Page 26

“Quanto Basta”

As I overlook the Tyrrhenian Sea, salt and sunset warping the pages of my new journal, I replay the conversation with Fielder, where he asked if I’ve turned him into a monster in my head.

“Can I change that?” he asked. His voice was timid, but so raw, not like the shiny, filtered Fielder you see on @LemonAt-FirstSight. It caught me off guard. I hadn’t seen that version of him in a long time.

After Fielder stood up for Cam at the tailor, then seeing Fielder nearly get clipped by the Vespa, I don’t know, maybe it made me soften up a bit.

My heart was beating so fast, almost as if Cam could hear me when I said, “Anything’s possible.”

Problem is, I meant it.

I spot Fielder by the pool staring at me, and my heart starts beating fast again, pounding against my rib cage the way it did all day with him at the Avello Family Lemon Groves—watching his face light up with every new fact Niccolò told us, seeing his eyes sparkle like fireworks on the Fourth of July when he tasted the pasta and chowed down on the lemons like apples, ripping at the flesh with his teeth, noting how the dimples in his cheeks creased, and I resisted the urge to press them like buttons the way I used to when we were together.

Fielder notices me looking, and I quickly turn away.

That’s when I spot Cam walking into the pool area, towel draped across his bare shoulders.

He waves half-heartedly to me. We haven’t spoken since he left.

When I got back to the room, he was asleep, and I didn’t want to wake him, so I slipped out, and knowing him, he most likely won’t bring it up if I don’t, since he hates confrontation and prefers to move past all tough moments without so much as a conversation, another byproduct of his upbringing.

Cam walks over to Fielder to shake hands, and I sink into my seat.

Flipping the blank pages of the journal Fielder bought me at the Avellos’ shop, I feel guilty because I told Fielder I’d stopped writing.

In Seattle, dorming at the woodshop, I wrote every night.

Mostly to Fielder, hoping that if I just got words down on the page, the loss and heartache would leave my bones.

Someone wraps their arms around my upper body and rests their chin on the top of my skull. Candied lilacs fill my nostrils as a manicured stiletto-nailed hand slaps the side of my face.

“Gorgeous view, huh?” Sienna slides next to me.

“Nothing like it.”

She presses her cheek to mine. “Which one are we talking about? The sea, or the boys? If option B, please specify the boy.”

“Not funny.” I slide away.

“Oh, come on, I’m the bride, you have to amuse me.” She offers a toothy grin, but I’m not smiling.

“I’m not that person, See.”

“What person is that?” She leans forward, propping her chin up on her elbow.

“Never mind.”

“Don’t be so serious; I was only joking,” she says. “I like Cam.”

I glare at her.

“I do! He seems really nice. I just don’t know him, not like I know Fielder. I grew up with Fielder. He’s, like, basically family, you know? It’s—different.”

I grind my teeth.

“Sorry.” She lays her head on my shoulder. “If I haven’t yet, thanks for being here. Dealing with me.”

“As bride-to-be, you’ve got me on a technicality. My loyalty as man of honor is to you in your time of need.”

She laughs. “You’ve been around the Lemons too long. Dramatic much?”

“Speaking of, how’s your new mother-in-law?”

She flaps her lips. “I love Topher’s mom, but she’s a bit of a—”

“Helicopter?”

“Right? I think she would build a house up Topher’s ass if she could,” Sienna says, looking around, making sure we’re alone.

“I love her, though. She’s made sure the wedding planners have everything taken care of, that I’m good, Topher’s good, Mom and Dad, too.

She’s been amazing with everyone. I’m just overwhelmed, and I can’t help but think, if Nonno could see all this.

” Tears form in the corners of her eyes.

“He’d never shut up about it. He’d be happy to eat off a fruit stand on the side of the road. Or one of those sandwich stands.”

“A little prosciutto and fresh mozz on ciabatta. Dash of balsamic.”

“Fuhgettaboutit.” I laugh despite myself.

“I haven’t seen you smile in a long time.” She dabs at her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized hoodie. “Not like you were today. All day. You’re always so serious.”

“Am not.”

“Okay, Nonno.”

“Scusi?”

“You’re so Nonno. Very stern, focused, harder than you need to be. An old man in a nineteen-year-old’s body.”

Something Niccolò Avello said during the tour earlier today comes roaring back to me.

Because his family has lived and worked on the groves for over two hundred years, he joked that his blood isn’t blood, but juice from the lemon.

Nonno used to say we had wood in our bones. I wonder if that’s what hardened me?

