And I was too caught up in Theo to care if Joel was right or not.
I avoided my sister’s texts and calls like the plague, as well as the gnawing pit in my stomach each time I skipped off with Theo.
I began to live for the moments we stole together.
Most of the time, Theo had to work and I had to keep myself busy to keep from wishing he didn’t have to work. But on the days when he could get away, we would walk the streets of Italy as I took photographs, talking about everything and nothing at all.
He would ask me about why I chose a certain subject, or what books I liked to read, or sometimes just be silent and watch me work. One day, as he drank a cold lemonade and watched me photographing a small child playing in the rocky pebbles that made up the beach, he asked me what I felt when I clicked the shutter button.
I’d frowned at first, glancing down at the photo I’d just taken before playing with a few settings and trying again. I was struggling to find the right words, searching through my vocabulary for something impressive, something with enough magnitude to capture the truth of my answer.
In the end, I simply said, “I feel free.”
Theo enjoyed taking me to restaurants with appetizers more expensive than a four-course meal at the places I went when I was back home. There was always some new place to go at the end of the days we did get to spend together. And while he drank his scotch or wine and chuckled as I tasted each foreign bite with either a grimace of disgust or a squeal of delight, he’d tell me about Envizion, and his beach house in Miami, and all the crazy things he did for fun like bungee jumping and sky diving and free solo climbing and skiing every black diamond slope he could find.
I teased him about being an adrenaline junky and he teased me about my love for the herbs I’d started growing in my dorm room and how brokenhearted I was to leave them in my sister’s hands while I was away.
Through all of this, to both my relief and my dismay, Theo kept our relationship completely PG-13.
Gone was the hunger in his eyes that night at the Grotto, as well as any attempt to kiss me. Sometimes, he would grab my hand from across the table at dinner, or sweep my hair behind my ear, or gently guide me with his palm at the small of my back when we weaved in and out of crowded alleyways. Each time he came even close to me, my body would tremble with delight, with anticipation, with hope and dread swirling inside me in equal measure.
Please, touch me.
Please, don’t touch me and make me tell you to stop.
Please, tell me again how crazy you are for me.
Please, let me pretend this is all innocent.
We lounged side by side on his friend’s private beach in Praiano, and as the waves crashed gently on the shore, Theo slid his sunglasses down and looked at me over the bridge of his nose. “I have spent my whole life devoted to work,” he’d said. “It’s all I’ve known. But now that I know you, I wish to never work again.”
He would say things like this — the kind that shook the very foundations of which I was built on — in the most magical of times. The more it happened, the more I started thinking that I really was in Wonderland, in a place where dreams and reality dance together.
And if I was lucid dreaming, I would make the most of it.
Theo made me feel more confident in my own skin. Everywhere we stopped, he would take me into a new boutique and tell me to pick something out. And each time, I went for something new and exciting that I never would have tried before — thin straps, bright colors, silky fabrics and exotic patterns. He had awakened a side of me I didn’t even realize was asleep. I thought it didn’t exist at all.
But I found I rather loved putting on a pretty dress and seeing the way Theo smirked in approval.
I liked to think I brought out something new in him, too. Not that he was a stranger to adventure, but I wondered if his entire trip would have been filled with work if not for me. Instead, we hiked the breathtaking Path of the Gods trail near San Michele, lounging in a hammock under a shade tree at the top with the turquoise water spreading out beneath us. Theo fed me lemon cake after we toured a farm in Amalfi, and I photographed him among the ruins in Minori. Theo ignored his phone when it buzzed in his pocket and I left mine on the boat altogether.
And all the while, he was the perfect gentleman.
Until he could no longer stand it.
It was exactly one week since the night we’d escaped to the Grotto, and Theo had given the crew the night off. We were anchored in Salerno, and we needed provisions, so Theo instructed the crew to get everything on the boat taken care of and then they could reward themselves with an evening in the city.
And he instructed me not to go with them.
I sat in bed while Joel got dressed and ready, pretending to read my book and focusing hard on not bouncing my knee too much.
I couldn’t wait for him to leave.
I couldn’t wait to be with Theo.
I couldn’t wait to see what was in store for the night.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us to shore?” Joel asked, sitting on the edge of the bed beside me.
I was almost shocked that he’d
