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“No, no, another Tee Kay Oh tea for me!” I argued as our empties were taken away. The server said something in Italian, something that went with an incredibly sorry sort of expression before heading back into the crowds. Ugh, stupid. I wobbled to my feet, felt my phone vibrate in my front pocket, listed right a bit, and then sat back down with a thump that rattled my fillings. A sour belch rose up. I swallowed something nasty back down, fished out my phone, and squinted at the screen. Oh. Oh ho! Well, look who finally decided to reply to my texts and voice messages. Mr. Donvino the Rower Man. Heartbreaker. I slowly got to my feet, phone still buzzing with the incoming call, and made my way to…
Where was I going? Who knows? I sat down on a pink sofa next to some girls who were talking to each other in Italian. Why on earth was everyone in this country speaking Italian? Oh. Right. I snorted at myself, tipping to the right to rest my head on the arm of the couch before answering the call. My sight lingered on a video screen playing the video that went with the current song that was playing. Babies were dancing. That was odd. Babies couldn’t dance, they could barely walk, I thought as I placed my phone to my ear.
“Hello, Signor Ghost,” I shouted into the Android as I brought my feet up on the sofa. One of the girls slapped them off and shouted at me before stalking off hand-in-hand with her girlfriend. Whatever. I hoisted my boots back onto the couch. “Can you hear me over there in ghost world?”
“What are…where are you?” Donvino asked, his tone a little cranky.
“Where am I?” I managed to sit up. The room spun. The dancing babies now had fur. What the hell kind of acid trip was the video director for this song on?! “Where are you, Signor Ghostly Ghost?”
“I’m at work.”
“Oh. Okay. So go work. I’m here,” I said, then swung the phone in a sloppy circle to show him the club. Was this a video call? Oh well. “I’m here having fun because you ignored me all day long you ghosted me all day and…and now I don’t even care because I had iced teas from Tokyo and they were good.” I belched loudly. In his ear. Good. “Did you see my texts? There were twenty. Twenty!” I held up five fingers. “And there they sat. Bianca only replied to me once.” I held up four fingers. The babies on the screen now had sunglasses. Oh shit, this was really weird. Had someone slipped mushroom sauce into my green drink? No, mushroom sauce was something that was served on spaghetti. Mm, spaghetti. That sounded good. I hoped Ricardo brought me spaghetti. “I’m hungry.”
“No, you are drunk.” He sighed and muttered something to someone on his end. “My phone was low on battery all day. And I was mad at not doing well, so I stayed away from talking to you because you are sensitive.”
“I am so not sensitive! I’m a brick house. Huff and puff and…oh! Here’s Ricardo with some food. Say hi Ricardo!” I shoved the phone in the undersecretary’s handsome face. He took it, spoke to Donvino, and ended the call.
“Your friend sounded angry,” he said, handing me the takeout container he’d fetched. What a nice guy. “He called me a creeper.”
“Creeper and Ghost. I think that could be…” I flipped open the box and inside sat a fat serving of spaghetti. My eyes filled. I looked over at Ricardo who, once he saw my watery eyes, looked less stressed and more concerned. “I wanted spaghetti so much. All day I wanted spaghetti and for Donvino to call me back and he never did because no one ever calls me back.”
I cried into my spaghetti as I forked wads of pasta into my face. Ricardo rubbed my back, clearly lost as to what to do for this inebriated idiot he’d taken out for a drink. I gorged about a pound of pasta, the plastic forkfuls bowing under the weight, sat back and sighed, and then felt it all coming back up. Somehow, I managed to turn my head to avoid my lovely corset. I didn’t quite miss my escort’s lap, though.
Moral of the story: never mix dejection, Tokyo Iced Teas, and spaghetti with meat sauce. It’s not a pretty combination, especially when it comes back up on paisley.
Chapter Fourteen
As to be expected, I missed the following two days of the congress due to being sick beyond words. Hungover didn’t even begin to touch on how miserable I was. I’d have sworn to God that I’d had food poisoning, but Ricardo assured me that no one else who had eaten at the restaurant across the street had fallen ill, he had checked, so that meant I was just a sissy boots.
“Ugh, boots,” I murmured on the way home in the back of my aunt’s Bentley.
“Did you forget boots, Signor Arlo?” Alessio softly asked. My headache was gone, mercifully, but my stomach was still tender. Also, my heart ached like a rotten tooth over the fact that Donvino had now seriously ghosted me. Bianca, who was still talking to me, thank all the gods, had informed me that her cousin was hurt over my being out with Ricardo. Or that was what he said was wrong. She suspected that was part of it, something she thought was cute, but he was also stinging from not doing well in the rowing competition. His scull, according to her, was too old to compete against the newer versions. I had to take her word for it as I had zero knowledge of rowing boat design improvements over the years.
So here I sat with a tender tum-tum, still looking pale, blanking on the beauty that was the Tuscan countryside as we rolled homeward. While it was kind of flattering that Donvino was jealous, it was also not, and somehow he had to come to realize that he was just as appealing as Ricardo, even more so to me.
The ride home was quiet. I napped a bit to try to rest my whirling thoughts. When we arrived at the villa around noon, I stood in the driveway and stared at my trunks, waiting for someone to tote them inside. While I adored the aesthetic of travel trunks logistically, if one wasn’t tipping someone else to carry the heavy bitches around they were rather cumbersome.
“I’ll see if Donvino is around to help,” I told Alessio. So inside I went, in search of Donvino who, unsurprisingly, was nowhere to be found. He’d not spoken to me since the call at Boots so why would the big lug be here to welcome me home? I’d find him, though. He couldn’t avoid me forever. And we would talk and work things out. I could be as tenacious as a terrier when I put my mind to it, and my mind was firmly put.
“Signora would like to speak to you outside, please.” Giada met me in the foyer. “She is just come down from her nap,” she informed me as I lingered on the grand staircase.
“Grazie,” I replied, heading outside instead of upstairs, to find my great-aunt resting under the pergola, her feet on a footstool, and bright yellow compression stockings on her calves. She looked rested and waved me over to sit at the table with her. “I’m glad to see you have your socks on,” I said as I poured myself some lemonade to sip on, hoping it would settle my stomach.
“They are ugly as all the great sins,” she replied, passing me a small dish of limes to add to my cold drink. “I’m disappointed that you did not partake in the congress.”
“I was there for day one.” I sniffed, giving the lime wedge a squeeze. Lucia ran past with a mole in her mouth, darting under a bush with white flowers.
“Hm, yes, and then spent the other two days in your hotel bed. Ricardo informed me that you were sickly from overindulging in alcohol.” Her scalding glare over the top of her glasses as they rested on her nose cut deep. “That is unacceptable behavior from the man who will take over this company. People at that club saw you, Arlo.” I shrugged. Her lips flattened. “Arlo, acting out like this is part of the reason that you were sent to me. It had seemed as if you were making progress, but then you make a fool of yourself like this and in front of Ricardo Martinelli, of all people!”
“Ricardo was more than understanding. I drank a little too much. It happens. Why is every little thing such a major shitstorm for you and Dad? Did you never get tipsy when you were younger?”
“Tipsy? Yes. Vomiting on the undersecretary of agriculture? Absolutely not. Back when I was a young woman, we were expected to act with decorum. Something that this generation has no grasp of.”
“Yeah, okay, well, maybe I was upset over something. Did that ever occur to you?!”
“Arlo, please lower your voice. Whatever could make you so upset that you act so appallingly?”
I obviously couldn’t say that my emotions for Donvino had led me to try to drown myself in booze. I could lay out some other truths, though.
