When In Rome...Find Yourself: A Sweet New Adult Romance (3 page)

“This is Theresa’s,” Ned said.

“Oh.” Now she felt like an even bigger moron as she dried her face. After Ned paid the driver, she climbed out of the cab with him. Looking up at the sliver of a house between other tall, narrow slivers, her nervousness returned. What if Theresa didn’t like her? What if she didn’t like Theresa? What was she supposed to say to her, anyway? Was she supposed to get to know her, ask for tours of the city? Or just stay out of her way as much as possible, trying not to be more of an inconvenience than she already was, a stranger invading her house for six weeks?

CHAPTER three

Ned was already walking up to the front door, so Rory followed. A fat cat was sitting near the front door eyeing them, its black fur glossy, a downy white chest looking soft as rabbit’s fur. Rory was allergic to cats, but she still admired this one’s dignified air. When she stepped closer to give it a quick pet, it hissed, bearing its needle-sharp teeth, then turned and streaked away.

“Don’t take it personally,” Ned said. “That’s Tom. He hates life.”

“Is that Theresa’s cat?”

“No, they’re loose in the city,” Ned said. “They were brought here to take care of the rat problem, and now they’re kind of a cross between pets and pests. People take care of them, but they hate everyone.”

“I definitely won’t try to make friends with him again,” Rory said, a little shaken by the cat’s menacing glare. She was glad she hadn’t touched it. It could have rabies.

Ned opened the door without knocking and walked right in, and after a moment’s hesitation, Rory followed. The floors were a reddish hardwood, almost the color of Rory’s hair. The wallpaper was a winter white with faded, dusty-blue flowers. A short, round woman with wrinkled, tan skin, round spectacles, and salt and pepper hair came into the hallway then, her arms open wide. “You made it,” she crowed in a strong Italian accent, a big smile on her face. “Come here and let me see you.”

Rory shuffled nervously forward, still clutching the handle of her bag, its wheels rolling noisily on the hardwood floor. “Hi.”

Theresa hugged her hard, then held her at arm’s length to study her, like a long-lost aunt who hadn’t seen her since childhood and wanted to see how she’d change

“With the red hair,” Theresa said, touching her hair. “The boys must be crazy for you.” She winked and released Rory at last.

“Ha, yeah,” Rory said, her face warm again.

“Come into the kitchen, we can talk while I bake. I’m making pizza tonight. Ned’s favorite.” This time, she winked over Rory’s shoulder at Ned.

“He’s…staying for dinner?” Rory asked.

“Of course,” Theresa said. “I feed him every night he’s here.”

“Well, you don’t have to feed me,” Rory said. “The program, the study abroad office, they said you’d provide breakfast and lunch but I’d be on my own for dinner.”

“That’s nonsense,” Theresa said. “Come and sit. I’m only making the dough now. It’s too early for dinner.”

“Right,” Rory said. She’d slept on the plane, but she was exhausted, nonetheless, and her sense of time was completely askew.

She sat in the kitchen while Theresa punched down a ball of dough.

“You make your dough from scratch?” she asked. “That’s dedication.”

“How else do you make pizza?”

“You buy a crust, I guess.”

“That’s not pizza.”

Rory glanced around the tiny kitchen, its wallpaper a faded, pastel yellow with sunflowers around the edges. Above the ancient stove was a row of porcelain sugar bowls, gravy boats, cream pitchers, and other seldom used dishes interspersed with ceramic figures of angels. In the center stood a ceramic crucifix with a tortured Jesus hanging on it.

Oh, no. She’d gotten a religious one. But of course she’d be Catholic. Most people in Italy were. They had so many famous churches and cathedrals, and the Pope nearby in the Vatican. Her mother would hate for her to be staying with a Catholic. But Rory figured she didn’t have to tell her mother that part. There were plenty of things she’d kept from her mother since going to college.

“So, who’s Ned?” she asked after taking in the room.

“Ned is Ned,” Theresa said, not turning from her dough ball.

“But is he your…son? Neighbor?”

“He’s a boarder, like you,” Theresa said.

