Love & Gelato (20 page)

“I didn't know that was an option.”

“He's always welcome.”

“Except he's petrified of you.” Which was ridiculous. I gave him a quick look. Regardless of his shady past, Howard looked like he was trying to emulate the perfect 1950s dad. Freshly shaved face, clean white T-shirt, winning smile.

Check, check, check.

He sped up to pass a semi. “I shouldn't have given him a hard time last night. I can tell he's a good kid, and it's nice to have someone I feel safe sending you out with.”

“Yeah.” I shifted in my seat, suddenly remembering our phone call the night before. “He actually invited me to go somewhere tonight, too.”

“Where?”

I hesitated. “This, uh, club. A bunch of people from the party will be there.”

“For someone who's been here less than a week, you've sure got quite the social calendar. Sounds like I'll have to restrict all our outings to daytime.” He smiled. “I have to say, I'm really glad that you're getting to know students from the school. I called the principal a few days before you arrived, and she said she'd be happy to give us a tour. Maybe Ren would come with us. I'm sure he could answer any questions you have.”

“That's all right,” I said quickly.

“Well, maybe another time. It doesn't have to be right away.” We circled through a roundabout, and then he pulled over in front of a row of shops.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Cell phone store. You need your own.”

“Really?”

He smiled. “Really. I miss talking to people. Now come on.”

The shop's windows were coated with dust and when we walked inside a tiny old man who looked like a direct descendant of Rumpelstiltskin looked up from his book.

“Signore Mercer?” he asked.

“
Si
.”

He hopped nimbly off his stool and started rummaging around on the shelf behind the desk. Finally he handed Howard a box. “
Prego
.”

“
Grazie
.” Howard handed him a credit card, then passed the box off to me. “I had them get it all set up, so we're ready to roll.”

“Thanks, Howard.” I pulled out the phone and looked at it happily. Now I had my very own number to give Thomas. Just in case he asked.
Please let him be at Space tonight. And please let him ask
. Because really? Even with all my parents' drama, I couldn't stop thinking about him.

Howard parked in the same area he had the night of the pizzeria, and when we got to the Duomo he groaned. “The line is even worse than normal. You'd think they're giving away free Ferraris at the top.”

I eyed the line leading into the Duomo. It was made up of about ten thousand sweaty tourists and half of them looked like they were on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I tilted my head back to look up at the building, but there was no sign of the bull. I probably wouldn't be able to find it on my own.

He turned to me. “What do you say we get a gelato first, see if we can outwait the line a bit. Sometimes it's more crowded in the morning.”

“Do you know any place with
stracciatella
gelato?”

“Any
gelateria
worth its salt will have
stracciatella
. When did you try it?”

“Last night with Ren.”

“I thought you seemed different. Life-changing, right? Tell you what, let's go get a cone. Start the day off right. Then we'll brave the line.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“My favorite place is a ways away. Do you mind a walk?”

“Nope.”

It took us about fifteen minutes to get to the
gelateria
. The shop was roughly the size of Howard's car, and even though it was pretty much breakfast time, the shop was packed to the brim with people happily devouring what I now knew was the most delicious substance on earth. They all looked rapturous.

“Popular,” I said to Howard.

“This place is the best. Really.”

“
Buon giorno
.” A bell-shaped woman waved at us from behind the counter and I made my way to the front. This place had a huge selection. Mountains of colorful gelato garnished with little bits of fruit or chocolate curls were piled high in metal dishes, and every single one of them looked like they had the ability to improve my day by about nine hundred percent. Chocolate, fruit, nuts, pistachio . . . How was I going to choose?

Howard came up next to me. “Would you mind if I ordered for you? I promise I'll get you another one if you don't like my choice.”

That solved things. “Sure. Bad flavors of gelato probably don't exist, right?”

“Right. You could probably make dirt-flavored gelato and it would turn out all right.”

“Ew.”

He looked up at the woman.
“Un cono con bacio, per favore.”

“Certo.”

She took a cone from the stack on the counter, piled it high with a chocolate-looking gelato, then handed it to Howard, who handed it to me.

“This isn't dirt-flavored, right?”

“No. Try it.”

I took a lick. Super rich and creamy. Like silk, only in gelato form. “Yum. Chocolate with . . . nuts?”

“Chocolate with hazelnuts. It's called
bacio
. Otherwise known as your mom's favorite flavor. I think we came here a hundred times.”

Before I could catch it, my heart slammed straight down to my feet, leaving me with a massive hole in my chest. It was amazing how I could just be going along, doing okay, and then suddenly—
wham
—I missed her so much even my fingernails hurt.

I looked down at my cone, my eyes stinging. “Thanks, Howard.”

“No problem.”

Howard ordered his own cone, and then we made our way out onto the street and I took a deep breath. Hearing Howard talk about my mom had kind of thrown me, but it was summertime in Florence and I was eating
bacio
gelato. She wouldn't have wanted me to be sad.

