Page 33

“Master and Apprentice”

“You sure you boys don’t need a ride back into town?” Isabella asks. “Niccolò is almost done with his tour. Or maybe my son? Ma non so dove sia.” Brushing stray hairs away from her eyes, she turns every which way as if that will suddenly draw him out of hiding with Matty. “I find him—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Fielder interrupts. “We can walk. A little exercise will help after all that pasta and pastry.”

“Va bene!” She nods as if she agrees that we both need to work off our pasta bellies. She grabs my shoulders and presses her cheek to mine and makes a kissing noise vigorously. “Buona giornata!”

“I love her.” Fielder nearly skips down the road toward town.

“Her warmth radiates! Look!” He plays what he recorded of us making fresh lemon tiramisu and sweet honey lemon cake.

Isabella’s voiceover says, “Thank you for respecting the lemons. Many people come through here and think they can pick the lemons from our trees themselves. They damage the trees. My husband has worked for many years to get protection for the Amalfi lemon and preserve the coastline, and so many tourists don’t understand the history and importance and how sometimes our ways of life feel so fragile.

We work hard to preserve our history for future generations, like my son. ”

That’s why Nonno taught my father, and then me, his craft. Why I work so hard to one day become the man Nonno taught me to be.

The last thing Isabella said reverberates: “Once you lose something forever, it’s gone.” So simple, yet frighteningly powerful. She held a Sfusato Amalfitano in her hand, and my own hands longed for the grip of Fielder Lemon’s.

“So beautiful, huh? Anyway, sorry.” Fielder slips his phone into his pocket.

No editing software apps, no swiping or pinching or typing or squinting, spending hours editing content for his channel so intensely he would tune out the rest of the world in FTV: Fielder’s Tunnel Vision. It’s oddly unsettling.

“Why are you sorry? You don’t wanna edit? You can.”

“I’m working on being more present. Living in the moment. I’ll edit the footage from today later.” I surprise even myself with this. I’m not itching to be on my phone. At all. “Once we’re back and we’re . . .” He pauses.

Not together , I almost finish for him.

When I don’t respond, he says, “No more FTV.”

“Hmm.” I study his face, the confidence in his voice. He seems calmer, and I want to peel back the layers of the last year, see what else I missed.

“It’s a relatively new development,” he says, turning to look at me.

Though I don’t turn to face him, I feel his stares.

“Being here feels transformative . . . I honestly haven’t felt the need to be on my phone as much since I’ve been here, the lemon groves notwithstanding.

I’m living in the moment. Been doing a lot of that since the Great Commencement Massacre. ”

“The what?”

“Oh, that’s what I call our, um—”

I laugh, maybe too hard. “Wow. Harsh, but . . . it’s good.”

“I thought so.”

“I wish I could live in the moment.”

He scoffs. “You’re king of living in the moment. Remember when your parents took us upstate to Ithaca right before your senior year, and we were hiking in the gorges, and found that swimming hole?”

“We lost them we were so far ahead of them,” I say.

“I was dying of heat, and you took off your shirt and jumped in, even though there were No Trespassing and Warning signs everywhere not to.”

“My dad was so pissed,” I say with a chuckle.

“You were like, ‘Field, get off your phone,’ and you pulled me in and—” He stops because he remembers what happened next.

Though he was self-conscious of swimming without a shirt, I told him that we were the only two around, and that I loved his body.

I wanted him to be as free as I felt in that moment, to see what I saw.

As he peeled off his shirt and tried to cover his soft midsection, I pulled him into the water and ran my hands across his sides and told him how hot he looked.

We swam across the pool and found an alcove and kissed for what felt like hours. It was only minutes, but it was heaven.

He clears his throat. “I still think about how we sat in that alcove on the rocks, kicking our feet in the water and played I Spy.” We took turns describing every little detail of what surrounded us. “I felt like a kid. You were always good at that. Seizing the moment, making everything fun.”

“I haven’t felt like that in a while,” I confess.

The closer we get to the center of town, the more crowded it becomes.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

How do I say the second I made the decision to break up with him was the second I stopped living in the moment?

I let fear of holding Fielder (and myself) back, geographical distance, the improbability of high school love lasting worry me, until all I could think about was the future and how it might destroy us, this idea that I needed Fielder to have his entire life together, direction and all, that I needed him to know who he was going to be when I myself was afraid of the unknown.

I robbed us of the ability to see how it might play out in real time.

Proceeded with caution.

And look where it’s gotten me.

What would Nonno think? Despite seeming like an old-school conservative Italian on the outside, he loved love, and believed in diving headfirst into the now.

Taking risks. That’s why he married Nonna and moved their entire lives to the States.

