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Divergent stairways,
Multicolored villas,
Roads to nowhere
-#31, In Blue Solitudes, S.O. Wilson
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A machine-gun knock shot Seb awake. Panic spiked his blood. He wrenched upright, slammed to the floor. Heart in his throat, starving him of breath. Head like an anvil, fever slick and hammering. Have to get up. Have to get out. Numb fingers clawing at his covers, cat in a bag. Everything white. Spotless. Sterile.
Had they finally had him committed?
Scrabbling, he found a hem. Beyond it something cool and smooth, like tile. Made a hole, wiggled his head out, eyes closed. Struggled till he managed a deep breath. Another. Was he imagining the smell of smoke? The thwap of helicopter blades? The distant drone of sirens? Swallowing back a second surge of panic, he eased open his eyes.
A white room, but no institution. Seb side-eyed the couch he had fallen off of as he sagged back into his blanket cocoon. An image came with every pound of his hangover headache: a table in the Piazza del Duomo, too many bottles of wine and limoncello, a four-piece band playing Italian classics, moonlight, dancing, Amalfi. Despite feeling like one of the sardines Chef Ottavio had scored, grilled, and smothered in lemon, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
Another round blasted across his front door, followed by a dovelike coo.
“Coffee, get it while it’s hot,” Kath’s muffled voice announced, followed by Maya’s, “Come on, cher. You’re missing all the action.”
Intrigued, especially by the promise of espresso, Seb crawled out from under the blanket the ladies undoubtedly tucked him in, made sure he was decent—check, in last night’s shirt and boxers—and staggered to the door. He opened it a crack—unlocked; nice one, Osaki—and reached out a hand. Espresso acquired, he took several fortifying sips before stepping outside... into Dante’s Inferno.
Or former inferno. A villa three tiers above them had been reduced to a pile of rubble. Soot-smeared firemen searched the surrounding underbrush for cinders that might spark. High above, two of the neighboring peaks sent out smoke signals. The drone of approaching water planes drowned out the fading wail of sirens. All the while the pyrokinetic sun burned away any hint of cloud. On their crowded deck, another lazy day basked in the clear blue sky.
“Bushfires?” Seb plunked down on a bench beside Ceri, who blew out a ring of smoke and nodded. She apparently didn’t get enough of a buzz from the charred reek of the villa’s ashes. “Even over there?”
“Nah. Cigarette in a flowerpot.” At his look, she barked out a laugh. “Amateurs.”
“I guess we’re staying in for the day.” His twinge of disappointment surprised him. The whole point of a vacation was to feed your schedule to the shredder.
“Avoid the buses for sure. Roads between towns will be parking lots. But that’s just common sense. Nothing beats the ferry.”
Which was how he found himself on the upper level of a boat that bucketed in counterpoint to his still-aching head two hours later. Slurping from his extra-large granita al limone—and praying the citrus conspired with his earlier caffeine to sharpen his senses—Seb struggled to keep up with the ladies’ conversation. There was simply too much view to worship.
Ever restless due to the endless stream of boats carrying tourists from town to town, the waves raced each other to shore. Villas of every size and shape, from humble stucco shacks to pillar-supported palaces adorned the voluptuous coastline. A land of peaks and valleys, of jutting promontories and of plunging ravines, strung together by lustrous amber and spackled with malachite. The fierce breeze tugged at the strands of his man bun, and volleys of spray occasionally doused his T-shirt, but Seb leaned into the wind with the eagerness of a dog out a car window. How dare Henry suggest taking the bus when there was this bliss?
“I told you,” he caught Maya say. “He’s gone. Between this and that card burning a hole in his pocket, we won’t see him for the rest of the trip. Say your goodbyes, ladies.”
“What?” Much as it pained him to tear his eyes away, he focused his attention back on the conversation. “Who’s going? What card?”
Seb did not appreciate the chorus of chuckles that erupted, like an auditory pat on the head.
Ceri snorted. “I think Sleeping Beauty here has already forgotten his prince.”
“I think so.” Maya pouted. “And Operation Stella was going so well!”
Seb shifted his gaze from one to the other and shook his head. “I don’t want to know.” The chorus changed from chuckles to giggles. He swore in Quebec French under his breath.
