Friday, July 8

FLORENCE

Home sweet home,” Clara said.

Aubrey put her bag down. Their apartment in Florence had high ceilings with exposed rafters, worn hardwood floors, and a beige couch covered in faded pastel cushions. It was early evening, and after two long train rides, Aubrey’s eyelids felt like cement. She ran her fingers along the back of the couch while Clara and Rae unlocked the shutters. Muted light striped the floor; pigeons outside beat their wings.

“Better, right?” Clara dusted off her hands. “Less depressing?”

“Totally,” Rae said.

In the light, Aubrey began to notice other small details of the apartment: the bits of folded newspaper beneath the dining table’s legs, the miniature washing machine squeezed into the equally miniature kitchen, and the old board games shoved beneath a chipped-glass coffee table. There was a cracked vase filled with wilted lavender blossoms on one of the windowsills. Dust motes bobbed through the air.

The room was eerie and cavernous, as silent as a held breath. It made Aubrey think of an old countryside church she’d visited with her parents when they’d first moved to England. She remembered standing in the dark aisle of it, noticing the trees that moved behind stained-glass windows, feeling hushed and somber and still.

She felt that way now.

Although maybe that was because Jonah wasn’t with them.

The apartment had originally been his idea. He’d texted the listing to her at three AM one night with a series of question and exclamation marks. She’d woken up and messaged him back right away with OMG PERFECT! The apartment itself was run-down enough that, split between the five of them, it wasn’t too expensive. And renting it meant they wouldn’t be stuck in hostels for the rest of the trip. It meant they had three whole nights to live in their own place—to make their own food, hang up their own laundry, and practice living like grown-ups.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Gabe said. He took his stuff up to the low-ceilinged second floor, where there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. Aubrey walked toward the windows. She saw laundry lines strung between buildings and someone watering flower boxes on the balcony across the way. But she felt so removed from it all. Like she was living above it, only skimming the surface.

“I’m going out,” she said, turning to her friends.

Clara and Rae were kneeling on the ground, picking through the pieces of an old Monopoly set. “Where to?” Clara asked.

“Not sure. The Duomo’s near here and the Uffizi Gallery. I don’t want to wait till tomorrow. I want to see something tonight.” She tucked one of the apartment’s heavy keys into her pocket and paused a beat before opening the door, waiting to see if they would offer to come with her.

But they didn’t. Clara took out a metal game piece and placed it on the ground, and Rae did the same. There was something about how they were bent toward each other, the way they were both so focused on the exact same thing—it was like when kids play a game that doesn’t make any sense to adults. It was like they were speaking to each other in code.

Aubrey grabbed her wallet and phone. She opened the door.

The area around the Duomo was a tourist haven: souvenir stands and gelato stalls, cute cafés with outdoor tables, everyone wearing sneakers and wraparound sunglasses. And in the center of it all was the Duomo, a cathedral with a spherical, rust-colored top, like a sun caught in perpetual daybreak.

It was pretty. But also boring. Why had she come here all by herself?

She ordered an espresso at the closest café and took a seat at a table outside. At the table beside her was a family: two teenagers—a boy and a girl—and their parents. They had strong Scottish accents, and the teenagers were arguing while their parents wordlessly shared a lemonade. One year ago, that could have been Aubrey and Chris and their parents. It occurred to her that, in her entire life, she’d never been this isolated before—no family, no friends. Even Rae wanted nothing to do with her now. She was floating alone, without a safety net.

And that, she realized, was why she’d chosen Columbia—not just because it was the school of her dreams or because of its great English-lit program or any of the other reasons she’d always given people. She’d chosen it because of Jonah. Because if she was going to leap into the unknown, she wanted to do it with someone who could at least hold her hand.

Okay, okay, she thought. Make a list, Aubrey. Make a list of things you can control.

She tasted her espresso, which was strong and bitter. She imagined being in her bedroom at home, with her desk and her bed and her floral curtains. She imagined sitting on the floor and going through all the books she’d decided to bring to college—Pride and Prejudice and I Capture the Castle and her copy of The Chamber of Secrets, full of the notes she and Rae had written to each other when they were twelve. There were other books—ones about belonging, about leaving, about falling in love. The books she’d chosen to sit on the shelves in her dorm. The books that would keep her company.

Her pulse began to slow; the café seemed to grow quiet.

Gabe pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.

“Gabe!” Aubrey nearly knocked over her espresso. “What are you doing here?”

“Sitting,” he said. His hair was slicked back, like he’d rushed over right after his shower. Like he’d tried to find her as quickly as he could. He picked up a sugar packet and spun it on the table.

“Sitting?” she said. “As in, you followed me here and now you’re sitting, because—because why?”

