Chapter 8

Eric

 

I was awake before the alarm. We were heading to Pompeii today, and I’d been so excited I’d barely slept. Every time I’d checked the clock, I’d thought, What? It’s still not time to go yet? Come on!

But finally, it was a reasonable time to get up, shower, eat breakfast, and head for the train station because we were going to Pompeii. Fuck yeah. Kid on Christmas. Right here.

Not surprisingly, Andrew was already up. In fact I was pretty sure I’d heard him get out of bed a while ago, and now he was in his usual morning spot—the desk by the window, hunched over his laptop.

“Hey.” I sat up, rubbing my eyes. “How goes the job hunt?”

“It’s, um…” Something about his tone made me sit straighter. He was chewing his lip and staring at the screen, and he looked…edgy?

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and as I pulled on a pair of shorts, asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Well, nothing is… I mean…” His knee bounced rapidly and he tapped his nails on the desk. “There’s this company in Cedar Rapids that wants an interview.”

“Oh. That’s good, right?”

“Yeah.” Andrew swallowed. Then he turned to me, but immediately dropped his gaze. “Except they want to do the interview today. Like, this afternoon.”

“That’s great! They must really—” The piece dropped into place. “Oh. This afternoon, like, when we’re heading to Pompeii.”

Eyes still down, he nodded. “I mean, if we leave now and get to the hotel, we’ll—”

“But there’s no guarantee the WiFi will be as solid as it is here.”

Andrew finally looked at me, and he nodded again. “If you want to go on ahead to Pompeii, I can catch a train in the morning and—”

“No, no.” I got up and moved toward him. “Andrew, I’m not going to ditch you.”

“But…the trip…”

I stepped around behind him, slid my hands down over his chest, and kissed his cheek. “We’ll just bump the reservation by a day.”

He tilted his head back and looked up at me as he laced our fingers together. “What are you going to do today, then?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. I haven’t had coffee yet.”

He laughed, though it was halfhearted. “Are you sure about this? We’re—”

“Yes.” I pressed a kiss to his forehead and squeezed his hands. “You getting a job is important. We can shuffle things around here, and I mean, it’s not exactly a huge imposition for me to lounge around in Rome.”

This time, the laugh had a little more feeling. “Okay.” He brought one of my hands up and kissed the inside of my wrist. “I guess I’ll tell them I’m available, then.”

“Perfect. And then we can go find you some coffee and, you know, other ways to relax before your interview.”

That brought some life back into his eyes. “Mmm, coffee.”

“What about the other part?”

“Eh. It’s Italy. Coffee.”

I rolled my eyes and huffed with mock exasperation as I started to pull away. “Fine. We’ll go get you some—”

“Get over here,” he laughed, and tugged me into his lap. “The coffee can wait.”

 

***

 

While Andrew had his Skype interview in our room, I was in the pub next door, using their WiFi to try to organize our trip in between nibbling some barbecue chicken nachos. Seriously, I hadn’t come to Rome for nachos of all things, but these things were amazing.

My progress with shuffling our trip around? Not so much.

Bumping our reservations by a day had been a good idea on paper, but in my pre-coffee fog, I’d forgotten we’d already booked tickets for a tour of Palatine Hill and the Forum for that day. We had nothing booked for the day after that, but the Palatine Hill and Forum tours were sold out, and no matter how I tried to swing it, I couldn’t move our various tours around enough to make sure we saw everything. Something was going to have to get canceled.

And to further complicate things, our hotel in Pompeii was completely full, and while they were willing to let us check in tomorrow instead of today—while still paying for tonight, of course—they needed us to check out at the end of our current reservation. Apparently there were a couple of cruise ships coming in the day we left, and while there were a few hotels with rooms available, massive crowds were expected at both Pompeii and Herculaneum. I’d anticipated crowds because it was peak tourist season. Cruise ship crowds? No, thank you.

So, as disappointing as it was, I conceded that the best solution was to come back to Rome the day we had originally planned. Which meant we’d most likely have to skip Herculaneum.