“Language!” Kath exclaimed.
“How would you know?”
“Doesn’t take a psychic,” Ceri grunted.
“Just a matchmaker, apparently,” Seb grumbled. He turned back to his one true love, the view, until their snickers dug so far under his skin that they drew blood. “Fine. Operation Stella. Give me a full report.”
“Oh, you’re not ready for that, cher.” Maya smirked. “I’ll start with a question. How do you suppose you got up all those stairs and onto your couch last night?”
That spooked him sober. “No. No, no, no, no, no.”
“Oh, yes.”
“No. Fuck.” Seb buried his face in his hands, shifting his cup against his throbbing temple. Then, through his fingers, “I wasn’t wearing any pants when I woke up this morning!”
“Not that,” Kath broke in, shooting Maya a look. At least Seb hoped she shot Maya a look. Maya deserved the evil eye to end all evil eyes. “We were with you. He just helped you up the steps and into your apartment.”
“Carried him, you mean,” Ceri countered.
“Helped,” Kath insisted.
“And left you his card,” Maya continued. “He put it in your book, the one with all your notes. Said to call him if you needed another lift or help. With anything.”
“The devil was in Ravello,” Seb muttered.
“What, cher?”
“Nothing.” He let out a long breath, not sure what to make of this latest turn of events. They all watched as an amphibious aircraft swooped down, scooped sea water into her hull, then soared back up to the still-smoldering mountains. “How long do you think it will take the fires to burn out?”
“Depends,” Kath replied.
“On?”
“How long it stays this hot.”
Seb nodded. Eventually he allowed himself a smirk.
“You ladies like soccer?”
Huffing and puffing more strenuously than the big bad wolf, Seb didn’t think he could blow down a house of cards, let alone one of the seamless walls that lined the endless staircase to the Viale Pasitea. A staircase he had been climbing for going on twenty minutes, with nary a street or shop front in sight. Trash cans, locked gates, and the occasional stray cat had watched him melt from eager, determined tourist into a walking puddle of sweat and sunscreen.
He’d gone from “I can do this” to “How much farther can it be?” to “There has to be a shortcut” to amber-alert-level existential despair over the course of five hundred supersized steps, with nary a football jersey-clad driver in sight to play white knight to his simpering damsel. That reminder of how he’d once again embarrassed himself in front of Andrea—not that it mattered because he wasn’t ready—spurred Seb on. He grunted and panted and cursed his way up and around another twist in the staircase... only to discover yet another set of steps leading to another blind curve. Behind which might be the Viale Pasitea, or the Yellow Brick Road, or the looking glass to Wonderland, or even more godforsaken steps, for all he knew. His life had become The Staircase, the latest from Italian horror master Dario Argento. Cue the maggots.
For the first time, Henry had steered him wrong. Seb stopped to give his screaming calves a rest, plunked his backpack and his ass on one of the fatter steps. After chugging his entire water reserve, he peeled open Henry’s notebook to the page he hadn’t bookmarked—an ill omen if ever there was one.
As Steinbeck famously wrote in Harper’s, ‘Positano bites deep. It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone.’ Here all roads lead to the Spiaggia Grande, the most popular beach on the Amalfi Coast, and the black Madonna in the church of Santa Maria Assunta, famously stolen from Byzantium. When the thieves could sail no more, they dropped their treasure, shouting, “Posa, posa!” on the first beach they came to, giving the town its name. If you, like they, land at the docks, you are faced with an impossible choice. From the Piazza Flavio Gioia, you can go right toward the church and the heavenly shopping district, or left, into the hell of the Via Pasitea, where all manner of culinary delights will tempt you.
A simultaneous harrumph from his throat and grumble from his stomach let Henry know what Seb thought of that description. Flashing back to the dozens of seaside restaurants that greeted him as he’d hopped off the ferry, he found his second wind. Stowing the notebook, Seb clopped back down to the beach in a quarter of the time. A glass of peerless white and a trough of seafood pasta under a shady, ivy-gabled patio refueled his body and his sense of adventure. A clear view of the buff bodies tanning on endless rows of recliners on the Spiaggia Grande below encouraged him to linger. By the time a US military family’s wedding party seized the table next to him—eavesdropped chatter about fighter jets was a surprising boner killer—he felt ready to tackle the stairway to heaven.