“He’s staying here?” Rory squeaked. She hadn’t heard him leave, it was true, and he wasn’t in the kitchen. But she’d assumed he’d gone quietly into the city and disappeared forever. Not that she’d have to see him again. Not that she was living with him.

“Don’t worry, there are rooms for you both,” Theresa said. “And don’t try to sneak in each other’s room when I’m not looking.” She smiled and winked at Rory again.

Rory’s face flamed. “I won’t.”

“Now the dough will rise,” Theresa said. “Come and see your room.”

While she washed her hands, Rory waited, trying not to freak out about a strange guy living under the same roof as her. She’d never even lived on campus with a girl roommate. Since her parents were from Fayetteville, she’d lived at home even when she went to college. In truth, she was a little scared to move out, and they were more than happy to keep her near. But lately, she’d wanted to do more on her own. This was her chance to prove that she could.

So what if a guy lived in the next bedroom? It wasn’t like they were living together. It was more like having a guy in the next room at a hotel. She could do this. She wasn’t going to let some spacy stoner ruin her chance to prove her independence.

Theresa led her up a set of impossibly narrow, creaking wooden stairs with several turns. They rose almost vertically in the corner of the house. Upstairs, a long dark blue carpet with floral patterns in a deep goldenrod color lined the hardwood floor of the hallway. The walls were mercifully white to offset the color of the carpet, and along them, dozens of portraits and framed photos hung.

“This is
mi familia,”
Theresa said with a twinkling smile. She led Rory past a closed door, behind which Rory could hear the rhythmic beat of a Sublime song faintly. It could have been her imagination, but she thought she also smelled marijuana.

“And this is your room, my dear,” Theresa said, drawing her attention to a bedroom door that stood open. Inside, a small but clean room waited, the thin white blanket tucked in with the crisp precision of a hotel bed.

“Thank you so much,” Rory said. “I really appreciate it. And thanks for sending Ned to get me.”

“I hope you were not confused,” Theresa said. “I was sure I could make it today, but…I could not.” She looked down, her smile faltering for the first time since Rory had seen her. The corners of her mouth twisted down, and she gathered her apron into a knot. Theresa looked fine as far as Rory could see. And she wasn’t going to be invasive and ask. She had enough problems to know that they didn’t always show up at first meeting.

“It all turned out fine,” Rory assured Theresa.

Theresa left her to unpack then, and Rory texted her parents to let them know she’d made it okay, and Quinn to let her know that she’d talked to the guy. Quinn sent back a row of applause emojis, and her mother told her to call soon, and her father told her to be safe. Rory finished unpacking and then realized it was almost time for the welcome dinner that Professor McClain had arranged for the class.

She changed clothes quickly, took her phone, her camera, and a map just in case. When she stepped out into the hall, she ran right into Ned, and they did that awkward shuffling thing to get past each other, both stepping one way and then the other.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, her face flaming.

“It’s cool.” Ned leaned against her doorframe and tugged at a dreadlock. “You going out?”

“I have a dinner thing,” she said. “With my class.”

“Need me to take you?”

“Oh, um…you have a car?”

“Theresa has one,” he said. “But she never uses it. The battery was dead when I got here. I had to jump it. But she said I could use it, so I do.”

“I should probably learn to figure out my way around,” she said. “And plus, I wouldn’t want to make you drive me all the way down to the university building.”

“It’s no problem,” he said. “I like to get out of the house, you know? I get bored so easy. Let me show you around?” He smiled then, and his forehead crinkled in that earnest, James Dean kind of way. When he smiled, he was actually kind of cute.

“Okay, but just once,” she said. “So I can see where everything is before I have to do it myself.”

“Deal,” Ned said. “Let me grab my keys.”

Outside, he led her to an ugly little purple hatchback with the back bumper gone and rust around the windows and door handles. “I call her Jelly,” he said, patting the top of the car affectionately while he unlocked the door with a key. He climbed in, then reached across and unlocked Rory’s door. A wave of heat shimmered out to greet her, but she climbed in, grimacing at the smell inside the car, slightly musty and scorched. Everything in Rome smelled weird.

