Love Storm (42 page)

"Stag," Gavin said. "Still searching for that perfect girl."

I smiled. "I know what you mean."

Forty five minutes later found us still in the same spot, though sitting on the ground with our backs against the wall. Gavin was incredibly easy to talk to, and I found that we never ran out of topics to chat about. I was laughing really hard at something he was saying when a shadow fell over me.

"Oh, hey Eva," I grinned, still chuckling a little. "Hi Martin. What's up?"

She looked slightly breathless and was holding hands with Martin. "Where have you been? I thought you said you were going to the casino room," Eva said, patting her hair a little. Then she noticed Gavin. Giving him a friendly smile, she said, "Hi."

"Hey," he replied, looking up at her and Martin.

"Gavin, right?" she continued. "You're in my chemistry class."

"Yeah," he replied with an easy smile.

"We were playing blackjack together a while ago," I supplied.

"I see," Eva nodded. "Wanna come dance with us, Winter? You can come too, Gavin." She pleaded with me with her eyes.

"Okay," I sighed, resignedly. "You coming?" I directed this at my gambling companion.

"Nah," he said, shaking his head slightly, a lock of brown hair falling into his eyes. "I think I'm going to go find Ian. He's probably wondering where I am. But I'll find you later."

"Oh, okay," I said, a tiny bit disappointed. "See you later."

Martin gave me a hand up and together, the three of us headed back to the dance floor.

"Ian?" Eva was asking me as we walked. "Ian as in Ian Farrington?"

"The one, the only," I said grimly. "He and Gavin are best buds."

"Ouch," Eva winced. "I hope Ian won't be mad that you just spent away half of Morp chatting and laughing with his best friend."

I grinned. "He should be okay."

"Come on," Eva said, pulling me by the hand towards the floor, speaking more loudly now to be heard. "Dance!"

"Aww," I protested good-naturedly, moving a little to the beat of the song. "This good enough for you?"

"Probably the best I'll get out of you tonight, so I'll live with it," she half-shouted, laughing a little. A few songs later, the music changed to a slower beat.

"Not
another
slow one!" Eva complained in my ear. "Man, I'm tired of dancing slow songs."

"Can I dance with Martin, then?" I asked her.

"Be my guest," Eva said. "I need to use the bathroom anyway. See you guys in a minute or two. I'll be right back."

"Bye," Martin and I chorused as she disappeared into the throng of people.

"Having fun so far?" he asked me as we took the traditional position. We kept a friendly distance between each other.

"Yeah, I guess it's been pretty fun," I said. I grinned devilishly. "And you?"

"Whoo," Martin said, pretending to wipe his brow. "My girlfriend can
dance
."

I laughed. "I know," I said. "She makes me look bad."

We continued to converse, and about half-way through the song, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"Oh, hi Gav," I greeted him loudly to be heard over the music.

"Hey," he said, then asked Martin, "Can I steal her away from you?"

"Sure," he said, shrugging. "Go ahead."

"Gee, way to make a girl feel loved," I said, pretending to be hurt.

Martin chuckled. "I'm going to go find Eva. See you later." And he disappeared into the crowd.

"Hey," Gavin smiled, dark eyes sparkling as he slid his hands around my waist. "How's it going, stranger?"

I grinned at him. "Not too bad," I returned, snaking my arms around his neck. He was considerably taller than me, and the action forced me to stand closer to him. "And you?"

He chuckled. "Not too bad at all. If I tell you to run, though, just do it."

"What? Why?" I said, confused.

"Take a look over my shoulder," he said in my ear. "Ian's dancing with someone about six feet away from us. So if he spots us and you suddenly see a murderous glint in his eye, don't hesitate to tell me. He's going to skin me alive."

I laughed. "He won't," I told him confidently. "I'll sucker punch him before he can do that."

"I'd love to see you try," Gavin smirked.

"Hey, you don't think I can do it?" I said mock-defensively, removing my arm from around his neck and flexing my bicep. "I have muscles honed from years of tennis, Gav. Don't underestimate me, just because I'm not as tall as you, you giraffe. You didn't seem this tall when we were chatting!"

"I'm a giraffe?" Gavin laughed. "Hey, I'm not
that
tall."

"Like friggin' six foot eight or something!" I said. "I can barely dance with you, you're so tall."

He grinned at me lazily. "You're cute, you know that?"

I was taken aback by such a forward statement. Not having much experience in this department, I can't honestly say I knew what to say in response to that. "Uhm, thanks," I laughed lightly. "I guess I know now, huh?"

He laughed but said nothing, eyes smiling at me.

We hung out for the rest of the night.

-
Zack
-

"I can't take this anymore."

"What?" I said absently, not looking up from my work. I pulled the collar of my t-shirt away from my neck automatically to relieve the heat of the room, jotting down another vocabulary word for Spanish.

"It's too fricking hot!" Leo complained, bounding up from his desk chair and going over to our window, which was already open. The room was stiflingly warm; a feeble, half-hearted breeze blew through, but it was all hot air. "This is worse than I remembered from last year," my black-haired companion said, closing his blue eyes and hunching over the sill, propping his hands along the bottom edge of the window.

"Well, what do you expect? Spring-time in these parts of Italy is warm," I told him dryly. "And I thought you said you hated cold weather."

"I do. But I don't like hot weather either."

I chuckled. "You're done studying your Spanish already?"

"I'm done and through," Leo announced, "Screw finals. I'm ready."

I raised my eyebrows. "Are you sure?"

He seemed about to say something, then slumped his shoulders, defeated, and mumbled, "No."