Which, thankfully, proved to be more of a path with a gentle incline. The view from the duomo almost locked Seb in for the afternoon, but the herds of tourists squeezing into an art-lined alley intrigued. The ladies correctly described Positano as higher end. Art galleries with museum-ready wares held him captive for a time until he heard the siren call of the vintners’ shops and apothecaries. He picked up a bottle of artisanal citrus-flavored gin for the ladies and a ‘93 Mastroberardino 2003 Radici Riserva for dinner tonight.
As Seb meandered up yet another fieldstone-lined street, he came to an open ornate doorway that stole the breath from his lungs. He stared through the peak-a-boo archways at the patio of the Hotel Palazzo Murat. Dropping his bags in front of a befuddled concierge, Seb ignored his protests as he crossed the mosaic tiles into a place of dreams. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he’s stepped right into The Talented Mr. Ripley, one of his and Henry’s favorite films and the inspiration for their anniversary trip. Seb imagined Henry as an even more suave Dickie Greenleaf, lounging on one of the blue-and-white-cushioned chaises as he waited for his awkward, endearing Tom—not Gwyneth Paltrow—to join him for a moonlit frolic.
He strolled the gardens in a daze, throat clenched and eyes stinging as he took in the cascades of purple bougainvillea, the plump lemons in the grove, the magnificent palm trees, and the eighteenth-century architecture. He’d imagined them slow dancing on their balcony under a ripe August moon more times than he could count. They had the honeymoon suite booked five years in advance. It took Seb ten tries before he successfully called to cancel. Now here he was in this magical place, and his Henry... Henry...
Seb sat on the edge of a fountain, fingers gripping into the ancient stone, willing back the tears. Knife-slit breaths scraped down his throat, the bite of the icy wind as he stood on his snowbound front porch as real to him as the sear of the late-afternoon sun. The remembered flash of police lights made him squint. The officer’s life-changing words distorted to white noise as Seb’s brain erupted. He crashed onto all fours on the tiled floor, gasping, whining, willing himself to be anywhere else.
Why had he come here, where every fucking molecule reminded him of the man he had lost? How could he give over to adventure when everything he did underlined the fact that Henry should be there with him? How could he hope to move on when Henry’s ghost lurked around every corner? Not that he ever wanted to forget him...
When he finally managed an even breath, Seb realized a small tray had been set beside him, bearing cup of espresso, a monogrammed handkerchief, and a bougainvillea flower in a tiny glass vase. A feeling of profound gratitude overcame him, enough to urge him over to one of the patio chairs, where a deeply kind waitress moved his coffee, brought over his shopping bags, and recommended the torta caprese-flavored gelato.
“After sadness there is always gelato,” she advised him, and Seb didn’t have it in him to disagree.
The sun sank into the sea as Seb clopped down from the ferry. After he set down his gelato spoon, Seb had dug out his journal and purged his pain the only way he knew how. The gracious staff of the Palazzo Murat left him alone until they could no longer postpone dinner preparations. They shooed him off to catch the ferry without asking for a cent; Seb promised them five-star Trip Advisor ratings for their kindness. He barely flicked his eyes from the gilded waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea the entire ride back to Amalfi.
He meandered along the crowded dock in something of a fugue, his brain on autopilot as he navigated the maze of confused and overheated tourists. A horn blast from a hotel shuttle erupted beside his ear. The usual dockside madness had been amped up to eleven by the hilltop fires: two peaks still smoked, cars of all shapes and sizes jammed the coastal road, and the taxi rank resembled a used-car lot, with dozens of drivers and hundreds of passengers stranded by the traffic. Some of the more enterprising tourists had decided to walk, weaving between stalled cars and up steep inclines with no side rail to keep them from plunging to their deaths. A few tour groups of young people had taken over the bus shelter, staging an impromptu Woodstock complete with guitars, iPhone speakers, and partial nudity. A bulldog of a driver guarded the door of the only bus that hadn’t made it out of the city, a salt circle of cigarettes around his feet to ward off horny couples looking for a place to get amorous.