Why he always said to say what I needed to say, and to never be afraid of love.

Maybe that’s been what’s held me back from Cam.

Fielder elbows me. Deep in thought, I hadn’t been paying attention to where we were walking. Apparently, Fielder led me through the winding streets, carved a path for us between hordes of tourists, to the alley where Niccolò said I would find the best woodworker in Amalfi, Guiseppe Bernadi.

Fielder jiggles the door handle to no avail and curses. Locked. “They’re closed. Sorry, Ric, I know how badly you wanted to come here.” He peers through the window and shouts, “Hello! Buongiorno! Anybody . . . home?” His knocking grows frantic.

There’s a small sign on the door above the handle: Guiseppe Bernadi è andato a Milano e tornerà ad Agosto. Vista guiseppe-bernadi .it per maggiori informazioni!

“Nobody’s inside, but wow, you should see some of these pieces!” He moves out of the way so I can get a closer look.

But I’m watching him, the way his face is a mixture of concern for my happiness, but also excitement from wanting me to see the beautiful work inside.

Though Fielder has always been slightly self-focused, it’s never at my expense.

When it’s time for Fielder to enter my world, he’s always first in line and ready to ride.

“I really am sorry, Ricky—”

“Stop apologizing.” I point at the sign. “He’s in Milan until August. So it wouldn’t have mattered if we came here two days ago or three days from now.”

“Does he know the Ricky DeLuca is in Amalfi for only a limited time? You should leave a card.”

“Who uses business cards?”

“Touché.” Fielder scratches his head. The blond radiates in the sunlight. “Maybe there’s another woodworker. Didn’t Niccolò—”

“I checked last night online, and the other name he gave me doesn’t have a public shop, so basically no info. I don’t want to show up to some guy’s house out of the blue, even if he’s a friend of the Avellos’. That’s stalker behavior.”

Fielder laughs. “Well, guess it means these people are missing out on meeting the greatest craftsman of his generation. One day you’ll have a shop here.”

“You’ll farm lemons, and I’ll make custom pieces for tourists.

” I peer inside, and though there aren’t many pieces, what I see is stunning—intricately carved chairs, tables, benches exactly like the ones at the Avello farm, a custom bar and an armoire, towering cabinets, and intricately carved grandfather clocks.

Tools are scattered about the shop as if Guiseppe left in a hurry, and I wonder what took him to Milan.

Perhaps a long-lost love, or an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. Maybe both? “His work is beautiful.”

My mind wanders to what a shop of my own would look like, what kind of pieces I would make—would I focus on custom furniture?

Create my own line? Or I’ll do what Dad does and be a contractor for engineers who want custom pieces, or do what Nonno did once he got too old to build his own designs and focus on fixing things for other people.

According to Christian Richards, I’m a “visionary still discovering my point of view,” very much an apprentice.

Fielder was always the dreamer; I was the practical one. In order to become a master craftsman, I’ll have to figure out how to dream, and execute what I dream.

“What’ll we call the shop?”

“The Woodworker and the Dreamer,” he says, and my breath catches.

How does he know that title? My eyes narrow.

“I heard there’s an old paper mill museum we could go to?

” Fielder stammers, changing the subject and looking everywhere but at me.

He starts walking ahead of me, leaving me behind.

“Niccolò mentioned it yesterday. From the thirteenth century. Could be cool to see machinery and tools from back then. Tick all your boxes. Or we could go back to the villa and hang at the pool or sea. I haven’t been down there yet.

” Fielder hates museums, but I don’t want to go back to the villa yet.

I want to stay in the here and now with the dreamer.

Breathless, I run after him, not paying attention to what’s in front of me and slam directly into him. “Let’s do—oof!”

“Ricky, wait.” Fielder’s breathing heavy. He looks like he’s seen a ghost.

“What?”

“I didn’t want to say anything because it wasn’t my place and I didn’t know and and and, but—”

“Fielder, you’re rambling again,” I say, but he takes me by the hand and points down a nearby alley that funnels out to the beach.

Framed by one terracotta building and one mosaic stone is Cam and some American Eagle Matty-looking guy, chest to chest, lips locked, Cam’s messy curls between his fingers.

I clench Fielder’s hand tight, then let go out of fear I might break his bones.

The audacity of Cam to demand I define our relationship, then do this? On a vacation paid for by my family, for my sister’s wedding?

“You knew?” I ask Fielder.

“I saw Cam yesterday with that same dude, but it was right before that Vespa almost killed me, and I didn’t actually see anything, so there wasn’t proof, and I—Where are you going?” Fielder calls after me, but I’m already gone.