“Of course,” she whispered back, before bringing her lips to his. So this was what it felt like when someone’s heart burst with joy? As an avid reader, she’d read descriptions of love in novels, but found them cliché. Heart pounding? Butterflies? She hadn’t understood. Until now. Now she was every single love cliché. And she couldn’t be happier about it.
“She said yes!” Zach yelled to a man and a woman in a small speedboat. When they looked confused, he repeated it in Italian. “Lei ha detto si!”
They cheered.
“How did you know how to say that?” Olivia asked. Zach’s Italian was rudimentary at best. He basically charmed his way through most conversations. It was Olivia who did most of the talking to the locals, but she was still far from fluent.
“I looked it up and practiced,” Zach said. “I wanted to be able to say it in every language so the whole world could know!”
Olivia laughed. “French?”
“Elle a dit oui!” he blurted in a horrible French accent.
“German?”
“Sie sagte ja!” he said, his syllables hard.
“You put a lot of thought into this,” Olivia teased, tracing his abs beneath his white linen shirt. Speaking foreign languages was a major turn-on, but more than that, she was touched by the care he’d taken in preparation of this proposal. “I’m impressed.”
“Then let me impress you some more,” Zach said, pulling her into him and wrapping his arms around her. “Ti amo.”
“Ti amo,” Olivia echoed, and let herself melt into the moment. Let herself feel all the things those fictional characters in her novels had been feeling for years.
* * *
Two hours later, Olivia nervously entered the password on her phone. She remembered this feeling when she arrived at the Naples airport two months before. It seemed a lifetime ago when her Italian consisted of only per favore and grazie. When she’d needed to use the Google translator app to ask for help finding the bus to Positano. Had it only been eight weeks since she’d dragged her luggage up the steep stone stairs in search of her apartment? She’d prayed she was following the map correctly, that she hadn’t ascended one hundred and eleven stairs only to learn she was lost. And yes, she had counted them.
The now familiar steps that no longer made her calves burn when she walked them were so narrow that Olivia couldn’t extend her arms without hitting the ancient buildings on either side, and only a sliver of the June sunlight could squeeze its way through. When she emerged at the top, sticky with sweat and heavy from the weight of twenty-one hours without sleep, she’d been ready to call her mom and announce that she’d made a huge mistake. That she had been a fool not to learn Italian first. That she had been too out of shape to trek these stairs every day—they were much steeper and more treacherous than they looked on TikTok, by the way. Cursing under her breath, wishing she’d known the Italian word for fuck, she’d turned back in the direction from which she’d come and gasped.
The view. It had taken her breath away. The sea that hugged the rocky shoreline was a brilliant sapphire blue—the water so clear she could practically see the mackerel and sea bass that she knew swam below its surface. The yachts that bobbed in the bay seemed tiny, reminding her of the ones that she’d captained in her mom’s claw-foot bathtub as a child. The picturesque houses that were inconceivably perched on the vertical cliffside were painted in vibrant shades of red, pink, and yellow. The gorgeous California coastline, where she’d built sandcastles as a toddler, lain out with her friends as a tween, and leaned against a lifeguard stand in her senior class photos, simply could not compete. She’d said later that it was the view that changed her life, because it convinced her to give Positano one more day.
And now, Olivia hoped that her mom’s reaction to her news would pleasantly surprise her the way the view still did. But what she couldn’t possibly know was her mom’s response was the last thing she should be worried about.
* * *
June Abbott fumbled for her cell phone, knocking over a tumbler of water that sent her cat, Meowsers, darting from the room. She was disoriented, straddling sleep and consciousness, as she searched her overcrowded bedside table. She turned on the lamp and pushed aside a stack of half-read novels with her reading glasses perched precariously on top. She located the charging cord and followed it to her phone hanging off the side of the nightstand. She squinted at the screen. Why would Olivia be calling in the middle of the night?
June’s heart started to pound as she imagined worst-case scenarios that were more likely to be the plots of her favorite thrillers than to happen in her real life. Her daughter had been kidnapped, and the call was about the ransom request for her safe return. Or Olivia was dangling from one of the many cliffs she perched next to while posing for Instagram. Or her firstborn was lost at sea—an innocent day trip to Capri gone awry. June frantically pressed all the wrong parts of her iPhone until she finally got it right and her daughter’s face filled the screen.
“Hi!” Olivia said, her sea-glass-blue eyes shining, her blonde hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. Her smile faded halfway when she noticed her mom’s strained expression. “Everything’s fine! I’m okay!”
June’s exhale of relief was audible.
“I wasn’t kidnapped by Italian pirates roaming the Tyrrhenian sea.”
June rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t thinking that.” She put her hand over her chest, her heartbeat so rapid she might have just sprinted. Except she didn’t sprint. Ever.
“Uh-huh. I got the hiking boots you sent. I’m sure they were a million dollars to ship!” Olivia twisted her mouth. “Based on the most recent series of scream emojis you left on my Insta, I’m guessing you want me to wear them so I don’t slip off a cliff while I’m posing for photos?” Olivia smirked. “So subtle, Mom.”
June shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”
“My high-tops are fine—they will save me.” Olivia smiled.
“Will they?” June asked, remembering the image of Olivia leaning back on a rock with her chin tilted toward the sun, her eyes closed (closed!), the ocean appearing to be thousands of feet below.
Olivia sighed, and June knew what she was thinking, because she’d said it many times since she’d arrived in Italy. Why send your young adult daughter on vacation alone to a foreign country if all you were going to do was worry?
She had a point.
But still, the worry always seemed to win.
“So, if everything’s okay, why are you calling in the middle of the night?” June asked, her alarm bells still ringing. It was three AM in California. Did good news ever come at three AM? “Miss me so much you can’t sleep?” June hoped as she stared at herself in the little box on her screen. Her forehead wrinkles were like deep rivers running under her blonde hairline. She should cut bangs. And the bags under her own sea-glass-blue eyes were heavy and dark. She flipped off the lamp.
“Mom! I can barely see you now.”
Reluctantly, June turned the light back on and vowed not to look at herself. But it was impossible. Her middle-of-the-night face was screaming that she needed Botox—maybe fillers? She’d told herself (and her daughters) that it was okay to age. But with every new line that showed up, she found herself warming to the idea of doing something. A little pop of poison between her eyebrows wouldn’t hurt, right? she thought as she stared at Olivia, who could have been her twenty-three-year-old self’s twin.