A fight broke out among the taxi drivers just as Seb reached for his journal to capture the scene. No fisticuffs, but one could be forgiven for thinking a few punches had landed given the men’s beet-red faces and aggressive gestures. They wielded their hands, teeth, and spit like broadswords and battleaxes, their insults volcanic arias of bile. Seb expected the other drivers to place bets on this cockfight, circling them to get close enough to catch a flying feather or two. Instead they shuffled around their cars, kept their distance.
It was only as he smacked down a vulgar gesture and stomped away that Seb recognized Andrea. His sparring partner shouted a few impotent insults after him, but Andrea had already deployed his cell, recounting the incident in rapid-fire Italian to a sympathetic ear. Seb watched him circle behind the other cabs, pacing out his frustration. Andrea hopped onto one of the anchor-shaped rocks that lined the docks, anger stringing his trim physique tight as a bow. Another day, another football jersey. Today the green of the US Avellino Wolves. Andrea certainly looked predatory as he surveyed the marina.
Before Seb could stop himself, he set out at a cautious pace toward him. Something about his lone wolf stance, abject but defiant, lured him forward. Andrea might lash out, but this was a man who’d seen Seb at his most vulnerable and responded with kindness. Had come to his rescue almost every day of his trip. The least Seb could do was return the favor.
“Turf war?” Seb climbed up on the rock as Andrea jammed his thumb down on his phone and cursed under his breath. “Are you a Shark or a Jet?”
Andrea scoffed, reached out his hand to help him up. Aftershocks of fury still vibrated through it. When Seb held on a second too long, Andrea pulled away, clicked his tongue.
“Not here.”
“Was it that kind of argument?”
Andrea sighed. “Maybe.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“No. Absolutely not. You’re the only not-crazy person I’ve spoken to all day.”
Seb laughed. “I don’t know about that...” This earned him a smirk. He felt ridiculously accomplished. “I’m guessing today has been a total wash?”
“Could have been worse.” Andrea shrugged. “It’s not the first time this...” He waved an exasperated hand up at the chaos. “I plan for it. Called in favors. Only lost two fares, which is not too bad. Or three, now, because of that testa di cazzo.”
“Do I want to know what that means?”
Another smirk. “Under different circumstances... maybe.”
“Now I’m really curious.”
In the corner of his eye, he saw Andrea cant toward him but resisted the urge to match his stare.
“Are you?”
Seb let the moment hang a few beats too long, feeling as if he dangled from the edge of a cliff. Would he find the strength to pull up and over, or should he just let himself fall? Still weary from his emotional afternoon, he decided to get a leg up.
“Of course. I’m a translator.”
“Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
Seb let out a belly laugh that must have confused the hell out of the other driver. He clapped Andrea on the shoulder—bigoted colleagues be damned—and gave it a squeeze.
“Let’s get a drink. Or, better yet, let me buy you dinner. I’m told I have a reputation to salvage, in more ways than one. Unless you have somewhere to be...”
Andrea grunted, pointed to his SUV stuck behind three lines of parked taxis and shuttles. “Not tonight. But don’t you have gin and tonics by the pool?”
“Ladies are in Capri. Expected back late.” Seb caught a glint of that high-voltage smile.
“Then I have you all to myself?”
“Seems like.”
Their eyes met, and Seb skipped a breath, overwhelmed and a little intimidated by the heat that simmered there. But he was here for adventure, and what better kind than the invitation in Andrea’s gray-green eyes?
“Then lead on, Sebastiano.”
Despite the cool breeze sweeping in from the sea in the sun’s wake, Seb’s back felt scorched by the full force of that fiery orb with Andrea’s heat radiating behind him as he wove through the crowd. Percussionists with makeshift drums and kitted-out tablets took over from the folk guitars under the bus shelter, underscoring Seb’s excitement and nerves as they darted through traffic. The sense of playing hooky—not just Andrea from work, but Seb from the realities of his life these last solitary years—loosed one of the binds around his heart.
As they emerged from the tight alleyway into the Piazza dei Dogi, Seb realized he hadn’t thought this through. Restaurants sprouted like dandelions in Amalfi, but only a few were worthy of being plucked for your salad. Turning away from the avid gazes of a dozen maître d’s in the table-strewn piazza, he caught his shrub-headed companion’s bemused look.