The daughter of the family at the next table was watching them with interest. But when Aubrey caught her eye, the girl went back to scanning the crowd, her expression sliding into boredom.

“I heard you telling Clara and Rae you were coming here,” he said.

“And you decided to check on me?”

“I decided to come, too.” He leaned into the center of the table. “You said it yourself, Bryce. There’s a lot to see around here.”

A waiter carried a few plates of tomato pasta by Aubrey’s head. She tugged at the sides of her cottony shorts. She wished she’d taken the time to shower and change as well. She wished she didn’t feel like she’d been traveling all day. “This place is pretty crowded,” she said.

“We could leave?” A dimple twitched on the left side of his mouth. “If you want?”

They pushed their chairs back at the exact same time, and, without saying a word, picked a direction and decided to follow it. A moped shot past them and swerved around a corner. They crossed a bridge as the dusky evening crept toward night. Here, the crowds began to fade away and their surroundings slowly transformed. Houses gave way to stretches of stone walls with cypress trees growing behind them. The sound of church bells drifted on the breeze; the cobblestone road was bumpy and uneven. They were walking uphill, which made Aubrey’s muscles strain. But she wouldn’t stop. Gabe took long strides, and she did her best to match them, using each one to leave behind Rae and Jonah and every stupid fight she’d had on every stupid train since she’d left London. She walked until she was completely out of breath, until a few houses began to reappear, all of them painted a bleached yellow. Over the wall running beside them, she saw a miniature Florence laid out below. Red-roofed building after red-roofed building.

“Wow,” she exhaled.

“It’s so—” Gabe said.

“Far away.” She rubbed the side of her face on the shoulder of her shirt. The city seemed impossibly small, like she could reach out and touch the tops of the buildings. Like the evening haze was steam she could wipe away with her fingers.

“You know”—Gabe panted—“I think I kind of remember Florence. I must have come here with my parents when we lived in Madrid. When I was, like, four or something.”

“What do you remember?”

“Mostly Zaida convincing me we should sneak away from our parents. When they found us again, I was crying, but Z played it cool. She told them they should have been more responsible.”

Aubrey felt the corner of her mouth lift. She could imagine tiny Gabe stranded in a crowd of people, gripping his older sister’s hand. But it was also weird to think of him being so young. And even weirder to think that, in a different part of the world, she’d been that young, too. Fourteen years ago, none of her friends had even moved to London yet. They hadn’t known that all their lives were about to collide.

“Do you think you’ll ever live there again?” she asked. “In Spain?”

“My mom would love that,” Gabe said. “She’s pretty worried that she and my dad didn’t take us back there enough. We went for a few summers, and once when my abuelo died, but it always felt really strange. I’d spend every afternoon in my abuela’s house, which was kind of familiar but in ways I couldn’t place. My relatives kept telling me and Z how American we were now.”

“But your sister decided to go back,” Aubrey said. “She’s there now.”

“Sure. But just to study abroad. That doesn’t really count. Anyway, after a couple years at Barnard, Z’s in love with New York. She wants to get her master’s in urban planning, move into a brownstone, and stay there forever. Barcelona definitely isn’t home. Neither of us even speaks Catalan.”

“I’m jealous of her. I wish I was as certain about what I wanted.”

“You are.”

She turned to face him. “You want to know the truth? I have no clue anymore. Everything I planned had something to do with somebody else—this trip was about the future Rae and I used to talk about, New York was about the one I had with Jonah. My life doesn’t make sense now.”

“Your life isn’t supposed to make sense at eighteen.”

“But I hate that!”

“Me too!” He grinned. “I was just trying to make you feel better.”

A small car wheezed up the narrow road, crowding them against one of the houses. Aubrey examined its red front door and sheer curtains, its windowsill with a lavender-painted radio and a pineapple sitting on it. She still felt tired but in a good way. In the way she used to feel when she would run in the woods behind her old house in Connecticut, eventually collapsing on the grass of her backyard. In the way she used to feel when she would swim in the ocean on family trips to Maine, the heaviness of the water pressing down on her. “What do you think?” she asked. “Should we start figuring out our lives?”

“Right now?”

“We’ll start simple.” She pointed behind her. “Do you want to live in that house?”

“Hold up. Explain to me how picking a house is the simple place to start?”

“Because. You can work your way from there: house, job, family, blah, blah, blah.”

He moved slightly closer to get a better look. “I guess I could be into it. These hills would be fun to bike around. And I’m especially feeling that pineapple.”

“If I never live somewhere with a pineapple in the window,” Aubrey said, “I won’t be living at all.”

He laughed, and Aubrey’s mood lightened—it was the first time in days she’d made someone laugh. “Do you want to see what’s up there?” she asked, gesturing at a set of stone stairs built between two small gardens.

