When In Rome...Find Yourself: A Sweet New Adult Romance (10 page)

CHAPTER ten

The next morning, Rory was on her way out when Theresa stopped her. “I hate to bother you, but can I ask a favor, dear?”

“Um, sure?” Rory said, checking the time on her phone before sliding it into her bag.

“I need some milk and bread,” Theresa said, handing her an envelope. “And maybe some eggs at the market. I thought you could pick them up on your way home.”

“Doesn’t Ned usually do that?”

“I think he will sleep today,” Theresa said. “I hear him awake all night.”

“Oh.” Rory was torn between asking more and making sure she didn’t miss her bus. Finally she said, “What was he doing? I went to bed early.”

“I think he worries about his piece,” Theresa said. “You know he submits it to a new artist exhibition.”

“Oh—wow,” Rory said. Of course he wasn’t painting his room. He was an artist. Was that why he stayed up all the time, locked in his room? If there was one thing she could understand, it was stressing about a project. She wished she’d been nicer to him, or at least shown some interest. If she’d bothered to ask, he would have told her about it himself.

“Yeah, sure, of course I’ll get your food,” she said. “Thanks.” She tried to hand the envelope back, but Theresa waved it off and headed into the kitchen. Rory hurried out, tiptoed past a sleeping Tom, and made it to her stop in time to catch her tram. She kept thinking about Ned, feeling guilty for some reason, like she should have known what he was up to. Not hiding bodies or growing weed. Working.

When she walked into the university building, a group of students were standing around the lounge area, where some boxy old furniture, a counter with a sink, and a coffee pot sat. One of the girls saw her and turned to another one, nudging her. A guy leaned in to hear what the girl was saying.

Rory had been around that kind of stuff long enough to know that it wasn’t just her anxiety telling her that they were talking about her. She hurried past, her face hot. She could just imagine what they were saying.
There’s that ugly girl, isn’t she hideous?

What is she even doing in this glamorous country? I can’t believe they let her in.

Yeah, they should have stamped her passport, REJECTED FOR UGLY.

But when she paused at the water fountain—she couldn’t help herself, she always had to hear what they were saying, even though it always made it worse—she heard the girl say, “I wonder if she’s seen it.” She sounded excited, not scornful.

“You think he’s going to get in?” a guy asked. “I mean, it’s Italy. There’s got to be a billion artists here.”

“It’s not like he’s up against Michelangelo,” a girl said. “And he’s gone to like, the best art schools, since he was, like, five. That’s what I heard. His stuff is so weird, though.”

“Ooh, what have you seen?” a gay guy’s voice asked. “Did you seduce him to get in his room and see something we haven’t seen?”

They all laughed.

“Believe me, I’ve tried, but I don’t live with him,” the girl said, and they laughed again.

“Maybe we should ask
her
,” another girl said. “What class did she go into?”

Rory scurried down the wide hallway and ducked into her classroom, her heart pounding. What if they tracked her down? What was she supposed to say? She’d thought they were talking about her, but this was even worse. They thought she was sleeping with Ned! And how did they even know who she was? Had he said something?

Thoughts pummeled her brain all through class, and only when it was over did she realize she hadn’t taken a single note, or heard a thing Professor McClain had said. Oh, no. That was bad. She’d done that before. In fact, she’d lost her scholarship and almost flunked out of school the last time this had happened. And for it to happen again, here, in Rome of all places, when no one was here to help her. She didn’t have friends, even fair-weather ones like Patty, to cry to. She didn’t have her family to coddle her and eventually tell her to buck up and get her butt to class.

This could not happen. She would just have to get the notes from Maggie. See, she did have a friend. So what if Kristina was a snob and hated her. Maggie didn’t seem to care what her friend thought—she’d been nice to Rory anyway. And not the kind of fake, pity-nice that girls did when they really hated her and couldn’t wait to talk about her the second she was out of the room. Maggie was genuinely nice. And Cynthia—well, she was still a mystery.

