She would have to take advantage of the fact that she hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to him this morning. She would just quickly let him know that she had enjoyed last night too—and she would thank him again for dinner. That was just good manners. No one could accuse her of being weird and desperate for just minding her manners.
The phone emitted a series of tones and then went dead in her hand.
Confused, Elise looked down at it. Had she entered the number wrong?
She tried again, gripping her phone tightly, but the result was the same. No ringing, just a few muted tones and then the call was terminated.
What was going on?
She looked from the phone’s screen to the note in her hand, comparing the numbers carefully. Hmm, she had definitely dialed correctly.
This isn’t his number.
The number Lucas had given her was wrong.
She felt numb and confused. Why would he have bothered to give her a wrong number? He hadn’t needed to do that. She had never asked him for a phone number. He could have left the apartment this morning and given her no phone number at all.
Was he just trying to be mean? To play a trick on me?
She didn’t think so. For one thing, if he was doing that, it was a stupid trick. It didn’t get him anything. He wasn’t even here to laugh at her looking foolish.
But more to the point, that just didn’t seem like something the man she had met would do.
She believed that Lucas had been his true self on their date. He was kind and caring and thoughtful. This was the guy who had rescued her purse from that thief. This was the guy she had spent last night with.
She didn’t know him well, it was true, but she had seen that he was caring and compassionate and generous. Not at all the kind of guy who would go around giving out fake numbers as a joke.
It must have been a mistake. That was all she could think. He had meant to leave her his number, but he had gotten a digit wrong or something.
Who gets their own phone number wrong?
Well, she had been pretty loopy when she’d gotten up this morning. Maybe he’d been feeling the same way.
She read through the note one more time, savoring the parts she could be sure about. He had enjoyed the night they’d spent together, and so had she. It had been one of the most remarkable nights of her life.
And he wanted her to enjoy the rest of her vacation. Well, that would certainly be no problem. She was only halfway through her trip, and there were a lot of things she was still looking forward to.
She would stop wandering aimlessly, she decided, and act with purpose. She would make the most of the rest of her time in Rome. She had been meaning to seek out the Pantheon. Maybe she would go looking for that today. And she would look for the farmer’s market she had stumbled upon her first morning here. She kept meaning to see if she could find it again.
It was a shame that she wouldn’t be able to see Lucas again. But that had always been a long shot. He lived in Boston. She lived in Albuquerque. The fact that they had met in Rome…it felt like their little fling was fated to burn short and bright. Once they went home, there was no reason for their paths to ever cross again.
She folded up the note, then carefully tore it into pieces and tossed it in the trash can. If she didn’t get rid of it, she knew, she would be tempted to keep revisiting it. She would obsess about that wrong number.
Better to let it go.
She dressed for the day in a sundress that she had been saving for a special day. Today was the day. It was the morning after her Roman fantasy.
This is the story I’ll tell everyone about my trip to Rome, she thought. She would be telling it for years, most likely. Someday, she would tell her children about the handsome man who had rescued her from being victimized by a thief when she had been traveling on her own.
Her parents would make a meal of the story. They would say that they had been right all along, that she should never have come to Rome by herself, that this would never have happened if she had been traveling with a friend.
Maybe she would leave out the part about having her purse snatched when she told them the story. She could just say that she had met Lucas at the coffee shop.
And, of course, she would leave out the fact that she had brought him back to her apartment after dinner. Her parents wouldn’t think much of that part of the story. They’d be much happier left in the dark.
But leaving out Lucas entirely wasn’t an option. She knew that this story was one she would have to tell everyone in her life. She wouldn’t be able to properly convey just how amazing and magical her vacation had been without including the fact that she had been swept off her feet by a handsome stranger.
She went back to the kitchen, finished making her coffee, and took it out onto the balcony to drink. She propped her feet up on the railing and looked out onto the street below.
The sounds of people calling to each other in Italian floated up to her. A moped driver swerved around a pair of pedestrians, his vehicle rattling over the cobblestones. The woman across the street, so close that Elise nearly could have reached out and taken her hand, was hanging her laundry out her own window.
I’m going to miss this place, Elise thought.
Enjoy the rest of your vacation, Lucas had said.
She would do exactly that. After all, once she went back home to Albuquerque, her big Roman adventure would be behind her. This had been the thing she had looked forward to for so long, and now she was here. She would make the most of it before it slipped away.
She finished her coffee, went inside, and put on her walking shoes. She had made the mistake of wearing cute boots her first day here, but walking over the cobblestones all day had left her in agony. Now it was sneakers every time she stepped outside the house—except last night, of course.
She paused in the doorway for a moment, remembering the feeling. It had been so intense, knowing that she was about to go on a mystery date with a handsome man. Nothing like that had ever happened to Elise before in her life.
And I suppose nothing ever will again, she thought.
But the point was that it had happened. She would have that memory forever.
She went down to the street. Outside the apartment, she glanced toward Gianni’s before turning and walking deliberately in the opposite direction. She was going to make today just as special as yesterday had been, even if it was in a very different way.
There would be no more repeating the same pattern she had fallen into since coming to Rome. She would stop doing the same things every day.
She would enjoy the rest of her vacation, as Lucas had advised her.
She would make sure every day was different than the one before.
Chapter 4
Elise
On the flight to Rome, Elise hadn’t been able to sleep at all. But on the flight home, she could hardly keep her eyes open.
The last week of her trip had been so overwhelming. So exciting. And even though nothing had managed to live up to the evening she had spent with Lucas, she felt as if her time with him had awakened her to the many possibilities Rome held.
She had discovered a hidden little wine bar with a library in the basement and had spent an entire day curling up with old books and a glass of merlot. Though most of the books had been in Italian, there were a few in English—more than enough to satisfy her needs.
She had bought a ticket to an opera on a whim and worn her classy boots, even though she knew they would hurt her feet. Not knowing the language served her well at the opera, because she didn’t have a hope of following the plot. She sat back, closed her eyes, and let the beauty of the music wash over her.