“I’m starting to feel like a blind man leading a seeing-eye dog. Where do you want to go?”
His typical Italian noncommittal shrug didn’t impress. “Wherever you like.”
Seb scrutinized his face, looking for a sign. “You’ve never eaten at any of these places, have you, man of a thousand business cards?”
Andrea laughed. “You try explaining to your mamma that you had dinner somewhere else when you were in town.”
“Point taken. And we can’t go anywhere else...”
“That depends on how tired you are.”
Seb considered this awhile. “I’d manage a second wind if we stopped for a granita.”
“I’ve created a monster.” Andrea chuckled, turning against the tide of tourists streaming in from the marina. After working his way through the crowd a few steps, he reached back to urge Seb to fall in close beside him, a wrinkle of uncertainty creasing his brow. Diving in with both, er, hands, Seb clamped a hold on his shoulders, half steering him, half being tugged down the short alley to his favorite café. The flow of bodies forced him so close he could smell Andrea’s citrusy cologne, the tantalizing olive-skinned nape of his neck peek-a-booing through the sweat-loosened waves of his hair. Though Seb resisted the desire to nest his face in his curls, nibble on that pale patch of neck the sun missed, he acknowledged how long it had been since he’d felt something, anything, for a man not named Henry Wilson.
Once armed with matching cups and away from the crowds, they followed the car-jammed coastal road up a twisty hill toward the Hotel Luna Convento, a converted monastery perched on a cliffside. Seb found walking inches from a dead drop onto a shoreline of toothsome rocks with only a flimsy rail between you and oblivion much easier with Andrea in front of him. He drank contentedly as Andrea chatted with local drivers they passed, relishing the tart pinch of lemony ice melting on his tongue.
They rounded the bend, veering away from the hotel restaurant with its enticing bar and exceptional seaside view. The road expanded, and Andrea fell in at his side, smile only slightly puckered by the granita. A brolike shoulder shove had Seb wondering if he’d misread the entire situation but also got his Spidey-senses tingling.
“So what was going on back there? Is he your competition?”
Andrea snorted. “My cousin Bruno. He’s... I’m not sure how you would say it in English. Scansafatica. Has a lot of opinions about everybody but himself. Hates the tourists, hates the government, hates everybody but his mamma and his car. He can’t keep a job. It’s his mouth, his attitude. But he’s family, so...” Another shrug.
“He helps you out?”
“That’s what he would say.”
“And you?”
Andrea sighed. “I use him only in emergencies, or when I can’t listen to my Zia Fabiana yell at him anymore. There have been problems with the clients. Sometimes it’s easier to lose a fare.”
“But that must mean losing clients.”
“Sometimes yes. So I try not to call him more than one day a week, but with yesterday, and now...” He waved at the traffic. “But he took his time, stopped to talk to this girl he’s chasing, and we lost the fare anyway. Very important client. One of our regulars who tips well. Travels here often. But the client knows about the fires and the traffic, so this time he decided to stay in Sorrento for the night, and I arranged something with another friend to take him there. It worked out.”
“Still a lot of trouble for nothing.”
“Precisamente. So I refused to pay my cousin today. This is not the first time he does this. And I can’t afford to lose any more business. There is, as you say, competition. But.”
“But?”
Andrea inhaled deeply, looked out to sea. “He knows things. About me. Things that... Here, it’s not like in Canada.”
“Things that your family doesn’t know?”
“No, no. My mamma, my sisters, they love me. But other drivers... It’s very macho. You can’t advertise.”
“They see it as a weakness.”
Andrea nodded. “Another headache I don’t need.”
“And I’m guessing your cousin doesn’t let anyone forget it.”
“Only thing he does remember about me. And likes to shout about. Loudly. In public.” Andrea slowed his pace as they approached a tunnel. The pedestrian path veered away from the road, through another cliffside terrace. Mindful of the crowded tables, Andrea waited until they hit the long staircase down to the beach to continue. At least these steps went down. “I’m not in the closet. Most people who know me know—”
“I get it,” Seb reassured him. “Even in Canada, I wouldn’t want someone screaming about my personal life to the wrong audience.”
