With that, she pushed off the bar and past the door into the restaurant’s kitchen.
I finished the last of my pasta, threw a few euro onto the bar, and waved to Massimo on my way out of the restaurant. The waitress was pretty, but I preferred to meet women in La Spezia. The short train ride put enough distance between me and them that I didn’t feel so guilty about it in the morning.
It was dusk, and I breathed in the fresh air as I made my way back home. Massimo’s restaurant was in the section of Vernazza most tourists never ventured into. It was past the train station, up at the top of the hill. There was no view of the sea, but the food was better than anything you could find down below. Most of the time tourists didn’t realize that. They’d accept the frozen fish and stale bread if it meant they could look at the sunset.
I walked past the train station, nodding at the locals I passed along the way. The Blue Marlin had transitioned into a bar now that dinner service was ending, and there were people spilling out onto the patios, enjoying the weather and ice-cold beer.
The road was dense with tourists, and I weaved my way through them, catching bits of laughter and conversation. A small boy ran across my path, nearly colliding into me on his way to get to a shop window. He’d spotted a row of cakes and pastries and made a break for them, ignoring his mother’s calls. She ran after him, throwing me an apology over her shoulder, but I didn’t mind. For someone who preferred to be alone, Vernazza was the ideal setting. For fleeting moments, I could participate in strangers’ lives and enjoy the moments without getting overly invested.
To get back to my villa, I had to walk straight through the main square, curve around the church, and start the steep climb up the hill. There was a faster way through the back alleys, but I liked the view along the cliffs.
I turned past the church and caught sight of a woman sitting on the breaker. It was a common place to sit and watch the sunset, but most of the time, tourists stayed to the concrete section, the dry, safe area with an even path and built-in benches.
The other half of the breaker was made up of hundreds of granite boulders, tossed down one on top of each other so that the surface was rocky and uneven. They were there to break the waves before they reached the concrete landing, but the woman sitting there was perched right on the edge, at the mercy of the sea. I stayed there, watching her and waiting for one of the waves to crash up and carry her away, but they never quite reached her, and she didn’t seem preoccupied with the idea of getting wet. She was licking her gelato, turning the cone round and round to keep it from dripping down onto her hand. Her legs kicked against the granite boulders and for those first few seconds, she seemed almost childlike to me—until I realized who she was.
I didn’t know her name. She’d told me and I’d forgotten, and now I regretted not committing it to memory. She was the woman who’d passed out in the square, the brunette Katerina had invited to dinner.
I wasn’t so shocked to see her sitting precariously on the boulders as I was by the unnerving notion that I should join her. I didn’t like the idea of her sitting there alone.
It was stupid. I knew I wouldn’t do it. I hardly knew her, and though she was beautiful, I had no business befriending her. She’d be moving on to the next village in Cinque Terre soon and I’d go back to my villa, back to the memories of Allie.
PERHAPS I’VE GONE full lesbian.
I hadn’t previously considered it, but it was starting to look like a viable option. Rather than admitting I was hung up on one unattainable guy, I needed to start considering the possibility that my brain was just trying to persuade me that all men were undesirable. I mean, in the two weeks since I’d arrived, I’d gone on three blind dates with truly lovely Italian men, and I’d left each one of them without so much as a kiss. I should have let them cart me off to their apartments and have their wicked way with me. I’d have had at least three proper (read: not self-induced) orgasms, and maybe I could have been on my way to planning an Italian marriage. Hear that? Gothic church bells ringing.
Instead, I’d found some arbitrary fault with each of them (as I did with every man) and I’d latched onto it. Ridiculous. Would it really be so bad to marry a man with a few flaws? God knows I had some—too many, really. My brother Freddie had told me on the phone just yesterday that I was flighty and irresponsible. A bit selfish too, he’d added when I’d told him I hadn’t been paying attention and to please repeat the last ten minutes of his ramblings.
“You can’t just move to Italy to escape your problems and assume they’ll work themselves out. Eternal optimism will only carry you so far. I worry, Georgie.”
“Well, you shouldn’t. I know exactly what I am doing.”
I didn’t.
Of course I had no bloody clue what I was doing. I’d spent the last two weeks in Vernazza and I was in no rush to leave. I’d asked Chiara about an extended-stay rate at the hotel and she’d promised to ask her mom about it. I knew it was a bit insane, but even if I didn’t know what I was doing, I knew it felt a lot better to be going through a quarter-life crisis in a place like Vernazza. I felt like I belonged. I went to The Blue Marlin every morning for breakfast, and Antonio greeted me with a familiar smile and asked if I wanted tea or coffee. Sometimes I’d order a fluffy croissant, or if I was getting a late start, I’d tuck into some eggs and bacon while I people-watched on the patio.
After that, I’d pop round to Katerina’s shop to see if she needed any help with stocking or folding new clothes. Even though there were quite a few clothing shops in Vernazza, I thought hers was the most chic. She didn’t bother with silly t-shirts or baseball caps. She sold frocks and linen trousers, shirts and handmade leather sandals she sourced from a man in Corniglia, the village just south of Vernazza.