Friday, July 8

FLORENCE

Rae lined up the tarnished Monopoly pieces along the pockmarked wooden floor. The room rang with the sound of Aubrey closing the door, but Rae didn’t bother looking up or even acknowledging that she was gone. Clara was watching her, probably wondering what she was thinking and why she hadn’t tried to make up with Aubrey.

But the truth was pretty simple: Rae was still pissed off. And the more she thought about it, the more pissed off she got. Aubrey had spent the whole summer talking about her-and-Jonah or her-and-Gabe or her-and-all-the-things-about-New-York-she-was-afraid-of. She’d talked about her plans and what she wanted out of this trip, but she’d never cared if any of that matched what Rae wanted.

A year ago, that might not have bugged Rae so much, but maybe what Aubrey had said on the train was true—maybe Rae was changing. Maybe they were growing apart.

And now, on top of all that, Rae knew that Gabe was in love with Aubrey. And—holy shit! What was she supposed to do with information like that? Was she supposed to keep it a secret? She had so many secrets now that they were impossible to keep track of. It felt like they were crushing her.

“Rae?” Clara’s voice made everything go still.

Rae’s eyes met hers.

Gabe’s footsteps squeaked on the stairs, and Clara looked to the side. Rae picked up a Monopoly top hat, pressing it until she felt an indent in her forefinger and thumb.

“That was fast,” Clara said to Gabe.

His hair was dripping wet, and his shirt was rumpled around his stomach, like he’d just pulled it on. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m all about—water conservation. Saving the planet. Stuff like that.”

“Okay,” she said, clearly confused. “Are you going somewhere?”

He paused by the front door. “I thought I might walk around. You know. Get a feel for the area.”

“Sure,” Rae said flatly. “Walking is good.” She put the top hat down and picked up a tiny metal dog. The door opened and shut again. But Clara was still right there, hair piled on top of her head, twisting a heart-shaped ring around her index finger. It dawned on Rae that there was no one else here. She and Clara were finally alone.

“Do you want to get food?” Clara asked.

“Now?” Rae asked. “Together?”

“Now,” Clara said. “Together.”

“Cool.” Rae stood up, legs shaky. “I’ll just—let me get changed first.”

Upstairs in the bedroom, she quietly panicked. She didn’t know what to wear. She didn’t know how to look like the type of person Clara would go on a date with. (If this even was a date. Which maybe it wasn’t. But then again, maybe it was!) Okay, okay, Rae, you’ve been on dates before. You are totally good at dates. She settled on a jersey dress with a strappy back she’d been too self-conscious to wear before and fussed with her short hair until it curled around her chin in a way that was, thankfully, cute. Usually, the feeling of makeup on her face creeped her out, but she decided on some eye shadow and flavored lip gloss. Just in case.

Back downstairs, Clara had put away the board games and was sitting on the back of the couch. Rae resisted the urge to tug and fidget with the thin material of her dress. She felt raw and nervous, her blood buzzing in her veins. “Okay,” she said. “You—um—ready?”

Clara stepped forward and took Rae’s hand, their fingers sliding and fitting together. “Yes,” Clara said. “I’m ready.”

Rae’s impressions of Florence at night were a blur.

She managed to register a line of restaurants, buildings with sandy exteriors, and postcard racks crowding the sidewalks. With each step she and Clara took, all she could think was this is a date, this is a date, this is a date. Her heart beat in her palm. Even walking was giving her motion sickness.

“So,” she said. “Is there somewhere you want to go?”

“I have an idea,” Clara said.

“Great!” Rae said. As long as you don’t let go of my hand, she thought. As long as I don’t somehow realize I’m still asleep on a train from Prague to Vienna and this is all a dream.

They stopped for pistachio and hazelnut gelato, and then Clara led them to a rose garden that curled along a hillside with visitors lying on the grass, gazing down at the city. A few bronze sculptures were dotted around the lawns. They must have been part of some modern-art exhibit—a few were shaped like cubes, others like arcs that appeared to dip in and out of the ground.

Clara dropped her beat-up purse beside one of the arcs and climbed on top of it.

“Should you be doing that?” Rae asked.

Clara got settled. “Sitting here?”

“Yeah. What if we get in trouble?”

“Aubrey?” Clara scanned the area. “Where are you? Why does your voice sound exactly like Rae’s?”

“Very funny.”

“I thought so.” Clara tucked a loose piece of her hair into one of her bobby pins. “Look around. If we weren’t supposed to climb them, a sign would say don’t climb the sculptures. Anyway, since when do you care this much about rules? You used to skip European History all the time, because you said Mr. Carson was too sympathetic to patriarchal systems of government.”

Rae adjusted the straps of her dress. “Guess I can’t argue with that.”

She clambered up to join Clara, feeling the cold, mottled bronze against the backs of her thighs when she sat down. She had to brace her feet against the side to stop herself from slipping off, but the view made all the discomfort worthwhile: She saw the Duomo and craggy apartment tops and church spires. This had to be her favorite thing ever—looking onto something that was so much bigger than she was, getting a small sense of how expansive the world could be. She’d felt that way sitting on the beach in Georgia when she was a kid. And hanging out in the back of her mom’s antique shop, looking at pictures of Australia’s coastlines in these old guidebooks Lucy had collected.

Clara tugged at the ring on her index finger. “You don’t feel weird, do you?”

“No,” Rae said. And then, “Wait. Do you?”

Clara shook her head. “Not even a little bit.”