Sighing, I tugged another chip free from the gooey pile of nachos. Okay, so this wasn’t the most ideal plan, and I was bummed about not going to Herculaneum, but we’d still get to see Pompeii. That was the important part as far as I was concerned. And Andrew would get to do his interview, which I hoped like hell worked out for him. As stressed as he was about finding a job, he needed this. In fact, it was good for both of us. I still felt guilty for encouraging him to join me in Italy instead of going back to Iowa to look for a job. If he managed to lock something down while he was here, then he could relax and enjoy the rest of the trip, and so could I. So, I could live with the change of plans, and I had all my crossables crossed for him.

And when he walked into the pub, I didn’t have to ask how it had gone.

The downward slope of his shoulders. The way he avoided my eyes as he came toward the table. The frustrated tightness of his lips.

I fought off a grimace and, as he sat down, asked, “So…?”

Andrew leaned back and sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I blew it.”

“What? How?” I touched his knee under the table. “Everyone gets nervous during interviews. Interviewers expect it.”

“I know. And I…” He put his hand over mine and met my gaze. “I just, I drew a blank on everything. It was like, you know when you cram really hard and sweat bullets over an exam in college? Then you sit down and it all disappears? It was like that.” He watched his thumb tracing the back of mine. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re—” I blinked. “Sorry? Why?”

“Because you put our trip on hold for a day so I could do this interview, and I fucking blew it.”

I stared at him, struggling to make sense of what he was saying. “Andrew, you don’t owe it to me to ace an interview.” I turned my hand over to clasp his. “I just wanted you to nail it down so you don’t have to worry about finding a job. Not because I had to shuffle some vacation things around.”

He pursed his lips and kept his gaze down. “I guess I just felt like… I mean, we could be in Pompeii right now. But instead we’re hanging out here.” He paused, then finally looked at me, his eyes as apologetic as his tone. “I didn’t want you to be stuck here for nothing.”

“It’s not for nothing.”

“Putting off Pompeii until tomorrow is for nothing.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m… I’m just frustrated that it didn’t work out, and I’m pissed at myself for getting so keyed up that I blew the interview.” Laughing bitterly, he shook his head. “I was so determined to get this right so it wouldn’t be for nothing, and look out that turned out.”

I studied him for a moment, then stiffened. “Wait, was that why you were so nervous? Because you didn’t want me to waste a day of my vacation?”

The way he averted his eyes said it all.

“Did… Did you…” I squeezed his hand. “Did I put too much pressure on you?”

“No, it wasn’t your fault.” He scrubbed his free hand over his face. “I put it on myself.”

“Because of me.”

He didn’t answer immediately, but I knew. And I was pretty sure he knew I knew. Guilt burned in my chest. Christ, had he missed an awesome opportunity because he was nervous about disappointing me?

Before I could speak, Andrew said, “Eric.” He met my gaze, his brow creased and his lips tight. “You’ve bent over backwards for me ever since we started this whole thing. And I didn’t want you giving up an entire day for nothing.”

“It wasn’t for nothing.”

He eyed me as if to say, Yeah? How do you figure?

I could have given him some platitudes, but he wouldn’t be any more receptive to those than I would’ve been in his shoes. Instead, I squeezed his hand. “We still have time today to wander around Rome and find something to do. We’ll still have time to do Pompeii.” I decided to hold off on mentioning Herculaneum until he’d regrouped a bit. “A few hours is a small price to pay so you can work on finding a job, and if another interview comes through, I’ll happily wait while you do that one too. This is important. Pompeii’s been there for two thousand years. It’s not going anywhere.”

“But when are either of us going to have a chance to see it again?”

“We’ll figure that out. But I don’t want you going into an interview thinking about me at all. It’s your job and your future.” I brought his hand up and kissed his fingers, not giving a damn who saw. “That’s a lot more important to me than what I do on my vacation.”

He held my gaze, and slowly—so slowly—started to relax. Exhaling, he shifted his attention to our joined hands. After a moment, he nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind if another interview comes up. I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t apologize,” I whispered. “We’re still finding our footing. And I mean, I appreciate that you were concerned about my time and how I felt. I just don’t want you making me a priority when it comes to a job interview.”

Andrew searched my eyes, then managed to smile. “Okay. I won’t.” He exhaled. “Don’t know if there will be any more interviews while I’m here, but I’ll keep that in mind.” He cast a self-conscious glance around the nearly empty restaurant, then leaned in to quickly kiss my cheek. “Thank you.”