After class, though, she was too afraid of running into Ned’s art friends to linger. She raced away from the building, head down, tucked into herself as she walked. Only when she got to the tram stop did she remember that she’d promised to get groceries. In a moment, she was damp with sweat all over. How was she supposed to make it to a grocery store, and know how much money to use, and make it home with the right items? Ned had shown her how to get to class, not to a grocery store. Why hadn’t he taken her to a grocery store?

She chewed at a nail, scanning the tram schedule on the wall. And then she thought of her mother, scolding her for biting her nails. Her mother would tell her to use her head. But she had a phone, and that was better. So she pulled it out and searched for the nearest supermarket. It came up, along with her current location, and then she searched the tram map and found the right one.

She could do this. She was in Rome, traveling alone, feeding herself. She was really doing it. As she climbed onto the tram, she could hardly believe this was her. If she could do this, she could do anything in America. Moving away from her parents would be easy. Maybe she would even confront Jack. Or tell Patty what a lame friend she’d turned out to be. After all, if she could navigate to the grocery store, buy what Theresa needed, and make it back on her own, in a country where she didn’t even speak the language, what was a little conversation with someone she already knew?

The tram rocked to a halt at her stop, and she double checked on her phone to make sure. This was her. This was it. She took a deep breath, patted her camera in her bag for comfort, and exited the tram. Her phone told her to turn right and walk two blocks, so she did. And there it was. A big, brightly lit, air conditioned supermarket, almost exactly like the ones at home except for the sensor for the automatic sliding doors.

They even had the same shopping carts. She got one and made her way up and down the aisles, taking comfort in the sterile familiarity of everything. Sure, some of the food was a little different, and the labels on some things were Italian, but she could figure out what she needed. The store layout was even similar to the ones at home.

She got the bread and eggs Theresa wanted, then added more items to the cart. After all, Theresa was generous about feeding them whenever they were there, even dinner, which she didn’t have to provide. Rory filled the cart with cheese, meat, milk, bread, cereal, jelly, butter, and even some lettuce and tomatoes, which were ungodly expensive. On her way to the checkout, she added a bottle of olive oil and a bag of coffee.

At the counter, she had a momentary lapse when she looked in the envelope and tried to convert Euros to dollars in her head. But then she just handed the checker the entire wad of cash, and the checker handed her a receipt and some change, and she took her bags and walked out. For a second, she almost thought someone would come after her, as if she’d stolen her food. That’s how odd it felt to get her own groceries in this strange place.

Retracing her steps, she made it back to the tram, showed her pass, and found a seat. She had done it. Rory Hartnett was an independent woman. She had made her first solo trip in the city, and everything had turned out just fine. She hadn’t gotten lost, or mugged, or even embarrassed herself. For all anyone knew, she was a worldly Italian woman out shopping for herself and her boyfriend, for whom she would cook an elegant yet simple Italian dinner. No, not boyfriend. In Italy, he would be a
lover.

But maybe she was being too confident. Maybe she’d still get lost on the way home, or get mugged, or humiliate herself. There was plenty of time to do all three. By the time she reached her stop, she’d whittled away her confidence to nothing more than a nub. She climbed off the tram and, clutching her bags, began to walk back towards Theresa’s. She’d probably forgotten something. Here she was, thinking she was so capable because she’d gone to the grocery store. Big freaking whoop, as Patty would say. Rory had been to the grocery store by herself dozens of times at home.

Ignoring Tom’s hiss, she stumbled into Theresa’s house and dropped the bags in the kitchen doorway. With her luck, she’d broken something, probably the jelly jar. Her hands were sweating from the heat, and her wrists were sore from carrying the bags for blocks at a time. She collapsed onto the couch like she’d just run a marathon. Her head was throbbing in an ominous way, one that foretold an impending migraine.

