Wisconsin didn’t have that. Wisconsin wouldn’t ever have that—not for hundreds of years, at least. She’d be long dead before anything in the land of her birth could muster the kind of gravitas that Naples was steeped in.
When she got to the Fountain of Neptune, she stopped. She was wearing sandals to keep her feet cool in the early summer heat, which had seemed like a good idea before she’d planned to walk around the city all day.
So she sat down at the edge of the fountain, and watched the people go by. She’d miss them. She didn’t know many of them, but she’d miss them, all the same.
As she sat, people watching, one man caught her eye. He was different from the others somehow, though she couldn’t put her finger on what it was that made him so. It was something about the way he seemed carefree, above and beyond the way the other people had their Friday glow on.
It was more than that, even. He felt familiar in a way Juliette couldn’t quite place, even though she was now staring at him.
It wasn’t because he was handsome. Well, at least Juliette wanted to tell herself that it wasn’t because of his tanned olive skin, thick dark hair and deep brown eyes. She saw him reach his hand up and run his fingers through his hair, and in spite of herself, Juliette felt her breath catch in her throat.
He looked like the kind of man she would imagine in an expensive suit, even though his clothes at that moment were casual—an open-necked shirt and jeans. She wondered where he was going like that, early on a Friday evening. She couldn’t think of anything in the direction he was heading.
And then he shifted direction, and Juliette was even more at a loss.
He was headed towards the fountain.
She averted her eyes, and tried to downplay the fact that she’d been obviously staring at him. She swallowed. He was going to walk right by her, and stand and look at the fountain, like so many tourists did.
But he didn’t. Instead, he headed right for her.
Her heartrate quickened as he got closer. She was torn between wanting him to walk right up to her and ask what her name was, and wanting him to stay away, lest she embarrass herself in front of a man so far out of her league. There were those who said she was attractive, sure. But compared to him?
She didn’t know whether to smile or blush when he stopped right in front of her, sliding his hands into his pockets in a casual pose.
“I’m Nico,” he said with a widening grin.
“I’m Juliette.”
So far so good.
But then he leaned down closer to her, moving as though he was about to whisper something in her ear.
“Your shirt is inside out, Juliette.”
He leaned back having said the words, and Juliette could swear it was just so that he could see her blush.
She glanced down, confirming what he had said with a cursory look, although she had no reason to doubt him. The seams on her shirt were easy to mistake, and she’d been in an almighty rush changing out of her all-nighter clothes into something more presentable to go turn in her final assignment.
But that didn’t seem like the kind of thing to tell a handsome stranger who was looking at her as though he expected a perfectly good explanation. An American student, about to head back to the States to an uncertain and uninspiring future didn’t seem like someone worthy of his attention. And, now that she had his eyes on her, she realized how certain she was that she did want to keep his attention.
So she shrugged, as though it barely mattered.
“Easy to do with this shirt,” she said, glad to hear that her voice sounded more confident than she felt. “I had back-to-back meetings all this morning and afternoon and no one noticed, so I think I’m in the clear.”
Happily, she saw his grin change from satisfied to bemused.
“Oh, are you?”
She shrugged again, a little worried that she’d done that too often already, but it was too late to do anything about it.
“Well, except for you, eagle eyes.”
He gave her a look of mock confusion and put his open palm on his chest. “Nico,” he said. “My name’s Nico. I thought we covered this.”
Something about his commitment to her own silly little joke made Juliette forget herself for a second and laugh, clear and strong.
She was always the girl you could pick out in the movie theater by her laugh. It wasn’t that it was unpleasant. If anything, she’d gotten a lot of positive comments about it. But it was loud, and bright, and undisguisable. Usually, when she was nervous, she tried to shy off laughing. But now, she couldn’t help it.
Nico’s eyes twinkled. “You sound like you’re celebrating something, today,” he said.
Juliette tilted her head. “I suppose I am,” she said, though she was still certain as hell she wasn’t going to tell him what.
His eyebrows raised. “That’s quite a coincidence, really.”
“How so?”
He shrugged. “It just so happens that I’m celebrating, too.”
A look crossed his face, then, as though he’d just thought of something. Juliette could tell that he had, in fact, had this thought a while before, but he was good at making it seem like a spur of the moment invitation.
“What do you say we celebrate together?”
Maybe it was the casual, playboy way he found of oh-so-casually asking, but Juliette couldn’t help but sweat him out a little longer, even though she had to stifle her body’s instinctive response to stand and follow him wherever he wanted to lead her.