“Any time.”

 

***

 

Since we were only spending two nights in Pompeii, we didn’t bother bringing our suitcases. Everything we needed for the short trip fit into a couple of backpacks, so we left the rest in our room and headed for the train station, which turned out to be just beyond the pavilion where we’d gotten on the hop-on hop-off bus the first day.

The place was bustling with activity, and my first instinct was to be intimidated by all the chaos. I was used to navigating airports, though, so a train station couldn’t be that complicated.

Turned out it wasn’t. Once we found the ticket machines and figured out how to change the language to English, it was pretty straightforward. Buy tickets while fending off beggars. Match train number to the trains on the reader board while avoiding pickpockets. Go to the corresponding platform while fending off beggars and avoiding pickpockets. Easy.

As we boarded, I gestured at one of the tables. “Want to sit here so we’re facing each other?”

“That’s fine as long as you’re the one moving backwards.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I get motion sickness if I do.”

“Fair enough.” I put my bag in the luggage rack above our heads and took the rear-facing seat.

Andrew added his bag to the rack but didn’t sit yet. “I could go for something caffeinated. Want anything?”

I shrugged. “Whatever you’re having.”

He smiled and, as he walked past, gave my shoulder a little squeeze. Goose bumps prickled along my arm, and he left me smiling like a fool from that simple touch. Funny how easy it was for him to get my entire body to react. He was casually affectionate in a way I’d missed for a long time—deliberately making contact even when he knew there was no chance of it turning into sex. I hadn’t realized until him how much I’d been missing that in my last relationship.

Just enjoy it. Don’t overthink it or start obsessing again over what happens after Italy. Just enjoy it.

He seemed to be enjoying it now too. He’d been a little on edge all day yesterday after the interview, though I couldn’t tell how much of that had been because he’d blown his interview and how much was from thinking he’d disappointed me somehow. And I’d felt guilty myself for how worried he’d been over needing to change our plans. But after an afternoon of exploring the city and stuffing ourselves with so much utterly decadent Italian food that sex had been absolutely out of the question, we’d collapsed into bed, and this morning, he’d seemed like his usual self. I’d felt like my usual self too. And of course that quickie in the shower hadn’t hurt anything.

I shivered, grinning to myself.

The train was just easing into motion when Andrew returned from the dining car with a couple of Cokes and little chocolate muffins. Not exactly breakfast of champions, but the Coke would keep me awake and the first piece I broke off the muffin was delicious. Worked for me.

“So how long is the trip?” he asked as he peeled the paper off his muffin.

“Little over an hour, if I was reading the thing right.” I popped the tab on my Coke. “We switch trains in Naples, and then it’s like twenty minutes or something. We’ll be in Pompeii in time to check into our hotel and go get lunch.”

“Funny—on a map, it all looked a lot farther away.”

“Right?” I chuckled. “Gotta love Europe. Everything looks huge, but it’s so not.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”

We settled in for the trip and watched the city turn into farmland. Herds of sheep grazed on lush green fields, and a few huge stone houses loomed over sprawling vineyards. Eventually, we left the flat farmlands and rolling vineyards just outside of Rome and headed through low mountains dotted with houses and more farms.

Gazing out the window, Andrew absently said, “Going back to the U.S. is going to be weird.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He tapped his knuckle on the window. “Iowa doesn’t look anything like this.”

I didn’t imagine it did. Washington didn’t either.

“It’s not just the landscape,” he went on, still watching the scenery. “I just… I feel like I’m on another planet right now, but it’s… everything, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

Andrew’s lips pursed, and he stared out the window for a moment before turning to me again. “It’s like, I’ve been away from everything that’s normal in my life. Familiar terrain. My job. Well, when I had one. That’s been my life for a long time, but less than a month of being over here and relaxing…” He sighed. “I think I’m going to feel like I’m landing on an alien planet when I get home.”

“I know the feeling,” I said quietly. “I’ve lived and breathed my job for so long, I forgot what it was like to do anything else. Now I have no idea how I’m going to shift gears back to that life when I get home.”