But she had done it. She had made the whole trip, start to finish, on her own, without a single mishap. Now that she was home, she could really say that. Even if the stress had finally caught up, and she was bedridden the rest of the day, it had been worth it. Now that she didn’t have anything else to focus on, the headache came crashing in. She didn’t see Theresa around, so she unloaded the food, moving as if through water. Nothing was broken, so that was good.

The migraine’s vicelike grip drilled into the sides of her skull as she ascended the stairs slowly, in a fog. In her room, she turned on her fan, stripped back the blankets, and lay on the sheet that stretched over her bed. She swallowed a handful of painkillers and lay back, letting her head sink into the pillow and be still at last. To her surprise, the soft blur of Ned’s music—the Doors, she thought—from next door was a familiar comfort, like the grocery store atmosphere. Something predictable and safe.

Above her, the page she’d torn from the magazine fluttered in the fan’s air current. If she could take care of herself in Rome, maybe she’d even be able to take the internship, if she got it, and travel to lots of places on her own. She hadn’t checked her email that day to see if she’d gotten a response. But she didn’t want to move just yet. That would have to wait.

CHAPTER Eleven

On Wednesday morning, as she rode in the passenger seat of Jelly, she finally worked up the nerve to check the email account she’d given the e-zine. She wasn’t sure which thought made her stomach twist tighter—the thought of a rejection, or the thought of an acceptance. She chewed at her thumbnail and stared at the emails piled up in her inbox.

There it was.

What if she got accepted, and she had to turn down the great offer? She had bought a round-trip ticket, and her parents weren’t going to change that. She’d have to tell the e-zine no, that it had been stupid of her to even enter. And then they’d think she was ridiculous, turning down something like that to go running back to Arkansas. But if they said no, and told her how amateur her photos were, she might die.

“You’re bleeding,” Ned said.

She pulled her thumb away from her mouth. It was smeared with blood. She sucked it off and wiped her lips, aware of Ned staring straight ahead. He would now know that not only was she a total spaz, she was a blood-drinking psychopath. Great.

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s gross, right? I just get nervous. I mean, I got nervous. See, I submitted this application to this travel e-zine, for an internship, the other day. It’s not even paid, and I’d never heard of the magazine, so it’s not like it’s a big deal or anything. But I guess they’re giving out like four of these spots. And I applied for one.”

“You didn’t get it?”

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, I could have gotten it. I haven’t opened the email. I’m afraid to look.”

“Yeah, that’s the hard part,” Ned said.

“Like, how do you deal with it?” she asked. “You must, right? You’re an artist. How do you keep from just, I don’t know, letting it crush you when someone doesn’t like it? Like, how do you keep painting even after you get rejected?”

“Weed helps,” he said. “And beer and pizza don’t hurt.”

“Oh.”

He laughed. “Dude, I’m kidding. Don’t think I forgot who I’m talking to.”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“No, go on. What do you mean?”

“Just that you’re…you know. You.” He gestured at her knee-length cotton skirt with the tiny flowers around the border, her white flats, her green fitted t-shirt. “You’re a square, right?”

“Because of how I dress?”

“No, you look nice. I just thought… So, you going to open that email or let it sit there, saying all the bad shit you can imagine, because you’re too scared of the rejection?”

“I think I’m more scared that it’s not a rejection.”

“Why would you be scared of that? You could stay longer, travel Europe.”

“I know, but…Well, it’s just that I probably can’t stay. My parents would freak out, and I don’t know if I’d have the money to stay, anyway. It’s unpaid. And I’d be by myself. I know you are, and it’s no big deal, but it is to me. And I don’t know what to say to them if they accept me and then I have to turn it down. I don’t even know why I applied. It was one of those things I did while I was talking on the phone, like I didn’t really mean it or something.”

“How about you just open it?” he said. “And I’ll buy you a beer if it says you didn’t get it.”

“What if I did?”

“I’ll buy you a beer anyway.”

“You won’t smoke me out?”

He shot her a look, his eyebrows raised. “You smoke?”

“I’ve smoked.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“You. You’ve smoked pot?”