“I miss him, too. I think about him all the time. But you need to loosen up a bit.” Sienna shakes out her arms. “Ever since you moved to Seattle, every time I’ve seen you, it looks like you’re just trying to get through the day.”

I shrug. “Probably because I am.”

Concern floods her face. “That’s no way to live.” She places a hand on my forearm.

I study her ginormous diamond engagement ring. “It’s not that I dread every day.”

“What do you dread?”

How do I answer this—put into words exactly what I dread when I myself don’t even have the answer? My eyes search the grounds of the villa for something, anything, to distract me.

They fall on him .

Fielder.

In the courtyard by the pool, talking to Monroe and Tyler. He’s laughing that full-chested belly laugh that infects everyone around him.

“You’re smiling again,” Sienna says. “Here I was worried you and Fielder would rip each other apart and ruin my wedding by falling into the cake or something.”

“That only happens in cheesy Amazon Prime rom-coms.”

“Who knew it’d actually be you two ripping each other’s clothes off.”

“I—What? We’re not—”

She laughs. “Can I ask why you broke up with him? I still don’t get it.”

“We were on two different—”

“Paths,” she finishes. “I know, I know. You’ve told me that a billion times. But from where I’m standing, your paths seem to be crossing at just the right place, and at just the right time.”

“Dearly beloved, we’re gathered here to celebrate the union of Topher Lemon and Sienna DeLuca,” I say, stiffly mimicking a priest. “It’s not exactly fate.”

“How do you know? And why does it matter if it was or wasn’t?” Sienna asks. “You’re too practical for that anyway. You think it was fate that brought me and Topher together?”

“Actually, yeah, I do. You said you and Monroe were out in the city for her and her twin sister’s birthday and ended up at some hidden speakeasy in the Village you needed a password for, which you didn’t have, and as you were about to leave, the secret bookcase opened and who walked out?”

Sienna’s grinning ear to ear. “I hadn’t seen him in years, since we both left for college, and when I did again, it was like we were the only two people in the entire city.”

I felt the same way earlier at the lemon groves with Fielder. When our pinkies touched like we were the only two people in Italy, and Amalfi belonged to us.

“As if the universe or the cosmos were reintroducing us.” Her eyes are beaming and bright.

I’ve never seen them sparkle like this. I didn’t even know it was possible; I just thought looks like these were something authors wrote in books.

“Our first date, we walked around the Lower East Side and got Artichoke Basille’s pizza.

Very low-key. Our second date, you know what he did?

In his apartment, he re-created the time our moms set up a projector in the backyard and played Disney’s Tangled .

I don’t know if you remember that; you must have been, like, six? But you and Fielder were there.”

Of course I remember that. I didn’t care much for fluffy Disney, preferring bloodier, more action-packed fare. But Fielder cried, and I couldn’t stop looking at him.

“During the song ‘I See the Light,’ he found my hand and we held hands for the rest of the movie. It was really sweet. Topher and I were eleven? Babies!” She continues, telling me how she knew then he was the one.

“He remembers the small things.” She laughs as she reminisces how nothing happened when they were eleven, even though he asked Sienna out all through high school many, many times, but she didn’t want a boyfriend yet.

“Back then, I had Nonno in my ear telling me to work hard and forget about boys. Which I’m grateful for because I ended up laser-focused on a career, and now I’m working with Monroe on building her fashion brand, with my marketing and merchandising expertise.

I get crap a lot, especially from the Coven who ‘joke’ that I’m trying to fleece the golden child.

Or that I’m the one who chose to get married in the most expensive place on earth.

” She shakes her head. “All Topher. I’m happy to go along with it, but I want a life with him, not just a wedding. ”

“You love love him,” I say, almost as if reinforcing it for myself.

“I do. I wasn’t ready for that in high school.

But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t think it’s fate that brings two people together; it’s being ready for love, the kind of love that’s earth-shattering and life-changing and time-consuming.

The stuff hard wood is made from. Remember that old family tree Nonno was working on?

I loved that thing so much. What I loved most was that it felt like he was immortalizing his love with Nonna, our family.

Taking the seed it was grown from and carving our history into it, fortifying it into something that couldn’t be broken. ”

I don’t mention that wood can easily break, so I make vomit noises instead.

“I know, someone kill me.” She reciprocates the vomit sound, and sticks out her tongue. “I sound like a Hallmark card.”

“It’s bad, See,” I say. “But I get it. I am really happy for you.”