“Well, I don’t know… I think I’d have to know what you were celebrating first.”
He leaned back on his heels, and considered.
Too long, said a voice in Juliette’s brain. He’s thinking too long about it. Something isn’t right.
“Oh, well, I’ve just been laid off by my boss, so I’m celebrating that,” he said finally, as though he didn’t know that it would raise more questions than it would answer.
“Why would you celebrate being laid off?” Juliette asked, too curious to find some clever or flirty way of saying it.
“Well, I guess you’ll just have to come have a drink with me to find out.”
And with that, he had her.
TWO
A few minutes later, the two of them ducked inside a tiny cocktail bar, tucked down a side street. The place was high end, with a kind of manufactured rustic feel to it. Fake rustic, but very well-done fake rustic. When she spotted the prices on the drinks menu, Juliette realized that she was, in fact, in a place where people went to celebrate especially big occasions.
But she tried not to think about it. She had been wanting something to take her mind off heading back “home” the next day, and what could be better than slipping into the life of someone else, with a mysterious, handsome man that she knew nothing about?
And the Juliette who was too busy to worry about an inside-out shirt because of back-to-back business meetings all day certainly would balk at a 15-Euro drink.
They sat at a table not far from the bar, and Juliette noticed that the female bartender kept looking over at them with a similar expression to the one Juliette suspected had been on her face when she first saw the Nico. It was like she, too, recognized him from somewhere, but wasn’t sure where from. But Nico was too handsome of a man to stare at for too long without it seeming like you wanted him.
Not that the bartender didn’t want him, Juliette suspected.
“So,” she said, when they had settled down and ordered their drinks. “I believe I was promised an explanation.”
He nodded. “You were, you were. And I’ll deliver. But not until our drinks have arrived.”
Juliette grinned. “What, you think I’ll run off if I get what I came here for before then?”
It came easy to her, now, this casual, flirty persona. She wondered where this confident girl had been all her life when she’d been trying to work up the courage to talk to her crushes in high school, or to broach the “what-are-we?” conversations that came with college.
“Well, you know, pretty girl like you, you never know…”
Ah, she realized as her cheeks burned—that was where she’d been all this time: buried behind a blush.
Juliette tried to shrug off her embarrassment and instead raised her hand, setting her face in a serious expression as though she were taking an oath.
“I, Juliette, do solemnly swear to stay at this table at least to the second drink.”
She broke out of the bit.
“Better?” she asked.
“Much,” he said, with a genuine smile.
“So let’s have it, then. What’s so great about being laid off?”
He cleared his throat and launched into his story. He told her he was a construction worker, who, until now, had been the foreman on a restoration project. He told her how he had gotten increasingly upset with management over poor and unsafe working conditions, and that he’d threatened to go to the authorities. It had all been idle threats at first, aimed at scaring them into compliance, but it eventually became clear that nothing was going to happen.
So, he’d reported them to the authorities. He’d been afraid that nothing was going to happen, and that the company he worked for had paid off health and safety to get them off their back.
But today, he said, a very, very angry boss came to him, looking as though he’d just been put through the ringer, and told him in no uncertain terms that he’d been fired. When Nico had asked why, the man said that he knew what he had done.
Juliette found that she was struggling to focus on the story. It was interesting, sure, and made Nico sound like some kind of workers’ rights avenger, which she had a soft spot for. But his voice was deeply distracting.
Before they’d sat down in the bar, she’d only heard him speak in little offhand sentences, and hadn’t gotten to hear the rhythm of his words. But now, heard long form, she was treated to the full music of them.
They were speaking English, which Juliette thought was best to maintain the illusion that she was just a short-term visitor here, but even so, the Italian music filtered through. Nico was perfectly fluent in English, and his was the rare case where his accent added more to his speaking of the language, rather than taking anything away.
While they were talking, their drinks arrived. Juliette thought for a moment that Nico wasn’t going to acknowledge the waiter, but then he turned with a smile and a quick but gracious “grazie.”
She saw now that the drink she’d ordered had been a mistake. It was a tall, confusing mix of fruits, strong-smelling liquor and something else that she couldn’t quite identify. She should have kept it simple, she thought. She should have taken it slow. She’d agreed to stay to the second drink, and she’d always been a bit of a lightweight where alcohol was concerned. If she wasn’t careful, this drink would be her undoing and she’d end up breaking the solemn oath she’d made.
When Nico had finished his story, he leaned back. He seemed ready to move on, but Juliette wasn’t ready.