“Great. I’m glad.” But she wondered why Clara wasn’t holding her hand anymore. Would it be awkward if she took hers instead? Farther down the hill, a couple lay on a picnic blanket, whispering in each other’s ears.

“Rae,” Clara said. “Did—did you really think I was straight? Until I told you about Leah?”

Rae began to skid down the arc. She pressed her palms against it to keep herself from falling. “Honestly? I did. I mean, you never said so explicitly, but I guess I assumed.” She pushed some curls away from her forehead and felt frustrated by how heteronormative she kept being. She really, really didn’t want to fuck this up. “But it doesn’t matter what I thought,” she added. “I guess I was just a little surprised that you never told me you liked girls. Obviously, you didn’t have to. But if anyone would have understood, it would have been me.”

“I didn’t think there was anything to tell,” Clara said. “When that whole thing with Leah happened, I didn’t know if it meant I was a lesbian or bi or pansexual or what. All I knew was that I liked kissing boys, and I liked kissing her, too.”

“So she just kissed you? Out of nowhere?”

Clara squinted at the sunset. “She came backstage to the costume room one day when I was fixing hemlines. I thought she must have been bored with rehearsal or something, but instead, she told me how obvious it was that I was into her. And then, somehow, we were making out.”

“Romantic,” Rae said.

“Shut up.” Clara shoved Rae’s shoulder, making Rae lose her balance again. Clara grabbed her arm, pulling her back up.

“Thanks,” Rae said.

“You’re welcome.”

She was still holding Rae, and they were sitting so much closer now, hip bones touching. Rae inhaled, and the evening air smelled like roses. She exhaled and said, “But you never dated her?”

“We kissed a couple of times, but that was it. We never even talked about it afterward. I tried once, but Leah got super evasive. She told me I was being clingy.”

“Wow. I always knew I didn’t like her, but it turns out I actually hate her.”

Clara shook her head. “You shouldn’t.”

“Yeah, I should. She treated you like crap, which means that she is, by definition, crap. In fact, do you have her number? I’ll call her right now and tell her exactly how crap she is.”

“But this kind of thing happens all the time.” Clara twisted her ring around her finger again. Her dress was green with small red polka dots. It matched the scene perfectly. “You hook up with someone, but you’re not in love with them. You don’t even have a crush on them. I can’t be mad at Leah for doing to me what I’ve done to other people.”

“Seriously,” Rae said. “You are nothing like Leah.”

“Maybe not. But sometimes a kiss doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a kiss. And that’s another reason I wanted to talk to you.” She sat up straighter. And Rae’s throat began to close up. Please, oh, please, she thought. Please don’t say it was just a kiss with me.

“I know I was flirting with you in Amsterdam,” Clara said, “and I know I kissed you first in Prague, so if this isn’t a big deal to you, I completely understand. But you should know something: It is a big deal to me. The reason I kissed you is that I like you, Rae. I like you so much.”

The wind shifted and played across them. Rae felt like the whole garden was whirling. In the past year, she had dreamed of this exact moment so many times. She’d imagined the places they would stand and the tone of Clara’s voice and the way their hands and lips might touch. Rae had felt the thrill of believing—even for one second—that this was possible. But she’d never imagined how nervous she would be, or the flowers that would be growing all around them, or the way they would both sit teetering on this ridiculous sculpture. And she never could have guessed how, even when it was happening, it would still feel like a fantasy. Like maybe even this garden wasn’t real. Like maybe this was all just a story Rae was telling herself.

“Clara,” she said. “I like you so much it makes my stomach hurt. I’ve liked you for so long, but I didn’t know what to do about it, which is a first for me, because I’ve known how to handle a crush since, like, middle school. The only reason I didn’t kiss you is because I was scared of screwing things up. I wasn’t sure you would want to kiss me back.”

Clara’s face went a deep shade of crimson. “You liked me for so long?”

“Yes.” Rae gripped the sculpture and focused on the branches above, on their slender green leaves and blooming roses. “Ever since last summer, when we’d hang out all the time. I hated waking up in the morning and knowing we had to go different places. I hated thinking about what would happen when Aubrey and Jonah and Gabe came back and I didn’t have you to myself anymore.”

Clara’s knee rested against Rae’s. “That summer was the first time I was one-hundred-percent certain I liked girls. It made me wonder about all the girls I could have been kissing.”

“All the girls?” Rae asked. She wanted to sound confident, but she knew she didn’t. She could feel herself unraveling.

“No,” Clara said softly. “Not all.”

Her pinkie finger moved to the fabric of Rae’s dress. Rae noticed the dark plum nail polish she’d applied that morning on the train from Vienna. She heard Clara’s breath, quiet and persistent beneath the sounds of the garden and the city and the night. They leaned into each other, their lips only inches apart. Clara touched Rae’s face, and Rae touched Clara’s—and they tumbled right off the sculpture, landing in a heap.

Clara burst out laughing. “That was totally your fault!”

“Was not!” Rae brushed dirt from her arms. But those had definitely not been her best moves.

“It really was,” Clara said. And then they were finally kissing again, dizzying and fast. Rae’s hands touched Clara’s neck, arms, waist. Clara pulled Rae to her, their bodies lining up, eyelashes brushing each other’s cheeks. They stopped for a moment, hearts pounding, to catch their breath.

Grass was tangled in Clara’s red hair, and the evening light blushed deep behind her. She rested her hand against Rae’s cheek before kissing her again. And Rae didn’t care if this was against the rules or if they were about to get yelled at or even kicked out of the park.

Because at that moment, no one else was there. The garden had grown out to cover the world, and they were alone.