“Si. Here, there are still hate crimes. Or people will shut you out. Not recommend you to their customers or their friends.”
“Deadly in your business. ‘You scratch my back, I scratch yours’ is pretty much the way of life here.”
“You’ve been paying attention.”
Seb attempted a version of the Italian shrug. “I try.” He stopped on a landing to admire the castle-like city of Atrani, a tessellated series of villas that fanned out from a central square, guarded by an ancient roadway pierced by stone arches through which the beach spilled out. Seb felt like he should be dressed in Don Quixote’s medieval armor, not sandals and cargo shorts. “You’d think he’d be more discreet about the personal life of the only man in town who’ll give him a job.”
“It also probably wasn’t a good idea to sleep with his ex-girlfriend.”
Seb choked on his granita, fighting to control his shock and his laughter. Andrea patted him on the back till he could breathe again. And laugh some more.
“I’m sensing there’s a story here.”
“Only that I like to make things harder for myself.”
“Understatement.”
Andrea fell quiet for a moment, to the point that Seb feared he’d offended him. After several awkward moments, Andrea drew in a long breath, then declared, “I’m bisexual.”
Seb smiled, nodded encouragingly. When nothing came after, he prompted, “That must be hard. Especially if people have—”
“Expectations. Yes. When I was young, I didn’t really understand the gay side of myself. Didn’t want to understand it. So I went with girls. But then when I was away at university...”
“The other shoe dropped. And now you get a lot of, ‘But if you like women...’ Or in your cousin’s case, ‘If you like men, stay away from my ex.’”
Andrea frowned. “You’ve heard the gossip?”
“Me? No, no. I’ve just heard this story before. Most bi people get some version of that.”
“Are you...?”
“More in theory than in practice. I think most queer people dated the opposite sex in high school, or tried to, to avoid rocking the boat. But I wasn’t fooling anyone, especially my girlfriends. One of them actually bought me a bottle of lube and a box of condoms for my birthday, and begged me to take her dancing in the Gay Village. Wasn’t thrilled when she had to find her own way home.”
Andrea laughed, too weak for Seb’s liking. “Sounds like my sister.”
“You’re lucky there. Mine married a caveman who keeps pushing her to send me to a mental institution for reconditioning. Thinks now that Henry’s out of the picture, I have a shot at a ‘real’ relationship.”
A curse that required no translation spat off Andrea’s tongue. Remembering that he was trying to calm him down, not rile him up again, Seb made a second attempt at a shrug and gestured toward the beach.
“This conversation is getting too serious to be had on an empty stomach. My last carb infusion was a whole six hours ago. I need some starch, stat. These staircases aren’t going to climb themselves.”
Seb took the soft chuckle that sad attempt at a joke earned, liked better the gentle push to the small of his back as they made their way to the beach. They scored a seaside table at a little shack of a restaurant under one of the archways. With its makeshift canopy bordered by potted palms, the atmosphere felt more surf bum than serf. Seb glanced at the menu but left the ordering to Andrea, only consulting on pizza toppings—spicy sausage—and color of wine—red, of course.
Instead Seb reclined back in his chair and looked, really looked, at the man across the table. Stripped of his fake accent, his taxi driver hospitality, his natural caregiver’s need to please, he appeared vulnerable. Gentle in a way his handsomeness masked to those who only saw surfaces. Seb’s hand twitched, the impulse to reach across the table and take Andrea’s hand a strong one. But that would be an invitation Seb wasn’t sure he was ready to send. Here in the moment, on a stage, Seb’s wants held court. Later, in more intimate surroundings, they might prove as transparent as the emperor’s new clothes.
“So. Your cousin’s ex. What’s the story there?”
Andrea groaned, bent his head to hide a smile just this side of wolfish. “You don’t want to know.”
“Oh, I definitely want to know. Don’t make me ask the gossips.”
Finally a fulsome laugh. “There’s nothing to tell. They were together when they were teenagers. He hadn’t even seen her for two years. She lives in Maiori. I was there one night, after calcio. I belong to a club. We went to a bar after our game. She was there.” He threw up his hands. “Same old story. Boring.”