"Ha," I grinned lazily, "Thought so. Any idea when the schedules for finals week are coming out?"

"The fuck if I know," Leo sighed. "Man, this school is so overrated."

I laughed. "Amen to that."

"I am sick of studying," he said. "I'm sick of conjugating verbs."

I exhaled and leaned back in my chair. "Well, there is one good thing about finals," I said. "It means summer break directly follows it."

"I know," Leo replied, my statement seeming to make him a little happier than before, "Just two more weeks and...no more school."

"Any plans for the summer, di Orazio?" I asked out of pure boredom, clicking my pen. I was tired of studying too. My brain was sluggish and slow on such a hot day.

"Probably going home."

"To the States?"

"Yeah. Back to good ol' New Orleans. Hot as hell down there during the summer though; it's not very fun. You?"

"I got an e-mail from my parental unit yesterday," I said, twirling my pen between my fingers. "Apparently I'm staying in Italy. He wants me to live with him and my mom in their house in Florence for the summer. I get the feeling he wants me to work at his office with him so I can 'get a feel' for the advertising business. I think he has some big plans for me…maybe he wants me to take over his company someday." I rolled my eyes.

"And what do you want?" Leo asked me, glancing over with raised eyebrows.

"Doesn't matter," I gave a bitter laugh. "He doesn't care. My mom doesn't care. No one cares."

"So you're just some puppet for them to play?" my friend asked. His grip tightened on the window sill.

"Why do you think I was sent here in the first place?" I said grimly.

"That's
bull
shit, Zack," Leo said. There was an underlying tone of anger in his voice. "And you know it."

"What am I supposed to do about it?" I asked him hotly, throwing my pen down on top of my desk. "He's got big, elaborate ideas about what he wants me to be, none of which are even close to what I want."

"So what
do
you want anyway?" Leo asked, pushing off from the window and pacing around his side of the room.

"I don't
know
," I muttered broodingly. "All I know is that I don't want what he wants me to want." The reason for this was unknown, but perhaps it was simply out of spite for my father.

"You know what?" Leo replied, stopping in his tracks and staring me straight in the eye, "You will never break free from this if you don't hurry up and figure it out. You can't be a pushover, Zack. Life is worth shit if that's how you're going to go about doing things."

"You think I'm a pushover?" I said in disbelief. "Is that what it is? So if you're blackmailed into doing something, it's called being a pushover?"

"You were blackmailed?" Leo said, incredulous. "Oh, for fuck's sake. How the hell were you blackmailed into coming here?"

I scoffed, not at him, but at myself. I shook my head and looked away from his heated glare. "It sounds stupid now," I murmured quietly.

"So?" Leo said softly, crossing over to my bed and sitting down at the foot of it, his favorite place to be when we discussed things. I took the gesture as a temporary peace offering. "Talk."

I sighed and was quiet for a long, long moment. He waited patiently. I pondered over the issue. Why had I come to Italy in the first place? All in all, it boiled down to Winter. Was it stupid? To let someone so wholly have control of my life, whether she knew it or not? Was it worth it?

Then I thought again, of how she would make me feel if she were here right now. I smiled softly to myself, realizing that I couldn't ever possibly know, because Winter wasn't something that was predictable. She wasn't just some friend, just some girl I knew, just some person I talked to and wrote to because I liked what I knew she was going to say, because I
didn't
know. She was full of surprises. She was just herself, and in the end, that was what I liked the best about her. She wasn't someone you could simply forget – she was one of
those
people, those people that come along every so often, who touch your life and make you see things you never even knew existed, who put things in a new and fresh perspective so that, even if they leave, you know you can never see things in that old light again. She was unlike anyone I had ever met before, and I wondered if I affected her the way she affected me.

Though it felt a little weird to say all this to Leo, I did, and he listened. He took me seriously, and somehow I knew he had an idea of how I felt.

"So what's stopping you now?" Leo said slowly after I finished telling him all this. "I mean, if what you say is true…then she's worth it, don't you think?"

I glanced at him sideways, speculating over if he had a point.

He sighed. "Man, you really…" He trailed off, looking out the window, eyes a little unfocused.

"What?" I said, silently willing him to finish his sentence.

He shook his head, smiling slightly. "Nothing."

"What?" I said again. "You keep doing this to me. What are you talking about?"

"Nothing," Leo said again, turning to me now. "Just forget I said anything."

I stared at him. "You're on drugs, aren't you?"

"Huh? No!" he cried. "No, I'm not on drugs!"

"Right."

"I'm not!"

"Uh huh."

Leo gave me a look. "You're trying to provoke me."

I grinned at him in return. "Hole in one."

He chuckled. "Nice try."

xxxxx

Spring semester finals passed with minimal trouble. I found that school in Italy was definitely more demanding than in the US, and it showed in the increased hours I had had to study. Italian class was not as easy as I had originally thought it would be. I could speak it, true, but when it came to the grammar, I was at a disadvantage – it completely baffled me. Not ever having had to worry about conjugations, different tenses, reflexives, direct and indirect objects and so on and so forth before, it was hard forcing myself to learn the language through such a strict system. After a while I got the hang of it, realizing it really wasn't all that different than Spanish.

After spring finals, we had one more week of school in which we did absolutely nothing. The teachers let us goof off in class and do whatever we wanted. On Andy's suggestion, our group, like many others, decided to cut one or two days of school to go into the city and hang out. The staff didn't seem to mind, because we never got in trouble over it. That week, I let myself go and had more fun than I usually did, because what lay in wait for me at the end of that week wasn't something I liked thinking about. I had an e-ticket my father had sent me for a flight to Florence, where he and my mom worked and lived.