“Why is that so hard to believe?”

He shook his head. “When have you ever smoked pot?”

“I don’t know, a while ago. My ex was kind of a stoner.” She turned her face to the window, not sure she wanted to go down this road with someone she already thought about way too much. If she told him, she’d just spend the rest of the day obsessing about whether she should have told him, and if that would make him like her more or less, and what he’d meant when he said whatever he would say in response.

“Never a dull moment with Stefani,” he said. “Go on. Open it.”

She opened it.

It was the furthest thing from the formal rejection or acceptance letter she’d expected. Instead of a professional letter, it was a brief email.

Hey Rory,

The deadline to apply was Friday. Sorry we had to turn you down. Your shots were impressive. Shoot us another batch this winter and we’ll consider you for our next internship opportunity.

“Did you get it?” Ned asked.

“I missed the deadline by two days.”

“Aw, dude. That sucks.”

“It’s for the best,” Rory said, deleting the email. She didn’t need it in her inbox, reminding her of her failure. Not that she’d failed, exactly. She just hadn’t decided in time. It wasn’t like she would have stayed, anyway. Now she could focus on her classes, and go tour the city on her own. If she could get groceries, visiting the famed landmarks was the obvious next step.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Ned said. “Maybe next time. Or there’s probably some other stuff like that you could apply for at a different magazine.”

“No, I shouldn’t have even applied to one,” she said. “That was stupid. Not like I’d ever get in. It’s not even my major. And like I said, I was more nervous that I’d get it.”

“Too bad,” he said, pulling Jelly into a parking spot at the university. “I’ll be here the rest of the summer. We could have hung out more.”

She mulled that over all the way to class, and all through class. Did he want to hang out longer? He sounded like it. But maybe he was just being polite. He was friendly to everyone, not just her. He would have said the same thing to Theresa, or any of her friends, or even a random stranger.

The good thing about having Ned on her mind was that she didn’t have to think about how stupid she’d been to even hope for the internship. She’d tried not to think about it, had known it was a long shot. She hadn’t really thought it would bother her much to be turned down, since she wasn’t expecting anything. But the moment she’d gotten the answer, she realized how much she wanted to do it. Maybe she hadn’t before, but now she did. In the brief moments before she’d opened the email, she’d seen her summer laid out before her—traveling around Europe, taking shots of all the tourist destinations, with Ned by her side.

She sat up straighter in her seat. Had she really been thinking that? Of course she had. What an
idiot
. She’d imagined him there with her, but he wouldn’t go along. She’d be alone, traveling through lots of countries where she didn’t know the language and customs. And Ned would be here, locked in his room working on his art, taking care of Theresa’s grocery shopping.

After class, she trailed after Maggie and Kristina to their little spot beside the building. They were talking about some guy Kristina had met. She’d been crying on the plane about her boyfriend dumping her, and a week later, just like that, she had a new one. Someone she’d met at the airport, from what Maggie had said on the bus from Milan. She had been madly in love with her boyfriend back home, brokenhearted when he broke up with her, and now she’d already forgotten him. Rory could tell by the way she laughed, how free she was, like the world back home not only ceased to exist, but had never existed.

Since Ned was working on something in the studio and she didn’t want to risk running into any of his artsy friends, she took the bus home. It didn’t feel as daring and special anymore, now that she’d gone to the grocery store alone. But she’d gotten used to it, something she thought would never happen the first time she’d done it. Now, it was automatic, like riding the campus bus at her school.

Back at Theresa’s, she offered to pay for some of the groceries, since she’d bought much more than Theresa had asked for and Rory had been so overwhelmed she’d just used what money Theresa had given her. Theresa refused, saying she didn’t need money, but said that Rory could help her cook dinner a few times if she really wanted to make up for it. After a sandwich, Rory went upstairs to her room. It was quiet without the background noise of Ned’s music next door. For a second, she thought about sneaking over and going in his room. But that would be going way over the county line and straight into Crazytown.