“You left out the part where you did it for revenge.” Seb didn’t know what he found more delicious, the halfhearted shake of Andrea’s head or the blush that tinted his cheeks. “I think you’re a better storyteller than that.”
A theatrical sigh. “How did you know?”
“I’m a writer. I know.”
“I thought you were an editor. Though I confess I don’t really know what that means.”
“Never heard that one before,” Seb quipped as the waiter set down an orgy of fresh seafood between them. He salivated over the gorgeous platter of langoustines, shrimp, clams, mussels, and calamari, eyeing their succulent flesh like he would a new lover’s spread thighs. His libido might not survive such indulgence with Andrea’s bright eyes glinting at him all the while. Seb dove in before he could think too much about it. “I edit and translate for work,” he elaborated between mouthfuls. “I write for myself.”
“Have you published any books?”
“In the past. But that wasn’t even me. I’ve done translations of classic Japanese haiku. Cliché, I know...” He quaffed down a particularly briny clam, savoring its salty bite. “Writing is more like my therapy now. I purge and prune. The writer spews it all out; the editor cleans it all up. But I’m too much of a perfectionist to send it out into the world.”
“Might be good for you to let it go.”
Seb smirked. “You don’t say?”
Andrea’s laugh echoed through the archways and out to sea, and Seb found himself that much more enchanted with the man of uncharted depths. He gave over to the food, the wine, the conversation, the starry night, the turrets looming above, and the grit of sand beneath their feet as they strolled back to Amalfi, tipsy and content.
Seb didn’t feel one pinch of ache in his arches until they came to the vaultlike doors of the Villa Napolitana and he faced the prospect of that endless staircase. And what it would mean to have an escort for the second night in a row.
He leaned back against a wall that had seen entire civilizations rise and fall, basking in the sight of Andrea, whose blood simmered with the lusts of the ancients, who smoldered with discomfiting allure. Eyes like silver dollars on a moonlit beach. Streetlamps crowning the waves of his dark hair like the head of the Virgin. He knew the man within to be kind, playful, honorable, and Bacchus knew Seb had tested his patience. Did he dare disturb the universe? In a minute, was there time for decisions and revisions another minute would reverse?
“‘Sebastiano and the Staircase.’” Andrea chuckled, closed just enough of the space between them so Seb didn’t bolt. “I could write that poem. Or perhaps a play in the commedia dell’arte style.”
“Dirty limerick.”
“Ah. Just so.”
“Was it bad last night? I don’t want to know what happened almost as much as I want to know.”
“Bah.” Andrea waved the thought away. “It was nothing. Too much dancing.”
“Too much wine.”
“Limoncello,” Andrea corrected.
“Ah. The critical error.”
That shrug again. “You’ll know for next time.”
“But did I...”
“Did you...?”
“Did we...” Throat parched but tongue heavy, Seb forced himself to meet that numinous gaze.
“Sebastiano...” Andrea stroked a tender touch down the side of his face, over his lips. “I do not go where I am not invited. And you were in no state last night to entertain guests. But tonight...” The second stroke lingered on the arch of his cheek, the hollow beneath, at the edge of a mouth Seb couldn’t bring himself to open to him. “I want nothing more than to make that climb with you. But I think... I feel you are not ready.”
He dropped his hand to Seb’s chest, pressing it over the space where his heart would be if it weren’t in his throat, choking him.
“I want to be,” he rasped, hating and clinging to every word.
“Si. And you will be. You have come here to shed your skin, and if I have helped with that... I am glad. It’s been a beautiful night.”
“I’ll never forget it.”
Seb stared in disbelief as Andrea broke into one of his dazzling smiles. “Nor will I.” He pressed a soft kiss to Seb’s forehead—a benediction—then slowly pulled away.
“Will I see you again?”
“Of course. This is Amalfi.” Andrea threw his arms wide as he hopped off the sidewalk into the street. “Calcio. Saturday. The campo by the marina. Don’t forget to bring us some cheerleaders.”
“Only if I can be one of them.”
“Then you’d better wear a skirt.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Seb forced a smile as Andrea neared the bend in the road, not ready for him to go but with nothing to offer him should he stay. “It has been a beautiful night,” he called after him.
“Sogni d’oro, Sebastiano.”