them back to the place she swore she’d never return: Prescott. Why? Nick didn’t know. Except that June liked a good fight.
Once he’d covered high school in Arizona, summers in Dublin at Tom’s pub hanging around musicians, best-friending Jason sophomore year, and the teasing he endured because of his funny accent and the fact his aunt wrote “smut,” he summed it all up by saying, “You know, typical dysfunctional family when you get down to it.”