Read Online Roman Crazy by Alice Clayton, Nina Bocci - Free Book Online Page A

experience. I mean, as recently as a few years ago at least. And it’s in exactly this kind of work, restoring Romanesque vases.”
    She was quiet for a minute, wheels turning. “You’re serious. Oh my God, you’re serious? This is the best!” She catapulted her lanky body and landed on me, squeezing my neck. “It’s nothing major—not that you couldn’t totally handle major, but it’s just a vase. Well, vases, as in plural. This is kick ass; you know that, right? We can go to work together. You can . . . oh—”
    â€œOh what? Oh no or oh yes? Let’s still focus on the yes!”
    She pulled away, sitting back on her haunches with her phone clutched in her hand. “It’s at my office. We’ve got a restoration studio there and . . .”
    â€œAnd?” I said, not seeing a problem with me coming to volunteer some time in her office and . . . oh.
    â€œMarcello,” we said together.
    She shook her head like crazy after thinking a minute.“You know what? I’ll talk to him tomorrow. It’ll be fine. The work area is on the first floor and he’s way up on five, you’d hardly even run into each other. Maybe. Probably.”
    I nodded, not feeling at all as hopeful and excited as I was a minute ago. Would this work? Would he be okay with this? The idea of helping out in my field, even in a small way, was an exciting prospect. Something that I hadn’t felt in a long time.
    Back home in Boston, whenever I thought about what I was missing out on by choosing to stay at home and not work in my field, I bottled it up. It didn’t matter that I was good, really good, at what I’d studied, what I’d worked toward all those years. I’d made a choice, and when I made that choice I knew full well what I was deciding.
    But still . . . the instinct lingered. I’d been in Rome twenty-four hours and I was throwing my hat into the Romanesque vase ring without a second thought because it just felt right. Even just to volunteer, it was something.
    â€œOh, I almost forgot!” Daisy scrambled off the bed and dashed back into the other room, snapping me back from my own thoughts. When she returned, she looked very proud of herself. “I brought you some coffee to go with your pastry. I wanted you good and sugared up for the rest of the story.”
    â€œThe story?” I asked, taking the coffee and giving it a taste test. Mmm . . .
    â€œThe story, she asks,” she said to herself, rolling her eyes. “The story! You! Marcello! The Love That Ate Barcelona! I gotta hear the rest!”
    I laughed in spite of myself, glad she was getting such a kick out of my long-ago love affair. “Sure, sure, that story. Where’d I stop?”
    â€œPark Güell. Good-looking Italian. Naive yet attractiveAmerican. Never told a soul even though her best friend is awesome. Comes home for a job.”
    â€œThat was succinct.”
    â€œYeah, but you left out all the good stuff, all the in-between. Gimme that part.” She tucked her legs underneath her and got comfortable. There was no way I was getting out of this.
    But I found that in the light of day, sitting here with a great cup of a coffee and a ridiculously good pastry, I wanted to tell the rest of this story. Give it some air and some light and see if it was as bad as I remembered it. Well, only the ending was bad. Everything leading up to that had been . . .
    â€œIt was fucking magic. Daisy, I can barely describe it, it was just . . . God it was good.”
    â€œNow when you say fucking magic, I assume you mean that the fucking was magic ?” She mimed a finger going very specifically into a hole conveniently created by two other fingers, then was quite surprised when a pillow hit her smack in the face. Peeking up over the edge, she blinked. “Too soon?”
    â€œPromise me never to do that