Rory rolled down the window, using the hand crank with the plastic covering gone, so it was just a metal bar, and let the heat dissipate as Ned started up Jelly. She was sure it would stall, but it came right to life, the engine knocking as if it would drop right out of the car at any moment.

“Are you sure this is safe?” she asked, snapping her seatbelt into the square buckle.

“Sure,” he said, turning out onto the street. “You’ll need to go this way to get the bus. I’ll show you our stop. And then there’s the tram. The stop isn’t much further than the bus, and it’s usually faster, in case you’re running late for class.”

She had a feeling he was one of those perpetually late guys, like most stoners she knew. Like Jack.

“So what do you do here?” she asked. “Are you studying abroad?”

“Art,” he said.

“I didn’t know they had study abroad for that.”

“Where else would I go but Rome?” he said. “I may never leave.”

“Don’t you have to?”

“No,” he said. “You can stay however long you want. I already changed my plane ticket once. I guess I’ll stay until I go.”

Rory marveled at how anyone could live that way, not knowing the future even a little bit. Only a guy could travel that way.

“What about you?” Ned asked after a minute.

“Anthropology.”

“That’s cool,” he said. “Just wait, though. You’ll end up wanting to stay, too. No one wants to leave Rome. It’s addictive.”

Rory wasn’t so sure. From her admittedly brief encounter with Rome, she already knew that it smelled like urine and the cats were mean.

Ned showed her the bus stop, the tram stop, and took her to the university, where she met with Professor McClain and a few others before going to dinner. There, she tried not to feel too utterly conspicuous. Luckily, Maggie made small talk with her, and she was able to sit with them and pretend she was part of their group.

That was how her social life had been at home, too. Of course she’d made a few friends in school, but mostly they were Jack’s friends. After they broke up, she’d managed to stay in the fringes of his extended group of friends, but she always felt like a tagalong, only included out of pity. She’d dreamed of making friends with a new group while in Rome, but when faced with the reality, she couldn’t imagine what it would take to actually make friends.

They all fit together so easily. She watched Maggie and Kristina bicker good-naturedly, neither seeming offended by their harsh words. Cynthia and Nick ate off each other’s plates, each seeming to find conversation effortless, their words flowing into the gaps when the other stopped speaking.

After dinner, Rory followed the others to the tram stop. She knew her stop, but when the others got off at theirs, she began to twist her fingers nervously and glance around at the other passengers. The tram smelled like urine. What kind of person would relieve themselves on mass transit?

At her stop, she exited the tram with a few others, none of whom had urinated during the ride. She wondered if any of them spoke English. If they noticed that she was alone. They probably thought she was a loser with no friends. As she walked back to Theresa’s house, she kept glancing around, aware of everyone she passed. Girls weren’t supposed to walk alone. Maybe she should have called Ned to come get her.

But he probably had better things to do than spend the evening chauffeuring her around. Besides, she didn’t want
him
to think she was a loser with no friends to escort her home. Or a loser who couldn’t find her own way home. He’d been nice enough to show her around a little already. She couldn’t burden a stranger with her anxiety. And he’d been in Rome for a while, so he probably had friends, or maybe a girlfriend, who wanted to spend the evening with him.

When she got back, Theresa was in the sitting room with a cup of tea and a book. “How was your evening, dear?” she asked, as if she were Rory’s real mother.

“It was okay,” Rory said. She stood in the doorway of the sitting room, not sure whether to join Theresa or go to her room. Already she felt like she was imposing.

“Did you eat?” Theresa asked. “There is pizza in the refrigerator if you like it.”

“Thank you, but I ate.” Rory started to bite at a hangnail, then stopped herself. “Did my suitcase get here?”

“Oh, yes,” Theresa said. “I had Ned take it up to your room.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Rory shifted from foot to foot and glanced longingly at the stairs.

“Would you like some tea?” Theresa asked.

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Rory said. “But thank you. I’ll just…I’ll go up to my room, if that’s okay.”

“Okay, dear. Sleep well.”