Chapter Twelve
Luna spent a quiet night in the studio. Though her hands itched to work, she kept herself on the chaise. Perhaps Tucker was right about some things. It surely couldn't be healthy to bounce from work to Tucker and back again. She had always been someone who was extremely independent.
"I am not going to let a relationship dictate this much of my life," she exclaimed to the darkness. It sounded pretty good, at least.
She had seen what happened to other artists who gave too much of themselves to their lovers, seen how it could take them away from the thing that sustained them and gave them that special spark. She had never seen if they regretted it; those people usually disappeared from her life sooner rather than later.
All right then, tomorrow, I'll get out a little bit. Murano glass is so beautiful, after all.
She rose in the morning to fetch the pastries that by now had become a staple, but she found that Tucker had left even earlier. The flat echoed with silence, and she was not sorry to get out of it. It was especially important after she remembered Tucker's four-hour lunch yesterday. There was a small, non-zero chance that if she had stayed in the apartment stewing over that information, she might have gone slightly mad.
Instead, she dressed herself in one of the gorgeous pale green dresses that had been sent to her, and after a moment, decided against the driver. Luna knew very much how her life hinged on Tucker at the moment, but surely there was nothing wrong about ignoring it for a short while? Using his driver, a friendly man of Turkish descent with a truly formidable moustache, would have been fine, but that would have been a link back to everything that she was trying to avoid.
Instead she called for a taxi service that would take her to the museum in question, and suddenly she was in another world, one that was not dictated by Tucker. There was a thrill to it, but even as she walked in awe among the art of another time, she couldn't help but miss him. There was one stained glass panel in particular that made her pause. Murano glass was justifiably famous for its blues and crimsons and greens, but this panel was done in glass tinted brown and gold. The result was a piece that looked unbelievably luxe and gorgeously decadent.
Luna spent a few minutes looking at the piece and trying to find a shard of glass that matched Tucker's extraordinary eyes, and finally, she had to shake her head with a slight laugh at her own foolishness.
"I love him," she said softly to herself, and the tears that came to her eyes were puzzling. It would have made sense if they were entirely sad or frustrated or grieving tears. After all, there was nothing pleasant about loving someone who did not love you back after all.
However, Luna's artist soul felt as if everything had snapped into place, as if everything now made sense in a way that it hadn't before. With the lens of love, it all came together.
A part of Luna had never thought that she would fall in love. That it had happened with a man who was so different from her was nearly funny, but when she thought about it, she would not have traded this for the world.
"I love him, I love him," she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself. She felt as if she might curl up on the floor next to all of this beauty and simply die of the strength of her emotions.
"Oh, honey, are you all right?"
Luna looked up at the concerned voice, noting only belatedly that she understood it. The entire day, she had been walking in a babble of Italian, and now being addressed in English felt like being hit with a bucket full of cold water.
"I... I am," she stammered, and she turned to face a concerned older couple. At first she wondered if they were tourists, but there was something comfortable about them, something that made her think that they were no strangers to the city.
"You looked a little peaked," said the woman, small and tidy in demure brown suit.
"You should sit down," said the tall and gaunt man who was obviously her husband. "Here, there's a bench here."
Luna protested a little, but in the end, the couple was right. A few minutes on a cool stone bench with a concerned couple from Wisconsin fretting over her proved to be exactly what she needed, and she grinned up at them.
'Thank you so much," she said with a laugh. "I think hearing English did me a lot of good, too. I didn't expect to hear it from anyone today..."
"Of course, dear," said the woman, who seemed to be the more talkative of the two. "I'm Cherry Lawson, and this is my husband Jim Lawson."
"Pleasure," Jack said laconically, and Luna grinned even wider. She had met plenty of couples just like these two, and somehow, halfway around the world, she felt at home.
"I'm happy to meet the both of you," she said. "What brings you to Florence?"
The two of them gave her wide grins of their own and answered her in unison.
"Bats!"