Wasn’t that the truth? I’d finally learned to stop trying to check in at work—my brother and my assistant refused to tell me anything anyway since they had it under control and wanted me to enjoy my vacation. Getting back into that groove when I got home? That was going to be seriously weird.

But it was still over a week away, so I tried not to think too much about it. After all, that meant thinking about life after Andrew, and I wasn’t ready for that yet.

“So when we get back to Rome,” I said, “is there anything you still want to see?”

“There’s a lot to see. I saw the stuff I really wanted. What about you?”

“I asked you first.”

He squirmed a bit, chewing his lip. “Well, I was, um… I was kicking around online this morning before we left, and there’s a tour of the bone church and the catacombs.”

“There’s a bone church in Rome?”

Andrew nodded. “Yeah. I guess it was a Franciscan monastery at one time. The one St. Francis of Assisi started. And they made, like…” He gestured as if he were indicating something on the ceiling and the walls. “Decorations. Out of each other’s bones.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Okay, that could be interesting.”

“Right? The same tour goes out to the catacombs, too. So that could be worth checking out.” He paused, some shyness creeping into his expression. “If you want to. I know you’re not a fan of guided group tours.”

“And I made an exception for the Alhambra, didn’t I?” I smiled and reached across the table to put my hand over his. “Send me a link when we have Wi-Fi again, and I’ll get us tickets.”

He relaxed a little, the shyness ebbing slightly. “Really?”

“Of course.” I squeezed his hand before withdrawing mine. “It’s something you want to do, and it sounds really cool. I’m in.”

We exchanged smiles and gazed out the window at the passing scenery. We were deep in farm country now, and the landscape was beautiful, but my eyes kept focusing on Andrew’s reflection instead of the rolling hills and grassy pastures.

He was still worried at every turn about suggesting we go somewhere or do something, because in his mind, this was still my trip and he was just tagging along, especially after his interview had thrown a monkey wrench into our plans. In my mind, it probably should’ve still been my honeymoon, but I’d stopped thinking about it like that a long time ago. As far as I was concerned, it was me and Andrew and had been from day one. He was no longer some stranger I’d bumped into on a cruise ship and fallen into bed with. He was Andrew. He was my traveling companion by day and my lover at night.

And if there was anything I was dreading when I got back to Seattle—anything I couldn’t stop thinking about now matter how hard I tried—it was life after Andrew. In under a month, he’d settled into my world and nestled under my skin like he belonged there, and the thought of him not being there anymore was too weird for words. It seemed wrong. I couldn’t even tell myself I was just afraid of going back to my life without my ex-fiancé. I was ready for that part. Now that we’d buried the hatchet and weren’t so hostile anymore, I was ready to move on without Chris. Hell, I already had moved on without Chris.

I just couldn’t get my head around moving on without Andrew.

Fortunately unaware of the thoughts bouncing around inside my head, Andrew gestured past me at something out the window. “I’m gonna guess that’s Vesuvius.”

I twisted around. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected. I’d spent my life in the shadow of Mount Rainier, so when I thought about a volcano looming over a city, that was what I’d expected—huge, rocky, and snow-covered.

Vesuvius was enormous, far bigger than Rainier seemed when viewed from Seattle, but only because it was so much closer than Rainier was to Seattle. Having been up close and personal with Rainier—including a trek to the top my left knee would never let me forget—I was well aware of how big that mountain actually was. Vesuvius was more like a hill on steroids. Or like two hills squashed together since it kind of dipped in the middle. It wasn’t exactly a molehill, but it was hardly Mount Rainier.

“Amazing that people still live that close to it,” Andrew said. “That would be kind of unnerving.”

“Eh.” I shrugged, facing him again. “That’s what scientists are for. As long as they don’t think it’s going to do anything, it’s probably safe.”

“Yeah, but what if it does decide to do something?” He squirmed. “I mean, how much time would you really have?”

“They had time to evacuate before St. Helens went off. I think the tech is a lot more advanced now, so I doubt it would catch anyone off guard.” I paused. “Well, I mean, unless a big earthquake set it off or something.”

Andrew shuddered. “No, thank you.”

“Uh-huh. And how much warning do you have for a tornado?”

He pursed his lips. “Okay, fair point. And nobody listens anyway. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at a restaurant or in a store when a tornado siren goes off, and people just glance around and go right back to what they were doing.”