They climbed farther above the city. It was nearly dark and everything around them was calm. Aubrey was almost convinced that she and Gabe were entirely alone, that the rest of the city had somehow been abandoned.

They emerged onto a small courtyard surrounded by houses. There was a fountain in the center with a stone lion carved into its base, and outdoor chairs and potted plants were arranged by each of the front doors. A few children’s bikes leaned against one another. A tiger-striped cat slept, curled across the cracked ground.

Aubrey sat on the top step and lay back. Her hair was damp with sweat, and her limbs felt even weaker now.

Gabe sat next to her. “That—was not a fun climb.”

“Shhh,” Aubrey said. “Listen to how quiet everything is. I bet the people who live here don’t want tourists walking around.”

“I get it. We want it to be a surprise when we stroll through their front doors later.”

“So we can hang out in their living rooms.”

“And possibly their kitchens.”

There were no streetlights here, only a few lamp-lit windows and the streaky summer sky. Aubrey had always liked this time of the evening, when it was still just bright enough to make out the shapes of clouds. Someone must have been cooking, because the rich smell of basil, garlic, and tomatoes wafted from a slightly open door. It mixed with the mineral scent of bubbling water in the fountain.

“I liked your idea.” Gabe lay down, too, folding his hands over his stomach.

“Which one?”

“About my major. About studying English. I didn’t sleep much last night, so I did some research on my phone, found all the requirements.”

Aubrey propped herself up on her elbows. “You do realize I was kidding about us figuring out our lives right now?”

The sleeping cat woke up and began padding toward them, eyes bright with curiosity.

Gabe propped himself up as well. “You know what I found out? Reed offers classes in poetry. And that made me think of this interview I read with Leonard Cohen once. The way he talked about writing lyrics, it was like he was talking about writing poetry. You were totally right, Bryce. Music minus the instruments. It’s perfect.”

“Wow,” she said. “First the pineapple house, now your major. I’m on a roll.”

“Yeah.” He breathed out a laugh. “You can honestly plan anything you want for me. You’re pretty decent at it.”

“Okay.” She lay down again, got settled. “Radio.”

“Radio?”

“You have a great voice.” She blushed up at the sky. “It’s not showy or anything—not, like, a voice meant for the stage.”

“Thanks?” he said.

“But it’s low and kind of soothing. It makes everything you say sound convincing. Next year, you should work at your college radio station.”

“How hipster of me,” he said. “Okay. And you should work at your school newspaper. Tell them you want to review museum exhibits and openings and stuff. That way you can go to as many of them as you want for free.”

“Oh my God.” She swatted his arm. “That’s genuinely brilliant.”

“Well.” She could hear the grin in his voice. “I owed you one.”

The cat slunk between them, and Gabe reached out to stroke one of its ears. The fountain gurgled and the distant city hummed. The uncertainty Aubrey had felt earlier began to ease. She had this image—a small, barely tangible one—of what she could be doing next year. Of who she could turn out to be.

“Tell me something else,” she said.

“About what?”

“About New York. About what I’ll be doing there.”

The cat’s tail swished against her arm. When she turned her head to the side, she saw that Gabe’s features were creased, like he was concentrating on something above the clouds. “Okay,” he said. “But consider this practice for my radio show. You need to close your eyes so I can set the scene.”

She closed her eyes. A minute or so passed.

“A dorm room,” he said eventually. “New York City. It’s—nice. I mean, I know it’s a dorm, but you decorate it. You have piles of library books everywhere, and you never turn them in late—mostly because the library is where you spend all your time.”

“I’m such a nerd,” she said.

“Bryce.” His voice was mock-stern. “You can’t interrupt my radio show. And your eyes are open.”

She squeezed them shut again as the cat curled up by her ear and began to purr. The stones beneath her were still sun-warmed.

“Okay,” he said. “You take a bunch of classes, but you also go somewhere new every weekend. You take the Staten Island Ferry, and stand by the railing outside, even when it’s fall and it’s windy. Just so you can watch the Statue of Liberty go by—plus the ticket’s free, Bryce, don’t forget that part. Sometimes you do this kind of stuff with friends, but sometimes you do it by yourself.”

Every word he said made it come to life even more—the streets of New York, a boat on the Hudson, the sidewalk forming under her feet one step at a time.

“When it’s winter,” he said, “you don’t go out as much because of the snow. But in spring, you eat outside on the library steps with everyone else. It makes you think about right now—about these steps we’re sitting on and how all the stuff you do in New York isn’t so different from the stuff you did with us. It makes you think about how connected it all is.” He paused. “Is this getting boring? Can you still see it?”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes shut so tightly it made the light burst around her. “I can see it.”