Luna blinked, and for a moment, all of her woes were forgotten as Jim and Cherry told her all about their project of studying a particular species of bat that had been living in the area even longer than the proud Florentines. They showed her pictures on their phones, as proud as they would have been of grandchildren, and when Luna expressed interest, they looked as if their day had been made.
"The glass is beautiful, but it's just us killing time until this evening," said Cherry. "There's a nearby cave where they come out, and it's amazing. We've been studying bats together for more than forty years, and every evening departure and morning return is unique. You should come with us! We're getting a light dinner at a restaurant we both adore, and then it’s off to the countryside."
Luna wondered if she should have some compunctions about going off into the Italian countryside with an older couple who seemed slightly insane (she refused to say batty), but she gave in to it with a shrug. She had wanted to be more independent, and maybe this was how it started. The old her wouldn't have hesitated for a moment to plunge into this new adventure.
"Hold on, just a minute," she said, and she reached for her phone. When she dialed Tucker, she wondered what he might say, and then it became a moot point because she only reached his voice mail.
"Hi, um, this is Luna. I'm going to be a little late tonight, it looks like I'm chasing bats with Cherry and Jim Lawson," she said. It was on the tip of her tongue to say I love you, but somehow she bit it back.
"I'll see you when I see you, I guess," she finished, and then she hung up.
He probably won't even notice that I'm gone, she thought with a sigh, and she turned to the excited couple.
"Well, I'm all yours," she said, and fell into step with them.
***
Eight hours later, she was cackling in the back of Jim and Cherry's Peugeot, hanging on to Cherry in the back seat as if they were old friends.
"You're too much, you are both too much," she exclaimed. "I honestly cannot believe that you actually climbed down into the cave."
"Only a little way, dear," said Cherry, though there was something very smug about her grin. "That's nothing, why, Jim descended nearly a mile into a cavern in Brazil just so we could verify the size of this colony we were trying to document."
"It was important," said Jim stolidly. "They were going to bulldoze the site, wreck the environment, without thinking of what a lack of bats would do."
After spending this much time with the Lawsons, Luna could appreciate how very bad losing a large colony of bats could be for a local environment, and she gasped accordingly.
"You should have come into the cavern with us, dear," said Cherry with a bright sparkle in her eyes. "You really don't know yourself until you've been caving, surrounded by rock, never sure what's going to happen..."
"No, thank you," Luna retorted. "I'll stay on the ground, thank you very much..."
From the driver's seat, Jim hummed thoughtfully.
"It's important to take risks though," he said. "Though of course, you should always choose the ones that you take. It should always be your choice."
Cherry laughed, suddenly sounding much younger.
"He said something very much like that when he proposed," she said fondly, and Luna felt a deep pang go through her even as she smiled.
Jim and Cherry Lawson were going back to a tiny subletted apartment in a rather poorer area of the city. They talked about getting to their study sites on burro, on buses crowded far past the point of claustrophobia and sometimes even on foot.
Despite their enthusiasm, she didn't envy their lives studying bats, but their happiness... that was something that she wanted fiercely and with a kind of hunger that startled her.
She threw her arms around Cherry in an enormous hug.
"Thank you," she said. "Thank you so much for today.
"Well, of course, dear," said Cherry, a little puzzled.
All too soon, it was time to drop her off, and she waved to them cheerfully before heading up to the penthouse.
Glancing at her phone, she was startled to see how very late it already was.
I hope Tucker didn't stay up worrying about me, she thought, and then she dismissed it.
She was just opening the door, thinking that surely he was asleep or perhaps even still out, when she felt a vise-like force grip her around the wrist, yanking her into the dim apartment before slamming the door behind her. Luna opened her mouth to scream, but then she realized that it was only Tucker, though Tucker looking far more furious than she had ever seen him look before.
This is Tucker, he's not going to do anything to me, he's not going to hurt me, she thought, but then he glared down at her, a mad light in his eye.
"Just where the hell have you been?"