I stared at him. “Seriously?”

“Oh yeah. My uncle always said if you can hear the siren, then there must not be a tornado because you wouldn’t be able to hear anything but the wind at that point.” He shrugged. “Not entirely accurate, but I’ve known a few people who live like it is.”

“You ever been through a tornado?”

“There’ve been a few that have touched down a little close for my comfort, and I’ve seen a few, but none have ever been close enough to damage whatever building I was in.” He tapped his knuckle on the table between us. “Knock on wood.”

It was my turn to shudder. “Nope. Fuck that.”

He just laughed.

The train slowed a bit as we continued into Naples. Maybe it was just the area we were in, but Naples seemed a lot more rundown than Rome. There were sleek high rises in the distance, but at least near the train tracks, buildings were somewhat more modern than those in Rome and significantly more worn down. Graffiti covered every surface a person could realistically get to with a spray paint can. There were glass walls alongside the tracks—presumably to cut down on noise for the apartments on the other side—and a number of the glass panels were spider-webbed like they’d been hit with rocks.

Not long after we got into Naples, we reached the station and switched to the train going to Pompeii. Shortly after that, we were in a cab and on our way to our hotel. I thought our driver made a wrong turn since the street looked more like a neighborhood than a place I’d expect to find a hotel, but after about a block and a half, he stopped under a sign that matched the name on the reservation.

The hotel was more like a large house than a Holiday Inn or whatever. There was an elaborate and fragrant garden out front, and a handful of cars wedged into tiny spaces in the small driveway-turned-parking-lot. A sign directed us up the front steps and into a lobby that, not surprisingly, resembled a living room aside from the high desk and rack full of tourist information.

The women at the reception desk spoke English, so neither of us had to make any pitiful attempts at conversational Italian. She gave us the usual rundown—when and where breakfast was served, checkout time, Wi-Fi details, how to get to our room—and handed us our keys.

“And how do we get to the ruins?” I asked.

“Follow the street you came in.” She gestured outside and to the left. “At the end, go right, and you’ll see signs. It’s about a fifteen-minutes walk.”

“Perfect. Thank you.” I took the key, and Andrew and I followed her instructions down the labyrinth of narrow hallways to our room.

In the room, Andrew set his bag beside the bed. The left side, of course. We’d never discussed who took which side of the bed, but from the first night we’d stayed together on the ship, he’d taken the left and I’d taken the right. I wasn’t sure why, but that struck me, and I found it both cute and kind of unnerving—like we’d fallen into a routine as a couple, which was endearing and terrifying at the same time.

While he took his toiletry kit into the bathroom, I picked up one of the maps fanned out on the table under the mirror.

“So what do you think we should do now?” I asked over my shoulder. “It’s still pretty early.”

“Don’t know. I didn’t get a chance to look and see what there is to do here. Or in Naples.”

I thumbed through the dog-eared guidebook beside the maps. “Doesn’t look like there’s all that much, especially in Pompeii. Aside from the ruins, I mean.”

The bathroom light clicked off and his voice was closer now. “And we’re not doing that until tomorrow, right?”

“Right. So we’ve got the rest of today to do… I have no idea what.”

“Well.” He wrapped his arms around me and nuzzled the back of my neck. “We’re probably going to do a lot of walking tomorrow. A lot of walking.” He nibbled my skin, making me shiver. “Maybe we should take advantage of not being sore and tired right now.”

“Oh yeah?” I set the guidebook down, covered his arms with mine, and tilted my head back to rest it on his shoulder. “What do you have in mind?”

Andrew kissed my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. “Nothing in particular.” He pulled me back against him, letting me feel his cock swelling against my ass. “Figured we could get naked and go from there.”

A laugh burst out of me. “For a guy who had to work up the courage to even approach me on the ship, you’ve got a filthy mouth when you want to.”

His lips curved into a grin against my face. “Well, considering I actually worked up the nerve to approach you at that bar, you should know by now I can pretend not to be too shy when I really want something.”

“Mmm, yeah, I’ve noticed.” I turned my head so I could kiss him. “I like it. A lot.”

“Do you?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Thought so.”

Then he kissed me full-on, and we got naked and went from there.