I leaned back against the door, trying to calm the burning anger welling up inside of me. Eventually, the adrenaline started to fade, and by then, I’d assumed Georgie was long gone, crying her way down the hill and prepping her speech for Katerina (The miserable arse tossed me out of his house!), but then I heard a soft voice just on the other side of the wood.
“Good progress. We’ll start tomorrow, then?”
I WAS UP early the next morning, seemingly the only person alive in Vernazza. I eased down the trail and followed the path around the ancient church in the square. The bell inside its tower would start chiming soon, but for now, it sat quiet, allowing everyone another hour of sleep. The plan was to take the train into La Spezia. I made the trek about once a month, picking up supplies that the small shops in Vernazza didn’t keep in stock. I needed a new shovel for my work on the wall, but then I spotted Georgie in the square.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her, but I was. I’d assumed after the day before, she’d take the hint and back off, but she was there, wearing jeans and a white t-shirt, flitting around the outside of the bed and breakfast. The front door was locked so there was no way for her to get inside, but she didn’t let that stop her. She had a clipboard in one hand and she was jotting down notes as quickly as her pen could go, measuring windows and doorways and front steps. I hadn’t a clue what she was doing and I had no intention of interrupting her until I saw the sign pasted to the front door.
OPEN SOON. UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.
Bloody hell.
“Morning!” she called when she spotted me approaching from the side of the square.
I grunted in response and headed straight for the door so I could tear down the sign.
“Hey! What’d you do that for?”
I crumbled it up in my hands and leveled her with a steely glare, but it had little effect on her.
She shrugged and glanced away, the early morning light playing up her delicate features. “Fine, if you don’t want the sign, we won’t have it then. I thought the customers would like to know they wouldn’t be dealing with you every day, scaring them and all.”
I didn’t let her see my amusement at that.
“This is better though,” she said, turning back to me with another wide grin. “Element of surprise and all that. They won’t know we’re redoing the place and then WHAM, we’ll open and have the best bed and breakfast in all of Vernazza!”
I turned away with a yawn and headed up the long road toward the train station. Unfazed, she followed along, chattering about her inane plans for the next month. God, she was exhausting. The persistent positivity, the sheer stubbornness. If the woman put her mind to it, I bet she could make herself the prime minister of England in two weeks flat.
Normal women would have been standoffish, or at least a bit cross. Not Georgie. She was a moving locomotive; I could either get out of her way or let her roll right over me.
I still wasn’t quite sure which option would hurt less when I rang up Massimo a few days later and asked about getting some building supplies from the farm.
“You’re going to do it then? Fix it up?”
“Only because I want to, and I think Nonna would want to see it open.”
There was quite a long pause after that.
“What?” I asked, annoyed that he wasn’t getting on with it.
“Nothing,” Massimo said. “Just shocked is all. I mean, I don’t buy your reasoning. You’re totally doing it because you’ve always struggled to tell a beautiful girl no—but it doesn’t matter. You could be fixing it up for Morgan Freeman for all I care.”
I ignored his suggestion. “I’ll be round in the morning to pick up those supplies. Just have them ready for me.”
I WASN’T AN oblivious girl going through life unaware of how people felt about me. I knew Gianluca wanted me to bugger off, and I knew I was making him uncomfortable talking about Allie. I knew, I just didn’t care. I wanted to shake him silly, to shout at him, WAKE UP. THIS IS YOUR LIFE AND YOU’RE WASTING THE BEST BITS OF IT.
The bed and breakfast was the only way I knew how to do that. Sure, I wanted to have a hand in fixing it up and I knew I’d have fun decorating it and getting it back in good shape, but more than that, I suspected it’d be good for Gianluca to have a project.
When he’d shouted at me in his house (right before he’d dragged me out and locked the door), it wasn’t out of rage, it was out of fear. It clouded his eyes and made him address some issues he’d kept buried. From experience, I knew it was loads easier to crumble under the weight of grief than it was to stand up with it on your back, but every day you carry it forward you get stronger and stronger, and eventually it doesn’t feel as heavy as it once did.
He needed to take that first step.
I showed up at the bed and breakfast the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. It was nearly a week since he’d tossed me out of his house, and my small hope that he would come to his senses was beginning to dwindle. I sat out on the stoop with two espressos and a couple of pastries in a brown paper sack and waited for Gianluca. I watched the old man across the square sweep out his doorway and I fed a bit of crumbs to one of the boat cats. It meowed and twisted itself round my legs, doing quite a good job of coaxing a bit more croissant out of me.
“Okay, that’s it, you greedy cow,” I insisted, showing it my empty hands. “You’ve stolen even more than you did yesterday. Soon you’ll just have to flop around like a chunky sea lion.”