Howard looked down at me thoughtfully. “I'd like to show you something at Mercato Nuovo. Have you ever heard of the
porcellino
fountain?”

“No. But did my mom by chance swim in it?”

He laughed. “No. That was a different one. Did she tell you about the German tourist?”

“Yes.”

“I don't think I've ever laughed that hard in my life. I'll take you there sometime. But I won't let you swim.”

We made our way down the street. Mercato Nuovo was more like a collection of outdoor tourist shops—lots of booths set up with souvenir stuff, like T-shirts printed with funny sayings:

I AM ITALIAN, THEREFORE I CANNOT KEEP CALM.

I'M NOT YELLING, I'M ITALIAN
.

And my personal favorite:

YOU BET YOUR MEATBALLS I'M ITALIAN.

I wanted to stop and see if I could find something ridiculous to send to Addie, but Howard bypassed the market and led me to where a ring of people stood gathered around a statue of a bronze boar with water running out of its mouth. It had a long snout and tusks and its nose was a shiny gold color, like it had been worn down.

“ ‘
Porcellino'
means ‘boar'?” I asked.

“Yes. This is the Fontana del Porcellino. It's actually just a copy of the original, but it's been around since the seventeenth century. Legend is that if you rub its nose you'll be guaranteed to come back to Florence. Want to try?”

“Sure.”

I waited until a mom and her little boy cleared out of the way, then stepped forward and used my non-gelato hand to give the boar's nose a good rub. And then I just stood there. The boar was looking down at me with his beady eyes and creepy little molars and I knew without asking that my mom had stood right here and gotten gross fountain water splashed all over her legs and hoped with all her heart that she'd stayed in Florence forever. And then look what had happened. She'd never even come back to
visit
, and she never would again.

I turned around and looked at Howard. He was watching me with this kind of sad/happy look in his eyes, like he'd just had the exact same line of thoughts and now he suddenly couldn't taste his gelato all that well anymore either.

Should I just ask him?

No. I wanted to hear it from her.

Conditions at the Duomo had not improved. In fact, the line had gotten even longer, and little kids were breaking down left and right. Also, Florence had decided we could all handle a little more heat, and makeup and sunscreen and all hope of ever cooling off was pretty much dripping off of people's faces.

“Maybe we should have just stayed hoooooome,” the little boy behind us wailed.

“
Fa CALDO
,” the woman in front of us said.

Caldo
. I'd totally recognized an Italian word.

Howard met my eye. We'd both been pretty quiet since the
porcellino
, but it was more of a sad quiet than an awkward quiet. “I promise it's worth it. Ten more minutes, tops.”

I nodded and went back to trying to ignore all the sad feelings sloshing around my stomach. Why couldn't Howard and my mom just have had a happy ending? She'd totally deserved it. And honestly, it seemed like he did too.

Finally we were to the front of the line. The Duomo's stones had some kind of miraculous ability to generate cold air, and when we stepped inside it took effort not to lie down on the stone floor and weep from happiness. But then I caught a glimpse of the stone staircase everyone was filing up and suddenly I wanted to weep for a whole different reason. My mom had described walking up lots of stairs, but she'd left out the tiny detail that the staircase was narrow. Like gopher-tunnel narrow.

I shifted nervously.

“You okay?” Howard asked.

No.
I nodded.

The line fed slowly into the staircase, but when I got to the base of it my feet stopped moving. Like
stopped
. They just straight-up refused to climb.

Howard turned around and looked at me. He kind of had to hunch over to even fit in the staircase. “You're not claustrophobic, are you?”

I shook my head. I'd just never faced the possibility of being squeezed through a stone tube with a bunch of sweaty tourists.

The people behind me were starting to bottleneck and a man muttered something under his breath. My mom had said the view was amazing. I forced one foot onto the stairs. Wasn't a staircase this narrow a fire hazard? What if there was an earthquake? And, lady snorting nasal spray behind me, could you please give me some
room
?

“Lina, I didn't tell you the whole story of the
porcellino
.” I looked up. Howard had walked back down to the stair just above me and was looking at me encouragingly. He was going to try to distract me.

Well played, Howard. Well played.

“Tell me the story.” I looked down at the stairs again, focusing on my breathing and finally beginning to climb. There was a smattering of applause from behind me.

“A long time ago there was a couple who couldn't have a child. They tried for years, and the husband blamed the wife for their bad luck. One day after they'd gotten into a fight, the woman stood crying at the window and a group of wild boars ran past the house. The boars had just had piglets and the woman said aloud that she wished she could have a child just like the boars did. A fairy happened to be listening in, and decided to grant her wish. A few days later the woman found out she was pregnant, but when she gave birth she and her husband were shocked because the baby came out looking more like a boar than a human. But the couple was so happy to have a son that they loved the child anyway.”

“That story doesn't sound true,” a woman behind me said.

I winced. Four hundred more steps?